EDITOR'S NOTE: Bill Wright is a self-employed businessman turned photographer. He travels exotic locales and captures in photographs the lives, emotions and cultures of people for his love of art, and because it helps him make better business decisions. He was recently named one of Abilene's 10 Most Influential by the Abilene Reporter-News. Following is an e-mailed journal entry to family and friends about his newest adventure - a trip to Kabul, Afghanistan.

Today confirmed that I am a slow learner. It has taken three days to understand that my room, 284, is not on the second floor. The lobby area is floor zero which I understand. When press 2 on the elevator I get off at the floor where all of the rooms begin with “3”. So the 2nd floor is really the first floor. I think I have it down now. I get on the elevator and press “1” for the floor containing my room, 284. Live and learn, if slowly.

I woke up this morning thinking about the news item in the morning paper: Taliban attacking Afghanistan schools. To date over 200 schools have been burned or abandoned because of Taliban actions to discourage the education of Afghanistan’s young people. Their theory is that an uneducated person is more likely to join their ranks than a person who has attended school and knows more about the world. Of course, it is a good but immoral strategy. I can almost assure you that the young women in our class would go down struggling if they were sent home to bake bread and be the third wife of some ancient tribal leader.

Another disturbing bit of news is that the Karzi administration is considering re-establishing the religious police. This would be a giant step backward in the modernization of the country. I am not sure this has been reported in the world press but local news organizations carried the story which I will try and send in detail later. I mentioned the concern to Faideen but he felt that is was not as big a deal as some of the foreign press might think. All Muslem countries have the religious police he said but their actions were exaggerated under Taliban rule. “I don’t think we will ever see that again,” he told me. Faideen, of course, is a devout Muslim and leaves the class periodically for his prayers. He is gone for about 20 minutes and then is back.

There were rapid local actions taken with regard to the bomb blast near the U.S. Embassy last Sunday. Several have been taken into custody and calm prevails. Life goes on as usual for these battered people.

Life for my students has been exciting. Their enthusiasm for learning elevates my own spirits and confirms that there is much good in the world in spite of all the disasters that we hear about daily. These young folks---I can’t call them kids because they grow up quickly here---are intent on learning. Yesterday two came to the class uninvited and demanded to remain. I agreed and they dove into the work immediately. The tragic underlying reality is that progress requires both education and opportunity. The latter is dramatically lacking here in Afghanistan. The internet will give these young folks more of an opportunity that they have had before. Unfortunately, ASCHIANA’s internet connection has been shut down for lack of money. That will change in time. And, impatient me, I have to realize that progress occurs one step at a time.

When installing the equipment donated by the U.S. Department of State, I realized how much we take for granted. Each computer was accompanied with a special power supply to ensure the computer would not shut off immediately if the generator for the building should quit. Power shuts off at night. Interruptions are frequent. Energy drives our civilization and without it we would all be subsistence farmers with only the sun to provide our life.

I noticed the power strip we were using was being held together with a unburned match jammed into the on/off button. Potentially dangerous. I requested three new ones so as not to put too much load on one. Fortunately, the grant provided enough money for re-chargeable batteries for the cameras. They were going through AA batteries at a ferocious clip.

Today we had classroom in the morning where I explained the best I could about the differences between dpi and ppi, jpg and tif, kilobytes and megabytes and many other terms that they would encounter. We went through the menu of options for the operation of their cameras and talked about histograms and exposure.

We had a portrait shooting session where we talked about the light and how important it was to focus on the eyes. I set up and took pictures of the students and they posed and tuck turns being the model. Before I knew it, time for lunch. Sarah and I had an engagement with J.B. the Public Affairs Officer at the embassy along with her financial person at a traditional Afghan restaurant named Safi. It was a long way from the school which game me a chance to see more of Kabul. We were accompanied from the school by the Director, Eng, M. Yosef, and of course, driven by Faideen.

As we entered, Sarah was excited to see the well-known lady, Nancy Dupree, who had written the definitive guidebook for Afghanistan. Her husband, Louis Dupree, a distinguished scholar, wrote “Afghanistan”, a book that should be on every library shelf for anyone interested in the country. In his book, he observed that Afghanistan is actually a nation of poets because poetry, essentially a spoken language, enables illiterate men and women to express themselves. Nancy looked to be well over 80 years of age but sparky and interesting to visit with. I photographed her with the Director Yosef who was her great fan.

The meal was exceptional. They tried to stuff me with every traditional dish but I was careful, especially as Sarah had been forced to make an emergency stop enroute. My favorite was the vegetable soup with cilantro and pureed vegetables and the awshak, a lentils and gdana concoction with a yogurt sauce.

Driving back to the school we stopped for a few shots along the way and found the students eagerly awaiting their assignment which was to find and photograph the beautiful in Afghanistan. It will be interesting to see what they come up with.

We wondered why the lights didn’t come on when we plugged in the battery chargers. We fussed around trying various plugs, taking out and putting in the batteries, changing chargers, and then realized the power was out. The computer had been running on battery back up. We left for the night with the hope that in the morning we would have fully charged power for the cameras.

Another lesson about life in Afghanistan.