Sylvia's Journal

Yesterday started with a one-hour long interview over the phone with colleagues in Kabul. They asked questions about intent and then contrasted those with the realities on the ground. It was good I knew these realities because otherwise it would have been pretty difficult to respond to their queries (“given that x and y, how would you go about z?”). Much of the issues raised are familiar to me in other settings as well and are typical of our third party work (getting paid by one to benefit another) where it is not unusual to find beneficiaries bristle at the conditions and strings attached to the aid given to them.

After that a quick visit to the nurse practitioner to talk about the hot flashes that now drench me several times a day and interrupt my sleep big time. The breast lumps, diagnosed so far as trauma-related, kept her from prescribing hormone replacement therapy. Instead we will experiment with a combination of herbal supplements (evening primrose oil and black cohosh) and a low dose anti-depressant to deal with the sleeping. When I called our local health food store to inquire about the brands (I was to get the European, not the American brands) I was greeted with ‘oh, hot flashes huh?’ It must be big business now with millions of baby boom women consumed by these flashes. Now my daily pill requirements are starting to look like those of very old people; pill boxes filled with a variety of pills in all sorts of shapes and colors!

Nuha arrived for a last goodbye before she flies home to Riyadh next week. It was her fourth and last visit to Lobster Cove which she had not seen in full spring bloom yet. Her last visit was when there was snow on the ground. Now she has seen Lobster Cove in every season. Her brother Youssouf joined us for a lunch en plein air.

He brought his brand new camera which was put to good use right away. In Gloucester we visited the Fishermen’s Memorial which stands on a boulevard that is lined with hundreds of American flags. When, years from now, they will show these pictures to their friends, it will not be difficult to guess in which country they were taken.

Nuha and her brother are both outdoors enthusiasts and we talked about the Appalachian Mountain Club and its great lodges and trails in the White Mountains. They might try to squeeze in a hike in the White Mountains before Nuha flies home.

Since I still don’t know whether Axel and I will get on a plane to Kabul a week from Monday (and me from there to Addis at the end of the month) I used the rest of the afternoon to get myself organized for all these trips, the first one starting today to Charleston for our annual Organization Behavior Teaching Conference and the board meeting that precedes it.

If I think about how much I will be away this summer and how badly the garden already needs attention (weeding, fertilizer) I get a little overwhelmed and wished I could use up my vacation days that will go ‘poof’ on June 30th. But I am programmed otherwise.