Iftar at the Embassy

The U.S. Embassy hosted an iftar for civil society and media leaders during Ramadan (one of four).  It was a chance at the end of my tour to reconnect with the media leaders, senior journalists, and some of the civil society leaders I met over the past year. 

Usually a public diplomacy officer spends the bulk of their time meeting people and building relationships but in Kabul our lack of opportunity to get out stunts our ability to meet large numbers of people.  Most of the Afghans I met were either brought to the embassy for tea, or on the rare occasion, during a visit to their organization (Aschiana - for street kids, or Killid Radio) for an hour or two.  It is critical that we know people so that:

• We can make informed decisions when we have to decide how to spend grant money; 

• We can choose wisely those organizations we can partner with to implement an important program;

• We can find Afghans to participate in exchange programs; 

• We can understand what is going on in Afghanistan from more than just a small sample of our normal contacts.

And I have to say that at the end of this year, thanks to the great Afghan staff, I had met a large number of people.  It is never enough, but it was a good crowd.

I still have a lot of processing to do on the whole experience.  So much happened, like the time simply accelerated in the last two months.  I guess that is always the way, when you are leaving, everything comes into clarity.  So I will try to capture the experience, impossible I know, but certainly worth a try.