Sunday 26th April

Good news - Sarah managed brief email contact...

Sitting in Taloqan with Leslie, Canadian journalist, Lucy, German documentary maker, Olympia, Slovakian twin project leader, and Kamawi, Afghan Twin sShool Coordinator...a cosmopolitan team and all light years younger than me! We have been sitting in the dark as no electricity but now have a few hours of generator power. No hot or running water ...just a bucket of cold water that somehow doesn’t appeal even after our 8 hour journey from Kabul to the North.

We travelled up through the Salang Pass and its 3000 metre tunnel, Hindu Kush still snow clad from the winter. Then through the rolling hills of Ali Abad—never so green as now due to the best rainfall in years. Never manage to describe these hills ...but try to imagine someone has emptied thousands of cushions from the sky and layered them with swathes of velvet in every shade of green, brown, and red. Nestled amongst them are mud bricked villages and tall poplars and the foreground is a mass of wild flowers—vermillion poppies, purple and yellow thymes .. and a beautiful scent of spring. And the river runs through it.

Security has tightened and we are not allowed to stop, as in the past, to sample kebabs and naan on the river bank, or search the bustling bazaars for dried fruits and mangoes.

Our plans must all change for our school visits as there is a celebration day on Tuesday—Mujahideen Day...commemorating the withdrawal of the Russians in 1992- and all the schools are closed and the cities are deemed dangerous for expats. So we have a delightful plan to visit Kishem and its 2 schools tomorrow (Monday) and then Tuesday will head off for 2 days in the remote and beautiful Worsaj, in my favourite valley, in the foothills of the Hindu Kush, where we have built 4 schools. They have begged us to stay in their villages for years and now we will. It will be an amazing experience staying in their homes and then we will visit the schools when they reopen on Wednesday. So no communication for a while.