San Francisco, California
29 October 2002

OBJECTIVE STATEMENT

I would like to use my professional skills in policy, planning and design for long-term development work in Afghanistan. I have studied and practiced urban housing and design here in the Bay Area since 1989. Hopefully, some of the skills needed to get work done here can be applied to long-term reconstruction and development work. I also believe strongly that the best hope of doing anything helpful is to work for Afghans, at their request and invitation, rather than for a foreign nongovernmental organization.

As the situation stabilizes in Afghanistan, it is now becoming possible to engage in long-term development work, which is my primary focus. For the last four years I have been involved in low-income housing design and development in San Francisco. The work has been very rewarding, and I would like to apply my skills in a region that has interested me and my wife for many years.

I first learned about the Pamir region from the accounts of mountaineers more than twenty years ago. I studied the region as a geography major at U.C. Berkeley. However it was very difficult to get information on Afghanistan at the time, and I got to know Sheraga Gulshan Raz partly because I asked him so many questions about Afghanistan.
By 1990 I was in graduate school studying housing polcy under Nezar Alsayyad, when the USSR began to open up and it looked more possible to go to Central Asia. Hoping to do PhD research on ancient Central Asian cities, I studied Uzbek in 1991 and visited Uzbekistan in 1992. However the political conditions in Uzbekistan make extended research infeasible, then and still now.

My wife Lizzie was born in Tehran and grew up in Britain. Since moving to the Bay Area, her interest in Iranian culture has resurged since we encounter many Iranians here. She began studying Farsi two years ago and took the intensive course at U.C. during the summer of 2001. Lizzie is very eager to visit Afghanistan, but our second child is due to be born in March 2003; therefore she may not wish to travel for the next six months.

I believe we have at least as much to learn as we have to contribute. Specifically, I wish to learn Dari, perhaps revive my Uzbek, and I would like to learn some traditional music. I would like to contribute to the repatriation process through urban planning.

Sincerely,
Pietro Calogero