The Home Stretch

My tour in Afghanistan is rapidly coming to a close with just a couple weeks left.  The many goodbye parties have already begun and this will be the time to focus on finishing outstanding work and begin to transition away responsibilities and hopefully establish tools to improve continuity for those to come.

This second year was challenging in that many of the colleagues with whom you became close with and spent so much time suddenly switch out and you begin the process of starting over with the new people who have come.  Fortunately, there were great people, new friends and old, that arrived and I'm glad to have had the opportunity to meet, work, and live with all of them.  Kabul really is a unique place where you can form such close-knit relationships in a brief amount of time.

The last few months have been busy and exciting.  I took a trip back to the US and went on the first trip in a decade with my brothers, saw lots of friends, explored several of the national parks in the southwest, and had some great experiences at work.

The next chapter of my foreign service adventure will take me back to Indonesia where I will help support my old office for nine weeks on temporary assignment.  It will be great to see old colleagues and friends and it will reunite me with my wife.  Then, it will be a brief home leave back to the US for a couple of weeks and then off to the next big chapter beginning in Thailand.

I'm excited and anxious.  Let's do this!

The flowers are blooming!

In the Moment

Working in Afghanistan, there is a probability you are away from your family and that sucks.  While nothing can replace your family, what I've found is that the community can really pull together and you'll find that you create strong bonds with the colleagues and friends who serve with you.

Over the past couple of months, I'm now settling into the new position at post and enjoying learning things from a more managerial perspective.  Managing multiple American staff has been interesting and work assignments such as staffing, hiring, and more strategic planning has been definitely a change of pace.  But I still remain close to the programs and, while I hold a special fondness for the infrastructure work, I'm branching out to cover areas like agriculture, economic growth, and audits.

I've also started to adapt to the new social groove with all the new people that make up the Mission and the new routines I've established.  It'll be a good year.  Different, but definitely will be alright.

Afghanistan being typically only a one year tour and a less than ideal work/life location, it's easy to always be thinking about the next "thing".  Like the next posting after Afghanistan, the R&R away from post, or maybe even the next big crisis to tackle (there's always something new here!).  But it's also because the time spent in Afghanistan is so short and so the time being with some of the amazing people around is so brief that I must make continual efforts to really appreciate the unique experiences and the people here.

As the holidays quickly approach, I'll anxiously anticipate seeing my family but still look forward to celebrating Thanksgiving here with this amazing cast of characters who make up my other "family".  Happy Thanksgiving!

Carpet Lunch - A favorite Friday activity

Looking Forward to the Next Year

One year down in Afghanistan, one more year to go.  However, I'm optimistic the next year will also be good as there will be a different group of people and a different position in the office for me keeping things interesting fresh.

In the next year, I'll be moving from an operational Contracting Officer covering a specific portfolio to a managerial role supervising others and supporting them in the management of their portfolios.  This will be my first experience managing American career officers versus local national or third country national staff and I am sure I'll learn a grow from this position.

There is also a new group of solid people that have arrived to post.  Several I also knew from Indonesia which is a nice headstart for forming a new social network and it'll be fun to get to know new people.  I was with many great people in the last year at Kabul, I'm sure the next year will be the same.

Other news is that I was successful in my last attempt at the annual evaluation process moving up to the next personal grade in the foreign service from FS-4 to FS-3.  This is a great step up that will help me in being competitive for positions and posting in the future.  Promotions are particularly more difficult due to the hiring surge from 2008-2012 with the DLI program where the Agency doubled in size creating numerous people vying to be ranked for promotions.

The last bit of news is the assignment list for priority bidders (those coming out from countries such as Afghanistan) and I can look forward to going to Thailand for my next posting.  Having this as a next a assignment was a major factor in my decision to stay in Afghanistan a second year as this post will allow both my wife and I to be employed, the city of Bangkok has great medical facilities for if we consider children, and will just be an all-around great place to live.

The adventure continues and I look forward to the what the next year will bring.

Recent event with the Ambassador and other agency heads announcing funding of $200M through NATO channeled through USAID's mechanism with the World Bank for infrastructure.

Hard Farewells with the Annual Exodus

The last month was the season I was dreading for months...transfer season.  The whole compound takes a new personality and life as 90% or more of the embassy population changes with people coming and going.

I really do believe it's all about the people you are with in this career.  Moving from place to place, having that foreign service family makes all the difference.  Afghanistan is tough in that you are with people for so short a period of time; however, those times are packed with memories as everyone is in this fishbowl together.

Workplace dynamics are also shifting greatly.  Completely new faces all learning the culture of the compound and the challenges of the work.  Hopefully handovers were all done well, or the best they can be, to keep the pace and momentum for all the things we've labored to date.  As I observe the newcomers to see whom I can reliably work with to get work done and who might be a part of the new social network for the next year, I reflect that perhaps this is similar to what the local staff feel in all posts as the American staff turnover.

I'm going to miss the departing group.  Some go way back to my entry DLI class.  Some were friends and colleagues from Jakarta.  Some I met here.  They were all really great people and I'm glad they were part of my life here.

Looking forward to the new arrivals.  It's a new year and a new life for me here in Kabul.

Plenty more time to buy these!