Carefully...

I am trying very much to be careful in what I write. It's not that I'm paranoid, but everyone here is careful. We had a dinner tonight with a bunch of expats at the guest house. Suffice to say at one point it descended into farce. The main thing is that there isn't just one country group represented in the expat community here, so sometimes you can have a number of different languages flying round the table and the opportunity for mis-communication is rife. Lots of laughter though, and I made the comment about being crazy. Our security guy looked at me and said "of course we are, why else would we be here!". My type of people. I heard another story today from someone else who works for a major organization. It was about the power of a single person. He was telling me about how development is as much about an individual response as it is a global one. He told me about someone who works in his office (for the sake of this story we'll call the man Bob). Bob is a local who fled with his family to Iran when he was 8, they were economic migrants, and in order to help his family he had to work, he washed dishes at a nearby restaurant. One day a wealthy businessman (or at least that's how Bob saw him) asked Bob if he wanted to go to school. Yes said Bob, so the businessman offered to pay for schooling and books and uniform ( it wasn't alot of money, but more than Bob and his family could afford). Bob kept washing dishes in the evenings, and went to school during the day. After a number of years, his family moved back to Afghanistan, he had to stop going to school, but because of the experience he had had he kept teaching himself. Long story short, Bob had the opportunity to get a scholarship to a University overseas, and is now working with this major organization. His thought is, I want to be able to offer others what this man offered me. One person can make a difference.