Hi everyone - this is Laura and I am helping Nate out by posting his first blog post from Dubai as he makes his way to Kabul.  When he reaches Kabul to work on our Commercialization of Afghanistan Water and Sanitation Activities Project - he will update us on all the activities we have going on.   As ICMA International Staff know - all roads lead to Kabul . . . even if you have to travel through Dubai, Delhi, Frankfurt, New York or some other city to get there!

My name is Nate and I’m a Program Manager on ICMA’s International Team based in Washington, DC. I recently joined ICMA to help manage international local governance-related projects in Afghanistan and Ethiopia, as well as to support other ICMA initiatives. I’ve worked overseas for most of the last seven years in Madagascar and Southern Sudan and have visited and spent time in several other African countries. Much of my work has revolved around issues of food security and land use. I have an academic background in urban planning and public administration and am excited at the opportunity to be a part of the ICMA family to further my interests and work in all of the fields mentioned above.

Since joining ICMA, I have been extremely impressed with the organization’s members and its staff. The projects I work on for ICMA are currently funded by the United States Agency for International Development. USAID has and continues to recognize ICMA as a premier professional association and understands the importance of connecting ICMA to countries around the world where USAID is involved in the areas of improving local governance.

My trip for the next two weeks will be to visit one of the projects I support from Washington, DC, called Commercialization of Afghanistan Water and Sanitation Activities (or, CAWSA).  CAWSA, in short, is working with several municipalities in Afghanistan to commercialize the water sector. The project has been ongoing since late in 2008 and will complete sometime in the spring of 2012 and has been very successful to date. USAID granted CAWSA an extension from November 2011 to the spring of 2012 to allow ICMA to complete some important work in several provincial sites where CAWSA is being implemented. Because of this extension, I’m visiting the project site to help move the work along, and work with our team to finish strong in the coming months. This will be my first time in Kabul and in Afghanistan. It’s become quickly apparent to me how professional and capable ICMA’s membership, domestic staff and international staff are, and I’m thrilled at this opportunity to meet our CAWSA staff in Afghanistan face to face, after having had so many dealings with them on the telephone and over email during the last two months. We’ve got a lot of work to do during my short, several week visit, but I’m looking forward to digging in, learning and helping ICMA continue to be leaders at the core of better communities!

Getting to Kabul for me, means going through Dubai. This is my first time in Dubai. Landing at the airport, I can tell that Dubai is everything it’s cracked up to be—the glitz, the glamour, the wealth and the diversity. Although I arrived after dark, as someone who has studied urban design and who has an appreciation for cities, Dubai seems to be amazing. From the air, certain things struck me immediately, including apparently high density, what looks like thoughtful planning, and the buzz of commerce in the form of lights everywhere. Between landing at the airport through to checking in at my hotel, I have already encountered a plethora of nationalities; a UAE passport control officer; a Philippino working at the currency exchange desk; an Indonesian baggage handler; an Egyptian cab driver; Indian staff at the hotel; and a British man haggling over his bill at the front desk. After only a few hours, it really does seem like the whole world can be found in Dubai!

I’ll have a little time tomorrow morning to check out a bit of the city, then it’s back to the airport and off to Kabul.