Wednesday, March 13, 2013

A Week of Training

The training that we did last week at Muscatatuck is over.  All of our students are now in Kabul, getting the last bit of training, going through lots of boring briefings, getting issued more gear, and waking up at 2 am and not being able to get back to sleep.  Ahh, yes, do I miss those days?

The training that we did last week was immersive.  We set up scenarios where they had to meet with Afghan "governors", "line ministers", and other officials, and carry out their duties.  The roles of the Afghans were played by Afghans who, quite often, had actually been officials.  Two "judges" had actually been judges; a "public health minister" had been a high-level official doctor, and so on.  Most have been doing these training scenarios for several years, so they know the ropes.  My job was to ensure that the scenarios went off more or less as they were supposed to.  In effect, I was the director of a series of plays in which only half the actors had the script.  Which meant that the plays could, and did, go off in unintended directions.  Nothing like sitting there, seeing the scenario getting hijacked into a subject that we hadn't considered, and thinking "I wonder how this is going to turn out ..."  But as I mentioned, our Afghan role-players were experienced, and they handled the curve balls with ease.  I was quite impressed with their ability to quickly adjust to an unexpected plot twist, deal with it realistically, and smoothly manage to get the train back on track.

I must have done my job fairly well because I've been invited back for the next round.  This time I'll have a different role: I'll be a mentor for one of the student teams.  That means I'll be with them from early morning to evening, providing some advice and assistance, answering questions, and prodding them along in their decision-making.  I'm really looking forward to it.  

1 comment:

  1. Hi: Kudos on being invited back. It is always a nice feeling to get a vote of confidence. Also congrats on you new studio. I saw it up on facebook. It looks as if your life is humming along with all kinds of exciting adventures and activities. Thanks for sharing with the strange of us out here. lorraine

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