Inyas Blog » Kabul

Amazing people and amazing project!

bjoern — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 11:22:10 +0000

After five days of assembly with hundred of great participants, politicians and people from embassies and international organizations is done: first Afghan Youth Assembly is history and will go on in future meetings. Afghan young people actually managed over all ethnical and politicial boarders to agree and work together!

Our team, consisted of six international and twelve national trainers, managed this project with huge power and amazing team-spirit. Was great to see how international society make a difference with Afghan youngsters on equal level!

great trainers

About crazy security-hints and cool work

bjoern — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 19:03:15 +0000

We are UN guys now! Nothing was that clear for us in the last days… after filling in almost twenty forms, got two passports, one crazy security-briefing with pictures from ambushed cars… and one badge and of course we got the amazing radio, that we all know from the movies and have to respond to head-quarter all evening… bravo. delta. 23… do you copy… :) And UN compound has a swimming-pool inside and we just attended a latvian party. Well – and about my room there are humours, that Nixon stayed here during his stay in Afghanistan in 70ies. ItÂ´s really different from my FES experiences but itÂ´s great to work with experiences guys from UNDP.

And we really feeling like in a movie here, cause situation is changing each hour in our project, but today we started with orientation-day and experienced 100 representatives from schools in Kabul, that made us believe in our work cause they were that great. And as our three last people arrived from Dubai we were completed by one Fillipines – working with that six experienced guys is amazing but still taff under this conditions. But we believe in the young people and as I got to know that 68 procent of Afghan population is under 25 years I understood, that “they are the future of the country” is not longer a sentence but reality.

UNDP called for Kabul again

bjoern — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 19:58:02 +0000

The people saying: “If you stay once in Kabul and enjoyed the country, you will come back.” I was not aware that this happend so fast, but as UNDP Seal office asked me to gather some trainers and come to there “Afghan Youth Assembly” I could not stand and agreed to stay from 2nd untill 16th June again in Kabul for this event in the Afghan parliament.

And I took my friend Katrin HÃ¼nemÃ¶rder (Germany), Asser Mortensen (Danish) and Igor Casapu (Moldova) with me and as we know each others from youthpolicy in the European context I am really lucky to find this dream-team. Together we will make to impossible possible and work with 100 young students in the youthparliament in a country, where democracy is not very wellknown and hardly any youth-NGOÂ´s are existing. ThatÂ´s exactly what I like as challenges. :) And the whole UNDP security stuff I want with Igor through together the whole day was really crazy, now I am not only UN-official but have a radio also, are not allowed to travel alone and have filled in whole books with papers. :)

Flood and earthquakes – all inclusive…

bjoern — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 14:32:51 +0000

Well, after I already thought that I get to know Afghanistan a bit – the country surprised me again and again. It started last week with heavy rains and the snow from the mountains was melting, so the rivers got more and more water and flood was arriving. The water destroyed some bridges in Kabul and the area around and several people drown.

And as if this was not enough for this country today I woke up at 5.10 oÂ´clock and it was shaking a bit – I experienced my first earth-quake and at around eight oÂ´clock the second one. The first one was 5,2 on the Richter-skale and it had his center in the north and their several houses and villages were destroyed. I really have to say, that might be more than enough for this country that has seen 30 years of senseless war. But there was also something crazy, that I discovered… The Afghan people like football and specially German teams but they better play buskashi, their national sport. Riders on horses went in the arena and wait for the start, then a dead goat is the aim to carry around. The winner is the guy, that managed to carry the goat against the others to the circle on theother end of the arena. It is really crazy but I definatly gave to see this soon!

Pictures from Kabul

bjoern — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 19:05:37 +0000

After a lot of remarks here same pictures from my daily life in Kabul. The first pictures shows the really amazing-snow-covered mountains around the town, that reaches 4.000 – 5.000 meters. ItÂ´s a pitty that you cannot see them on daylight very often cause of smog and dust. The second picture is the street in front of FES office and this is the normal standart of streets here – it can go worse outside but with good cars you manage all, you only need time. The third and fourth pictures show men and women at street in typical clothing – the burkas are very strange for me, cause you cannot look in the eyes. And the last pictures shows Zainab, our secretary, and Ismail, our leader of administration in her office – thatÂ´s great work in there with cool team.

Sunny life in Kabul

bjoern — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 18:32:37 +0000

After some great days in Kabul I really enjoy life here and Germany is soooo far away, even if you meeting Germans everywhere and all people love Germans, cause “they were never fighting against us”… :) And I got introduced to this town by our office, Ursula and Zahir, on several trips but also by some friends, that showed me good restaurants and of course journalists, that stay here. In the office we sent out now the new “call for candidates” for the “Young Leaders Forum 2007/2008″, that I wrote together with Sulaiman. The forum is a one-year trainee-course for young leaders in soft-skills but also with meeting to experts, politicians and journalists. I met them one year ago in Berlin and was amazed about their positions, they have already taken considering their youth.

The next days I work on the young journalists network and potential exchanges with “the world” and I love do to the work, cause the country lackes independent media and that would make a big difference to the people – even if only 200.000 have internet-access, the news are spread out via radio and TV and reach them. Next week the SPD chairman Kurt Beck is coming to our office, so we are already cleaning – which is not that easy, cause after the rain we have only dust outside on the streets…

Sightseeing in Kabul

bjoern — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 18:43:23 +0000

After I arrived in my office and I got introduced to the team I managed to realised, that work is gonna be different, cause of slow internet, funny working procedures and specially different mentality. Afghanian people suffered now under 30 years of ongoing war and they just want to have peace and silence and do not use to creative and critics in team-work.

But afterwards I got a personal trip through Kabul with the rainy, misty streets – the guarded embassies, the traffic-jams and socialistic block-houses but also the great view to mountains. Here itÂ´s my best picture from today ;)