Professional Development Outing

Sorry, it's been a while but I hope that I'm back in rhythm. This day proved a most insightful one for me as I saw my Director in a whole new light. That morning he came into my office and asked that my interpretor translate a briefing he built for presentation that afternoon at the Police Academy for a professional development seminar for Provincial (state level) Police leaders. Upon initial viewing, I observed it was a complex power point brief even though it was all in Dari. In the end, our very short notice effort to translate the slides proved inept. My interpretor was not nearly as competent with Power Point as the original author and remember they write right to left so this proved a most daunting task. I crammed editing the document the best I could but it just didn't jibe with me. I did recognize the strategic and complex concepts which I believed at the time was not a good match to his target audience. Ahh, wrong again.

So, off we went to the Police Academy right before lunch. While there were other coalition members attending, I was the only one invited in for lunch as the guest of the Director. Actually, it made me felt kinda special. After lunch, we sat through three brutally boring presentations, at one point you couldn't hear the speaker above the chatter in the room. I took a much needed nap. The Director was the last speaker of the day and I was most concerned. He proved captivating, totally engaging his audience and generating much discussion. The lecture went well beyond the allotted time, but that was only because of discussions. While I did not understand a word being spoken, I could see the excitement in the room and passion for the subject. I do know it was about the Afghan culture/traditions and how criminals were taking advantage. I was captivated.

Below are pictures from this outing. Interestingly, it started out with me taking a picture of the director and his junior executive officer. Naseer (the driver) than insisted I join in. Then others and even more. Of course I had to show the pictures to all who thoroughly enjoyed.

After this, we proceeded on to the Academy Commandant's office, once again me being the lone coalition member. There were about 7 senior police officials present, all very passionate about about whatever they were talking about... once again, discussions in Dari. Another interesting experience in Afghanistan