Sylvia's Journal

I had my first formal interview for the position in Afghanistan. Talking about the work, the responsibilities, the challenges made me even more eager to get the job. I have to be careful not to get too invested in the idea because there are others who want the job. I figured that my strongest competitor would be an Afghan-American woman with tons of executive experience if the decision is made that an outsider rather than an insider to MSH is preferred. It’s funny how, when you are at a fork in the road, so many people seem to know what lies ahead around the corner.

My French-speaking colleagues and those who want to perfect their French have initiated a one-a-month French-lunch-about-a-topic at work. Yesterday’s lunch was facilitated by Ashley, a spirited young woman whose enthusiasm overcomes any hang-ups one might have about not speaking French perfectly. She had picked the topic of HIV/AIDS and prepared a glossary of terms in English and French. I was very impressed.

She asked us all to talk about what we had recently learned about HIV and AIDS. We went around the table. Our group included four young American women, one from the Middle East and two African males, one a doctor from Cameroon and the other an IT expert from Senegal.

The one doctor in the room was by far the most knowledgeable, as he should be, and I discovered he is also a great teacher. We talked about facts and perceptions, male behavior and got an illustrated lecture about the female condom. I could show what it looked like (no one had one in their pockets) with the pictures I had taken at GHC earlier this week and placed on facebook. As we checked out my facebook page we could also see who of our colleagues were on facebook while at their desks.

While I had my hair cut at the end of the day, I listened to what happens to a woman who is financially and administratively illiterate and trusting a husband who should not have been trusted. I suspect this story is played out in shocking numbers around the world. She is discovering that she signed for 2nd and 3rd mortgages on a house she thought she owned and is hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt while at the same time replaced by another who has taken her place in the heavily mortgaged home and conjugal bed.

Her image of an ordinary marriage, couple with teenage son, has shattered like a mirror into a thousand pieces. I can practically see the reverberations of this monumental source of distress across the network of relationships each of them are in.

I remember telling her at least 10 years ago when the kid was young and the husband (maybe) not yet cheating that she should teach herself about the routine financial and administrative transactions that happened in her household so that, if she found herself alone, her grief would not be exacerbated by this not knowing. I also remember her response, which was one of surprise and indignation – the situation was simply unimaginable to her. We both remember the many silly (and often expensive) purchases she made over the years.

I think there is a good case to be made about educating young girls and boys to be financially literate before they leave school. It would prevent countless women from sliding into poverty, as she is now doing. The wakeup call was the first visit to a food pantry. She’s still in shock and there is no visible exit out of this nightmare.

We sat through the usual Memorial Day routine, including a rambling speech by one of the local clergy and the loud noises of the gun shots that salute the dead. This is a practice I don’t get. If it was through gun shots that most of these people perished, why honor them with what killed them?

Memorial Day in the US is very different from memorial day (Dodenherdenking) in Holland, which happens on May 4, the day before Liberation Day (of WWII). All day the flags would be half-mast and in the evening there would be a silent march, along a dark and tree-lined avenue to the enormous granite social-realist statue of a woman, gazing up (or down) with her arms crossed over her chest. (She still stands guard at the end of the lane at the beginning of a park, amidst enormous beech trees. When my mother died, now 10 years ago, we all walked over to this same statue, this granite mother of all mothers, and laid the flowers that had been sent to us at her feet.)

The 4th of May ‘march of remembrance’ would end with local notables laying a large wreath at the statue and 1 minute of silence. For many years, I would stand among dozens of fellow girl and boy scouts along the route, in uniform, holding a (real) torch while the townsfolk walked silently by. It was a somber ritual that was very meaningful to my parents’ generation, whose losses were, in the late 50s and early 60s still very raw.

For me the day was also my kid brother’s birthday and thus meant cake and decorations and a party where I, as the next older sister (but the youngest of the rest of the bunch), could play the role of older sibling and organizer of the games – and the next day, Liberation Day, was always off.

After the morning memorial ritual we went back home and spent the rest of the day reading, me Samantha Power about Saddam’s treatment of the Kurds and Axel about Rory Stewarts’s walk across Afghanistan. We ended the beautiful day with a cookout on the beach and the final plantings. We have never been this ready for the growing season, which officially started yesterday.

I biked to Quaker Meeting yesterday, in between showers, and meditated on the topic of courage, leadings, openings and exits. Afghanistan is definitely a leading for me, an opening, not an exit. And so I shared it with my fellow Friends. If I go, they will hold me in the Light. I biked back with a light heart, evermore committed. I realize that I may not get the job if other more qualified people apply and I am committed to that outcome as well.

Axel put Tessa and Steve to work on getting the cellar, attic and porch ready for summer – it’s a big job that requires many arms and some heavy lifting. We were glad to have them around. In one day they completed chores that might have taken us weeks.

I focused on the gardening tasks. After planting the remaining vegetables (garlic, squash, broccoli, tomatillos) and digging up the last stray potatoes we drove to the cemetery to complete the annual ritual of getting the ancestors ready for Memorial Day. We do this with vodka: a thank you and a toast to their legacy, a few sips, followed by a sprinkling of the headstones (only of those who wouldn’t have declined a glass of vodka) with the holy water. On Penny and Herm’ headstone the liquid formed a map of Africa.

At the end of a the day we received a phone call from a tired and bored Sita waiting at JFK for the last (delayed) leg of her trip home from Jordan where she wants to buy a farm. We are glad she is safely back home and as enchanted with the Middle East as we are.

We dined at the house of our friends Gary and Christine and met Louise from Quebec who is a psychologist working with First Nations clients. We compared our work as psychologists in cultures that are not our own and found we had many things and interests in common. The only big difference between her work and mine is that she is paid by her clients, like the Cree or Iroquois, and directly accountable to them while I am accountable to the US government AND the government of the country I work in. Those agendas don’t always match. Third party consulting is my reality, a complex one, that is often unimaginable to people consulting in the private (for profit) sector.

Bill and I had a passenger yesterday morning, Andrea, on our trip to Martha’s Vineyard. We like to go to Katama airfield as it is the only grass airstrip around and thus a good place to practice soft-field landings and take-offs. Bill flew outbound along a 9 nautical mile radius from Logan airport, low over the water. It was a nice front row seat from which to watch the big planes land and take off.

Further south we had to dodge some cells with bad weather. I was glad we had an IFR man in the plane although we never needed to go IFR. Behind the clouds we could see the Cape and the islands in the sun. By the time we landed summer had arrived on Martha’s Vineyard and the small breakfast restaurant at the airport was filled with holidaymakers as the English call them. A biplane two-seater for scenic rides and a fully saddled galloping horse (without rider) on the run kept me entertained while Bill and Andrea walked to the beach and back.

I piloted us back west around Boston under sunny skies and executed a perfect landing, according to my passenger and coach, exactly at 2 PM when the plane was due back. I have nearly 70 hours in cross country time now. The flying is one thing that I would sorely miss if I were to go to Afghanistan for a year. Flying in a small plane at low altitude in Afghanistan would probably not be a good idea in a country with that many guns and trigger-happy men.

For once we completed most of our planting tasks before Memorial Day, including the graves of Penny and Herman, of Granny and Grampy Magnuson, of Paul and Phil. We took out the crocus and tulip bulbs and put in fresh soil and bright red geraniums. The DPW already had put in the American flags for our family’s warriors and everything is ready for the festivities on Monday. The only thing we did not do was the vodka ritual because we forgot to bring the drinks. If the sun shines again this evening we will make up for this and splash a few drops of vodka over the graves of those of our ancestors who liked to have a drink each day.

Back home we completed the spring ritual of bringing out the houseplants for the summer, trimming and cleaning them and finding them a spot in the shade. I am nearly done with the planting of our crops: the capucijners (Dutch grey peas), kouseband (foot-long green beans), bush beans and the Chinese peapods are in. All that’s missing is the basil and a place where various squash varieties can expand freely in all directions. Tessa promised she’d do the last two window boxes. 

This morning I am drinking some more of the coffee that was brewed from the green Ethiopian beans Axel roasted yesterday on the camping stove outside in the yard. It was a good thing he was doing it outside because roasting coffee beans is a smoky affair and the first batch got heated a bit too much. There must be a use for the blackened beans, but not for coffee. The second batch came out beautiful and there is nothing like a cup brewed from these still warm and crispy coffee beans.

Although Axel presented me a list with things to do in and around the house, I withdrew with a book and offered my help if any of these things required more than two hands. It was, after all, the last day of my vacation. I promised to do chores over the long holiday weekend.

Having a vacation at home is an art; there is much interference from work that comes in by phone and email as well as endless chores on the home front. But travelling as much as I do, home is where I want to be.

I returned the book about the fragmentation of Afghanistan to the MSH library and picked up a new one for the remainder of my vacation (Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell). The half read books languishing at home in various piles near my bed, in my office and in the living room do get a little upset when I come back with a new one that is commanding all my attention. And it is – a set of essays about the most haunting abuses of power in recent history to which Shepard Fairey’s artwork forms a perfect backdrop.

To balance the heavy reading material with something lighter I did do some more planting: the blackberry bush has found a spot in the sun and the yellow daisies, surrounded by light blue lobelias, are standing guard by the front door. The snap peas are settling in nicely at the foot of the tallest asparagus which we are not allowed to cut anymore (it’s hard to let the yummy looking spears continue to grow into inedible plants). At least they will serve as a trellis for the peas which we will be allowed to eat as they appear.

All through the day an eager Chicha would place balls or sticks close to my feet, or on them, then backing up expectantly and ready to retrieve. Occasionally she will be distracted by a chipmunk and dash after the clever little thing in mad pursuit, never catching it. The chipmunks are too fast for her or hide in places she cannot get at.

Yesterday was half vacation, half work, a fieldtrip into Boston. First stop was Shepard Fairey’s exhibit Supply and Demand at the (magnificently located) Institute for Contemporary Art. When you have completed the tour of the fourth floor you get so sit at the glassed in gallery looking out over Boston harbor, watching the planes take off and land at Logan and the boats come and go. I could have sat there for hours.

But we had a rendezvous with Tessa who had already ordered us the best sandwiches and pastries at the French bakery (Flour) in her upscale workplace neighborhood. We ate them in the sun under bright blue skies sitting on the boardwalk across from the Children’s Museum, surrounded by ducks and, of course, children.

Next stop was Chris’ and Kairos’ brand-new baby Maia who we found sound asleep in her laundry basket crib
with her Japanese grandma watching over her. The Chinese grandma is probably waiting anxiously on the West Coast for her turn. I listened intently to the replay of the birthing ordeal. I am not sure whether Axel did as these stories are infinitely more interesting to women. We both admired the outcome – I got to hold Maia for most of the visit. We left her with a homemade yellow striped knitted tiger (or kittycat).

And that was the end of the vacation part of the day. I reported to my supervisor Alison for my annual performance review which we did in the sun on a picnic bench behind the building (I’m good). After that a meeting with Alain to talk about Afghanistan while Axel scoped out the ‘green’ house in Cambridge that Gary has rehabbed and which is on the market for a million and a half. For that you get a house within walking or biking distance from Harvard and MIT, four parking places, a small garden, 3 floors, 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms and a low ecological footprint. Axel is doing some of the marketing materials and needed to see the place for himself.

We drove back in bumper to bumper holiday weekend traffic that took us one hour and 45 minutes to get home. I was glad to have company and that Axel did the driving. As soon as we got home Axel and Steve headed to the Manchester Club for their thursday night dinner and all-male social. I turned around and drove to Gloucester for an event hosted by my friend Martha who hired me in 1986 for Planned Parenthood’s counseling and referral hotlines that, I hope, got many teens back on the rails or kept them from derailing altogether.

The topic for this awareness raising house party was sex education which is now named something else, for middle and high school students (‘Get Real’). The young PP’s Director of Education, who is about Sita’s age, spoke eloquently and which much passion about their efforts to help parents and kids talk about sex.

Gloucester was the center of attention last year because of alleged ‘pregnancy pacts’ among teenage girls. It was a perfect entry point for Planned Parenthood and its advocates who have been tirelessly working to get to the approval of the Get Real curriculum in the Gloucester school system – the vote is next month.

A young man of Tessa’s age, in a crisp white shirt, one year out of college, also an employee of PPLM, did his first public speaking as the resource mobilization man while his father was proudly watching him perform from the back of the room. The kid moved back in with the parents so he can afford to work in Boston, commuting an hour and a half to and from work each day. As it turned out, all the parents in the room who have adult kids have them living at home again – with high student loan debts, high housing/rent costs, this is now normal in this part of the world. Some mind, we don’t. And Tessa did pay for our lunch ysterday, which was not cheap.