Within the first few minutes I entered AWN for the first time, I was greeted by the woman who I had been communicating with for months and whom I was supposed to work most closely with. She greeted me with, “It is so nice to meet you! I quit. Today is my last day.” Needless to say, I was surprised. Regardless, she, I will refer to her S, briefed me on who is who and outlined for me what AWN is currently working on, which I will go into in detail in a later blog.

At lunch-time, about 8 or 9 of the 21 staff members at AWN sat down together for their daily serving of one of several different Afghan dishes. The S brought in a digital camera to take pictures of the rest of the staff on her last day. I insisted that I take pictures so that she could be in the pictures, not just taking them. After a few, I told S, AWN’s Program Manager, a 20 year old woman, who I will refer to as R, and one of AWN’s finance staff, an 18 year old man, who I will refer to as SH, to squish together in order to get all three of them in the picture. R turned cherry red and covered her face with her head scarf. SH too blushed. S said chuckling, “Come on! This is Afghanistan!” In the end, I played it off as a joke, but it was a close one!