Sylvia's Journal

There are about 55 participants in our two parallel workshops which we merged back into one after the first day. This includes teams of four people from 13 provinces. Somehow the numbers don’t add up but I haven’t figured out why.

Afghanistan has more than 13 provinces, but these are the ones assigned to USAID and where our project works. Donor agencies do this everywhere; they split up the country between themselves, just like the division of Africa after the war among the colonial powers. One of the consequences of this is that the various provinces don’t speak the same planning language. What one calls an objective, others call a target or a goal. Of course we are also introducing our own language, further confusing people. I am trying to show that the concepts are more important than the language and that, as long as they can tell the difference between a result and action the words don’t matter.

Compared to the small group of people last week (twenty one) this is certainly a large crowd. I was able to learn everyone’s name last week but this time I won’t even try. The room is a mass of mostly bearded and/or mustached men dressed in shades of grey, black and brown. There are only six women, about the same percentage (10%) as last week; they are only slightly more colorful in dress, each with a scarf loosely wrapped around her head. I have a scarf too but it is only draped around my head/hair when I am in a public space

Yesterday I had lunch (Chiefburgers again) with three women, sitting on top of a table in a side room. With over 50 participants we are filling all the space so you have to be creative in finding a spot to eat lunch. One of the women was with us last week; she is now here as a facilitator. She also serves as a translater. I ask questions about the Taliban era and they tell me about the stupidity of the Taliban with a big grin. Like sending a woman in labor, on her way to the hospital, back home during the night, telling her to come back the next morning; or beating all female hospital staff with a stick, telling them to go home. There are thousands of stories like that. As a psychologist I wonder what it is about these men that they are so fearful of women and need to, literally, beat them down.

In the office this morning I hear that my counterpart lost a relative in a car accident yesterday. He will not be coming in. I rely very much on him so, aside from the personal tragedy, it is also a setback for us. But the team regroups quickly and with only minutes notice one of them jumps in and runs the session. It is like one of those dances in West Africa where a circle of people forms around a few dancers and cheers them on; when the dancers get tired or had enough, other move in when they move out. I often ask my co-facilitators if they are good dancers. This is why; it is about rhythm, flexibility and going with the flow. I am very lucky and grateful that everyone here is a good dancer.

With that many actors the coordinaton of everything remains a bit of a challenge. There are all sorts of suprises, uncontrollable variables and unforeseen things. Like people from the ministry showing up to facilitate a session when all sessions have just been assigned. While they are settling in I frantically search for a session they can co-facilitate without sacrificing quality. There are many challenge that require improvisation without looking disorganized; deferring to hierarchy; people or things that don’t show up when expected and all this in the face of a hard stop at the end of the day when cars and busses are leaving to take people home. Because we start earlier (wintertime office hours are over), we also end earlier.

Tomorrow’s session with the Ministry’s most senior leadership is also full of question marks. I was going to facilitate it with my counterpart who is now attending to bereaved relatives. My other counterpart, his boss, has been called to a meeting with USAID, taking with him my third choice of facilitator. Those who are left would be OK except that the meeting goes more than two hours beyond the official office hours which means the cars are gone that take them on the long ride back to their homes, 40 minutes away.

But again, everyone appears to be cool about it and so I am cool too. Somehow, in all its complexity and confusion, and with this large cast of characters, everything appears to have worked out well. One of my big victories for the day is that a woman facilitated a very rowdy crowd of men taking them on a personal visioning journey, with great finesse and bravado. The other victory is that I got the Tech-Serve Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) expert to do a session about some basic monitoring and evaluation notions in the leadership program.