Sylvia's Journal

Today was the last day of the workshop and of my assignment. It is countdown time. It is always a little stressful because there is no more room anymore for forgetting things or postponing. There is much to do: certificates, signing, thank you gifts, evaluation, assigning people to sessions, lining up speakers, etc. It takes much concentration to keep all of this in my head. But luckily I am surrounded by a large team of people who all play their part near-seamlessly.

For each trip I throw a large number of serious gifts, inexpensive symbolic gifts and snacks into my suitcase. I never know how I will use those and I never know how many I need. So part of the before last day routine is matching people up with gifts. It is a bit tricky because I cannot leave anyone out and my supply is finite. This time about 90 people participated in one role or another. I had brought a large pack of colorful mechanical pencils and had given a good part of those out (‘keep your pencils sharp’) in last week’s workshop. I had some but not enough left. We quickly sent someone to the market and replenished the supply with items, not as colorful and fancy, but symbolic nevertheless. I will use the granola bars I still have for the kitchen staff, symbolically feeding them instead of them us. Various other nice office supplies such as fancy highlight pens, unusual post-It notes will be gifts for the Tech-Serve staff. A large chocolate bar will replenish the energy that the support staff has lost over us.

We are now in the closing reflection and from time to time I hear a word I recognize, such as ‘coaching’ or ‘methodology’ or something that sounds like ghaonum zulfia which means Miss Sylvia. This is how I am called here. I have no idea what they are saying but I stopped asking for translation as it gets a bit tedious after awhile. I am sorry I miss some of the flowery language. There is much use of figure of speech and I am lucky if I catch one in translation. The mechanical pencils I handed out last week were compared to the human body (casing) and soul (lead). There was more to it but I didn’t get it all.

I took some last shots of various familiar places on this trip, like my before last breakfast with Mirwais and some picture of the outside and inside of the MSH compound, to please Sita who is always asking for more pictures. Here they are.