Sylvia's Journal

Yesterday was a long day that ended at 9 PM at the Melrose hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC, in a 3 room suite. A bill that matched it in size was pushed under my doorway this morning.

When I travel I don’t get up at 4:30 AM so yesterday started slow and late. Axel cooked me breakfast, leaving me time to admire Lobster Cove, spectacular in its post snow-storm appearance. Everything was covered in frozen snow – the kind of white that looks blue in the sun. It made me want to pull out my watercolors – to catch the snow on tree trunks and branches, best painted by not painting it, as negative space. On some of the branches the wet snow had melted and then frozen again; ice crystals that sparkled in the sun like jewels. To complete it all a bright red cardinal settled down on a high branch, chirping as if there was no tomorrow. It was a fragile and tender nature poem – for now the sun was helping it come to life; soon it would kill it.

I dropped the car off at the Shell station near work to fix the slow leak in one of the tires. A little gremlin is piercing the outer wall of our tires. One month ago we replaced one tire and now this one on the opposite side has the same problem. We are puzzled by this and soon some 200 dollars poorer; but then, we know that the tires and the car are old and worn. The Korean mechanic circled the pinhole that he could do nothing about with yellow paint. He put the tire back on, it’s a slow leak after all, and did not charge me; he knows I will come back. My belief in the basic goodness of people is coming back, even if it is simply good customer service.

I travelled to Washington with Kristen on the 7 PM flight. These flights used to be full but now, like all others, they are only half full. We sat next to a discombobulated woman from the Commerce Department who panicked when she did not see her purse. When she found it (inside a larger purse) we all sighed and laughed. She was going home to DC and clearly in need of some R&R. She had taught businesses in Rhode Island about export rules and restrictions. When she discovered that we were ‘in international health,’ (in developing countries even) she blessed us for our good work and I kept my skeptic mouth shut, trying not to reveal how we are all tripping over each other in places like Afghanistan and Ethiopia, doing HIV/AIDS work. And that there is money in doing development – some people even derive a very good living from fighting poverty. That’s when shame takes over from pride. But I let her bless us nevertheless. As far as tax dollars go, I feel like I am spending them quite responsibly (we did not take an earlier flight to avoid an extra charge of 50 dollars and instead waited for 2 hours in the airport.)

We have been asked to do a 3 hour session to teach our peers about management and leadership of health programs. We have done a similar event about one year ago. Kristen will do more now and I will do less. We have no idea how many people will show up. There does not seem to be a registration process. We are prepared for one person, for 30 or anything in between. The event is part of our continuing crusade to have those who assign clinicians to run health facilities think about the management and leadership tasks that need to be done before things get messed up. It causes a lot of unnecessary stresses in people and systems. I know this first hand, as it happened in my own family. We have been doing these sorts of events for years and keep being surprised that this is not obvious to others that people need to learn how to manage and lead.