Saturday, February 18, 2006

The Warming Trend

So I’ve safely made my bittersweet return to the Kabubble. I’m back in the swing of things, already. Got back on Thursday and just chilled and unpacked and started catching up. Friday was another day off, and had a staff meeting at 8am on Saturday. At the meeting the Chief thanked and apologized to our staff and few guests for the early morning meeting.

Specifically he acknowledged the difficulty of the early morning meetings, naming me in particular. Though the irony would have been priceless, luckily I wasn’t nodding off at that point (2 minutes after a fresh dose of nicotine) and politely smirked and nodded my head in appreciation for the acknowledgment of my personal suffering and steadfastness.

The meeting was an overview of a project some of us had been working on for the past couple of months. I had been floating in and out of it, assisting here and there. Sadly it’s part of our wrap-up for our work here. Even more sadly was that I finally see, or rather clearly appreciate, all that we are doing here and how it all fits in. I don’t think I was the only one to appreciate this, the scope and the necessity of the work.

It was bittersweet leaving the warm beaches of Goa. It will be dramatically more bittersweet leaving the many warm faces here in Kabul.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

... nodded my head in appreciation for the acknowledgment of my personal suffering and steadfastness.

Good to see that despite your mercenary status, you are still quite happy to claim martyrdom.

*huff*... evil aid contractors.

*looks down from moral high ground*

quasim said...

VP,
So quick to assume superiority, huh?

The claim to martyrdom had nothing to do with saving the world from itself for a mere pittance. Instead, it had to do with me not getting my beauty-sleep. No one could pay me enough to compensate for that...

Shannon said...

How long do you have left?

quasim said...

Aboout a month.