Sylvia's Journal

It is Friday, Afghanistan’s day off and feels like the equivalent of a rainy Sunday in spring in Holland. Kabul is in the clouds. The farmers will be happy. Mirwas and I had a long drawn out breakfast and talked about everything that is important in the human experience. The cook doesn’t come to our house over the weekend but he leaves plenty of dishes to heat up. Mirwas set the table and did the dishes.

I reconfirmed my Thai massage appointment which has been postponed to later in the day. I arranged for a car from the dispatch and then set to do my homework for this weekend, which is a considerable list, including preparations for the next week and other things not related to Afghanistan.

The email box had filled up while I was asleep and contained some more relational hiccups that generated strong feelings that alternated between anger and sadness. It resulted in a few emails sent impulsively and then retracted, and wondering whether retracted emails can actually be opened. At any rate, when my emotional buttons get pushed, rational thinking about email etiquette tends to go out of the window; I do what I know I should not. For a moment I was little more than a pitiful heap of sorrow but then I collected myself, dusted myself off and went to work again. It did leave me drained and suddenly tired. I am soothing myself with music from Francoise Hardy as it comes with sweet memories of adolescence.

Last night I was invited by Paul, Iain and Brad. They live in Guest House #26 that has nothing of the hideousness of our house and is actually cozy and surprisingly well decorated for a house with gentlemen of a certain age. They had invited me for a dinner with other lowlanders, including Pieter, a compatriot of mine, who is the WHO chief here, Willie from Belgium who is a lab technician working on an EU project and later, halfway through our meal the top Belgian diplomat who got lost because he has an imported driver (for security) and only had military maps that turned out to be of little help (I am on purple street! – where the hell is that?). Brad wanted to welcome his excellency with the Belgian national anthem but the other Belgians did not play along, so Brad made up his own song and I got to sing what I always tell people is the Dutch national anthem (we voeren met een zucht, daar boven in de lucht…). It was a wonderful evening with great food and the best stories about working across cultural and linguistic boundaries and the pickles we get ourselves into sometimes. I also had my first beer and one glass of wine after a week of zero alcohol consumption.

I discovered that House #26 has a rowing machine. This may be a good opportunity to test whether I can row again in a real boat when I get back to Boston.