Bpeace in Afghanistan

Paula spent the day in the field photographing the associates in their homes and has a creative blast capturing the daily life of these women and their families. "Real World" Kabul style. Meanwhile Steve, the budding documentarian (Dana he is working the oeuvre) was stationed behind the tripod capturing the moments between Athena, Rangina and Kate . . .more on that later.

Marla, Athena and Susan took a crash course in the hotel business this morning with Jalal Rabbani, the very helpful owner of the Heetal Plaza Hotel, where we are staying. The objective of the meeting was to get some market and cost information for Mahbooba’s guest house. Jalal gave us an insider’s view of the challenges and opportunities of the hotel business in Kabul, including specific costs and tips. By the end of the conversation he offered to assist Mahbooba in any way he can, including providing free consulting.

There was exciting news when we went to visit Latifa who is selling some of her embroidered clothing at Nasima’s new store. Latifa has introduced her sister to her business who will ultimately take it over. Why? Because once Latifa’s current assignment with the consulting company On the Frontier Group (OTF) is complete in August 2006, she intends to team up with another Bpeace Associate Kamela to provide business development consulting to Afghan businesses of all sizes. Latifa is clear about the skills she needs to develop to be successful and looks forward to having her mentors’ guidance as she grows into this new career. We counseled her to cultivate a relationship with an Afghan person who is accomplished in her new field who could mentor her. She immediately thought of someone to approach and is quite excited about this possibility.

Kate and Gabriella spent the morning at Gabriella's studio/house. After an Italian coffee (bliss after days of Nescafe instant and Jasmine tea) they jumped into work. Steve took pictures and notes of the rapid fire sample concepts they developed, all inspired by authentic Afghan designs.

Rangina arrived in the late afternoon after a 6 hour ride from Kandahar (stuck behind the regular occurence slow speed military convoys) for the weekend training sessions and for her mentor meetings with Athena and Kate. She was greeted by the Bpeace team with such joy. We all remain so impressed by this young woman.

It's 9:30pm the night before our training so while this blog is being typed various Bpeace team members are finishing their preparations and this typist is about to jump off and do same. Pictures as always take forever to download so we will be multi-tasking getting them through to dear Toni who always gets them posted for us. Shout out to her.