Hi there!
You're probably reading this as you saw a "out of office" reply to one of your emails, and are wondering what on earth possesed me to take a three week trip to Afghanistan in the middle of winter.
It's fairly simple really - about a year ago, my church was asked if we could do a collection for a small orhpanage in Kabul that had narrowly avoided being demolished, and was in a pretty precarious state. We managed to raise about £30 000; and that was the end of that, as far as I was concerned - just another fundraiser that went well, another charity to forget.
However, during the year I went on a holiday to California to see a freind, and ended up meeting a lot of new people, and having a few conversations which made me feel that constructive holidays, at least for me, are a lot more rewarding than just running around on my own, which has been the sort of thing I've done over the last few years.
A couple of months later, the director of the projects in Afghanistan (who was partially responsible for the rescued orphanage) came through London to give us an update on the orphanage project - it's still going, and going pretty well (though always in need of more money) - and I thought it would be pretty cool to actually go out and put my mouth where my money was, so to speak.
The last thing I wanted to do was become some sort of "aid tourist", pitching up with nothing to do; and I also knew that I'd only have a limited time and budget. As my job involves quite a bit of technical support and training (as many of you know); I thought that I'd ask if there was a need for three weeks of free technical support and IT training for local users of the charities services - frankly, I was doubtful that such a niche would exist, but I got a very enthusiastic reply - so I'll be leaving for Kabul tommorow (thursday 15/2/07) to provide training for local people in IT skills - basic office and maintainance stuff; but useful for the day to day operation of several projects, and also for a skills set which will make them more employable in the longer term.
I'm really loooking forward to my three weeks adventure, which I will keep updated on this blog. Hopefully I'll also be able to post photographs as I go along.
I won't touch down in Kabul until Saturday Morning (as I'm going via Dubai), but I hope to keep you informed as much as possible!
This trip is entirely self funded, with no outside support. If you'd like to know how you can support this project either financially or practically, please contact me by email at leon @ crowbar.co.uk (remove the spaces!)
Speak to you soon!
