When a plane tips its wings to land, you know there’s an adventure waiting below. When that wing tip reveals the coarse mountains of Afghanistan and dusty suburbs of Kabul, it’s something else altogether.

 But after I landed and cleared customs what happened next might shock you.

 

Nothing.

 

That’s what happened. No bombs. No taliban freedom fighter with an angry gun over his shoulder. Just that 1950’s feeling that they need a little bit of love, and new buildings. Queer eye for the Afghani guy.

All I was confronted with was a wide eyed teenager trying to carry my suitcase for a US dollar, a devilishly handsome soccer team off to Istanbul, and my driver Fukruddin (yes, I did over-pronounce his name) whose weathered brown face was lit by a most welcoming smile buried in a wiry beard.

 

Indeed, strolling the kilometre or so between the relative safety of the airport building and the car park one could feel just as endangered in the wilds of American suburbia when some idiot exercises his right to bear a fully automatic high powered rifle with unlimited ammunition.

 

America doesn’t seem all that different really – a government lobbied to corruption that inadvertently kills innocent people, and a hope for a better life.

 

The first striking thing—apart from the sheer novelty of being sent to work here– was the drive to the UN compound.  Security restrictions meant it was no longer safe to take the main road so dusty back streets it was.

 

Here, I got a chance to see the real Kabul.  If you’ve ever seen a city in old Asia, you’d recognize  the same grubby shop fronts, pockmarked footpaths, and weekly garbage service that comes but twice a year; likewise, the old folks leaning against door frames, smoking cigarettes, and gesturing with their hands.

 

During the ride over, it occurred to me that with that big blue U.N. sign on the car was a bit too obvious.  I mean, if bad dudes really wanted a target, wouldn’t it be better to be cruising around in a beat up old Datsun 180Y, like the other other like the rest of the locals.

 

I was greeted at the compound by no-one. Consequently, there was no record of my arrival; no one to check who I was.

 

If it wasn’t for the daff pommy judicial lawyer who took the ride with me from the airport (bugger got the front seat) and signed me in as a guest, I’d still be sitting in the cold-tiled, windowless den of a bureaucratic processing room, in a cracked plastic chair that pinched my butt every time I moved.

 

90 minutes later, I was in. I’m not going to describe the compound for you – it was—well, let’s just say that I had the shipping container in the back row between the generator and the guards tower. I’m not sure if it was the generator humming all night, or the dulcet tones of the 4:30 a.m call to prayer that was more of a trial for me.  Then again maybe it was just jet lag.

 

But I was there to do a job. It was UN leadership development time.

 

And a lovely bunch of people it was— from all around the world— 22 countries, 25 participants—courageous, hard working, inspired folk in a volatile environment.

 

The program is designed to be run by two facilitators but my partner got caught without a visa so he was written off a day before I arrived. Nevertheless, I nailed it; once again proving that you never really know what you’re capable of until you’re thrown into the mix.

 

Even so, I was under no illusions.  I was responsible for engaging them. This training week in a 1950’s fibro-shack classroom had to be useful enough to justify taking time away from working on the country they’re trying to heal.

 

In looking back, I must say that  I’m truly blown away by the trust that group placed in me to guide their learning journey.  The humility and gratitude I feel is immense.

 

So the first question any rational person may ask is:  what do I have to offer when I’ve never worked in a war zone;  never scraped bodies off the road, or overhauled a human rights agenda; never taught farmers to plant flowers for perfume instead of heroin? How the hell do I tell them how to do their job?

 

I don’t.

 

You see, I’m a facilitator, derived from the latin word facil – meaning ‘to make easy’.

My job is to  not to teach the how to.  My job is to guide…their… learning…journey.

How do I do this?

 

I listen, I ask, I play, I inquire, I offer, I suggest. I use the notion of not-knowing as a starting point for deeper systems thinking, reflection on the intelligent use of emotions, and that elusive sense of just doing the right thing. They’re already a long way down that road, I’m just the guy in the service station when they pull in for a tune up.

 

And I freekin’ love it.

 

Once the gig was done, I only had one more task—to convince the security guys to let me ride into town. I’d been softening up their boss, who was in the training all week, so when I dropped his name, and the Learning & Development point person organised the logistics, I was in.

 

Just as before, I found a city going about it’s business; a busy market, streets choked with ridiculous traffic, hilltop homes with a view, even a riverside promenade (we’re not talking Paris here, it was the Afghani version).  People just going about daily life. The only difference being that a bomb could go off any moment.

 

You may or may not want to believe Pakistan supplies weaponry to the Taliban because they don’t want a stable Afghanistan to take back land that was rightfully theirs before the meddling British decided what lines to draw across the mountains.

 

And you may or may not want to believe the Iranians don’t want a stable Afghanistan because they need the water that flows there, or just because they hate America – who happens to be here thinking they are doing the right thing.

 

But one thing is incontrovertible: The human spirit. Here in Kabul at least, if you stay for long enough, you can feel it.

I could leave you with the flowery prose of that last sentence. But here in Afghanistan, if you stay for long enough, I’m sure you would also feel jaded, cynical, distrustful, bitter, disappointed, opinionated, hurt, scared but numb, and burnt out.

 

My job was to keep the participants focused on the flowery sentence.