Brandished hand gun

When I was being driven home last night in Kabul I noticed a tall man in Afghan clothes (Peraan Tunban) being firmly taken from the Shaw-i-naw cinema property towards the street. At the street a tall man in a grey western business suit pulled out a hand-gun and pointed it at and about 15cm from the tall man's head. I didn't see what happened next because my driver zoomed us away from the scene. Police and other armed men were watching from a block away and one man had taken the machine gun off an armed pickup truck and was aiming it at the situation. My Personal Security Detail radioed the situation to our Operations Room and even three hours later that stretch of road was out of bounds.

I've been told the man in the suit was probably part of the local security force and I'm assuming nobody got shot and the tall man is now enjoying the comforts of an Afghan jail. I've seen Ethiopian jets bombing Asmara airport and I've heard Ethiopian police shooting a man in Addis and I once had a gun pointed loosely at me at the Djibouti-Ethiopia borders ... hm, this is the first time I've realized that those events all involved Ethiopia ... but this really disturbed me because I've never seen anybody point a gun at anybody else before. Despite being thrilled when I fired an AK-47 a few months ago guns make me nervous. But it's probably good to get an updated dose of reality.

Strangely, the longer I delay blogging because I'm so far behind, the farther behind I get!

SO MUCH has happened since I last posted. That was a quick note to ensure friends that I hadn't been near the bomb attack on the Sarina Hotel in Kabul. In fact I need to relate a few even earlier things. So gather around my flip chart and we'll brainstorm on the following:

I got back from holidays about a month ago and having now been a motionless night (this is my criterion for listing countries) in Turkey, Romania and Seribia I have updated my list of countries visited.

The holiday really made me realize that my job was not making me feel interested or personally developed and after a few days back at work I resigned. My contract required a month's notice and I gave seven weeks - however Equal Access responded that I should leave at the end of January (three weeks later).

That was while I was in the northern Afghan province of Kunduz. On the way back through a heavy storm while we were putting chains on our car wheels at a checkpoint the policeman let me fire his Kalashnikov rifle. It was the first time I'd ever fired a gun and it will probably be the last but it was quite a thrill. There was much less recoil than I expected and much much more noise.

Evenings were turned to job hunting and over the last few weeks I've had various tentative offers and enquiries but nothing is definite yet. I hope to go back to Afghanistan because of the important work that has to be done and because of special friends. I miss playing Ultimate Frisbee - there are very informal pick-up games that were the high point of my week.

I came home on February 2 and 3 - on a marathon journey that really made me feel my age. After a short (but of course delayed) flight from Kabul to Delhi I had a 13 hour layover in the transit lounge. Thankfully I met a very interesting medical student who helped pass the time. Then I had a cramped 15 hour flight from Delhi to Newark with no entertainment system or reading light. Then, rather surprisingly I had an 11 hour wait in Newark for my flight to Ottawa. The best part of the trip was seeing Dad and the second best part was having Customs tell me that I did not need to pay duty on the photography equipment I was carrying. (Honesty is the best policy.)

I still hope to post more holiday and Afgahnistan photos...