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Vignettes from Kabul

Daddy is working in Kabul, Afghanistan, for Management Sciences for Health. He wrote the following update a week ago, after his first 24 hours in Kabul:

Hi to all,  Just a few vignettes from my first day in Kabul:
I had no trouble getting a ticket from the airport counter for Ariena in New
Delhi($250 one way cash only) The flight was only 30% full.  I met some
other NGO folks on the flight and sat next to an Afghan Internist who has
worked his whole life here in Kabul at a big hospital which now has almost
no lab machines or xray equipment. So he works completely by clinical
impressions as to what is wrong with the patient.  In other words, he has no
help in his diagnostic exam from the lab or the xray which we consider so
essential in the developed world, but is rarely present here in the
developing world.

I was met at the airport by an MSH driver. Since they don't have any
machines to offload the baggage from the plane, at the small airport, it
took longer to get the checked bags(2 hour wait) than the flight took from
new delhi(1.75 hours).

The people at MSH Kabul are a very nice group and we had a dinner together
last night at a couple's house who  are from Olympia, Washington.  She works
on contracting with the ministry of health giving money to other NGO's and
he works with the Ministry of Finance trying to install Western type
accountability and systems into there way of budgeting and paying out
government money here. He is a Graduate of HBS class of 1971, and has had an
interesing career in many countries doing this type of consulting work in
accounting and budgetary systems.   He told me the budget for the whole
government of the entire country this year is only $500 million.  40% of
which comes from revenue generated by local taxes and customs duties and 60%
comes from international donors.
I am getting oriented  these first few days.  Friday(today) is the only
holiday in the 6 day work week here. So it will be a slow start which is
just as well,
I was taken for a drive around the city yesterday and it does look like I
expected, maybe a bit worse, in terms of the amount of destruction of
buildings.  23 years of civil war and two international superpower wars have
made Kabul hardly recognizeably as a capital city of several million people.
  Many bombed out buildings are now the site for squatter families, who are
returning refugees from Iran or Pakistan and have no house or land of their
own.
The daily life for the people here is very difficult, but their spirit is
unbreakable.  They are a long suffering and almost unsuppressible people,
and I suppose that is what inspires the western workers who come here to try
to help.  It is that and the level of poverty, which is worse than almost
any other country I have been in.
The old markets and streets which existed here back in 1973 when we came
thru  here in our campervan, on a trip from London to Bangladesh, are no
longer here, due the destruction from constant war.  They are just now
starting to get rebuilt and you can see the entreprenuerial spirit is still
present in the people(mostly men).
More reports later.     Steve

posted by Li at 9:29 PM