Kabulife #3 - Work

With a big gap in my reporting due to a massive workload, the theme of today will try to explain what I do on a day-to-day basis. I'll start by describing the week that I now leave behind me (since the Afghan Saturday is like the western Sunday).

Sweden will from the 1st of July 2009 have a new country strategy for Afghanistan, and in the beginning of this week a delegation from Sida (including the General Director) in Sweden arrived to immerse themselves in the reality of this country. My responsibilities for this week was to coordinate everybody and their travels between meetings, since we cannot move anywhere without our cars and drivers. This meant some detailed work in excel and a constant accessibility and flexibility since things never turn out the way you plan when having meetings here (people just don't show up, or change their mind hours before the meeting). I have also arranged a week of separate meetings for a person looking at issues concerning Private Sector Development, with this being my area of interest. During the week, I together with this person have been trying to figure out what Sweden can do to promote the development of the private sector in Afghanistan. Which surely is a challenge, I can tell you. It has been an intense week where we have met highly positioned people in ministries, organizations and NGO's, and my business card collector is just about as full as my brain at the moment.

When things are back to normal, I work with assessing project proposals that come to us that deal with education and employment. This means that I compare the activities and goals to the aims of our funds, and commit interviews and follow-ups to make sure that every piece of relevant information is squeezed out of person with involvement in the project. When this is done, I write fancy documents describing the project in order for my 'boss' to decide on it. It is actually a very nice thing to do here, since it gives you opportunities to come out to visit places and people in and around Kabul.

Then, of course, being the youngest at the office, I'm more or less the IT-guy also, helping people with their excel issues and technical questions. It's such an easy way to make people happy.

I hope you're doing good back in Sweden with all the Snow. We also got our first flakes on the top of the mountains surrounding Kabul the other day, and I'll try to be back with a photo-special soon. Until then - stay safe!