After we had completed the Project Implementation Plan (PIP), this was submitted to the Government of Canada for approval. The first part of any development project is to plan out what you will be doing in the project; it is impossible to know this when you first ask for – or issue – a contract. So, for nearly four months, program officers at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development (DFATD), which had been CIDA (the Canadian International Development Agency) when we started, and which soon evolve into GAC (Global Affairs Canada), reviewed our work.

By some stroke of happenstance this process happened over the PEI summer, so I was able to keep myself amused in the garden and elsewhere. In October we finally received word that the PIP had been approved and were able to start recruiting a Field Manager and some technical advisors. Once the Field Manager was appointed we returned to Kabul, to see if our colleagues (whom we had last seen the previous May) remembered us and our project.

It was at this time that I decided against continuing with the blog, and instead started writing a series of letters. Some of these included photographs, as you will see.

Previous: The Power Went Out Again
Next: Letters from Kabul: 23 November 2012