Cultural Differences

Cultural differences are such an interesting concept and one of the joys of traveling and exploring the world. They also can be a huge pain in the ass.

I have already learned so much about Afghanistan, its people, the language, the food, and the way of life since living here. It has been a very enlightening experience. Today though, I had an experience that drove me absolutely insane…

Routinely we have to go to the different Ministry offices around Kabul in which we work with. This is part of one of the cool experiences I have while working in this job. I meet new people, see different parts of the city, partake in shaping of a nation, and most importantly, I get out of the compound for a bit. On the other hand, it is dangerous to drive across the city, we get stuck in traffic, we are easy targets, it takes time and security to get us there for the meetings. In my mind these meetings should be left for hella important activities and only when necessary.

We are currently in the process of transferring all of the raw data we have collected over the last 4 years to the relevant Ministries. This allows them to save and use the data for whatever they want for in the future and allows them record keeping of past activities. I know what you are thinking; why in the hell wasn’t this done from day 1? I wonder that as well. Welcome to development work 😉

Anyway, we get to the Ministry, which sits on the side of the hill in the city and has very cool views and begin our conversation. The meeting is to discuss that this data we have collected needs to be transferred to the Ministry (Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation, and Livestock in this case) so that they can have it because our contract is up August 31st, with no guarantee to be extended.

We begin at around 10:15 (were supposed to start at 10), this idea is explained, the Ministry folk agree and are excited to have all the raw data for the future. Boom meeting should be finished and it is 10:20. First off, why in the hell did we need to have a meeting for this? This really could have been explained in an email. The real meeting will be later when the two technical teams of developers and GIS people meet to discuss the concurrent fields and data that actually is useable and needs to be transferred. There was absolutely no reason to drive all the way across town and literally putting people in danger to discuss this. Mind Blown.

Next the meeting continues for another 40-45 mins, talking about the same main points in more detail, for what reason I am still not sure, until we have come to the same conclusion that we had in the first five minutes; yes there is data the Ministry wants, they have the capacity to take it, the technical teams need to sit down and do their thing.

Afghans are interesting people. I am not sure if the conversation took so long because everyone was speaking in English, where at a table there were 9 of us and only I spoke English as my first language, or if it was that Afghans just enjoy the process. Enjoying the process is my way of combining slow and the need to do things face-to-face. Everything here just seems so drawn out and inefficient, but that is part of the culture here. You need to say and do things in person, no matter how miniscule, which really might not be all that bad. I have plenty of coworkers that I couldn’t even put a face to back in the US, but here I know everyone’s name and what they look like. It’s just a different style and one that is going to take a little bit to get used to I suppose.