Sylvia's Journal

I have been trying to follow Eckart Tolle’s exhortation to stay in the Now but in my dreams I am throwing that advice to the wind. I have Kabul on my mind – all the time. I have another two and a half months ahead of me of being in this in-between place, neither here nor there.

Upon hearing where we are going in the fall people say ‘why would you go to a place where you can get shot, blown up or raped?’ It is getting a little irritating and last night I found myself lashing out to someone who posed that question. What are people thinking? It’s clear that too few good stories make it out of Afghanistan and so I take it this means there is plenty of work for Axel.

I showed Axel the home page of Safi Airways. There is a slideshow of the places that we visited some 30 years ago with the words ‘Adventure in Afghanistan’ superimposed. It’s a bit of a hard sell these days – who wants adventure in Afghanistan? If the country ever gets its act together the tourists would flow in by the thousands – the beauty of the country is phenomenal and the pictures do their magic, even on Axel. Not that we could take a bus or taxi and drive into the countryside for a picnic. Still, in Kabul, all you have to do is step out of the house and smell the roses, pick the grapes from the arbors that are everywhere and look up at the majestic Hindu Kush Mountains. When I was there last they were still snow covered and spectacular.

The month of July is starting to get filled in: Axel will meet me in Dubai on the 11th of July after my stint in Addis and we will go from there to Kabul for an exploratory visit. We will return to Boston just in time for my pre-op (shoulder surgery) tests on July 27th. After that surgery, a family reunion and packing up and handing over the care of the house to Tessa and Steve.

In the meantime I am starting to hand over responsibilities at work and, with regret and disappointment pulled out of the BU course that I love so dearly. I may also need to drop out of the Ghana work that took me so long to get set up and now we are nearly there but I can’t see how to squeeze in a trip to Ghana in between everything else. It proves once more that any change, however much wanted, comes with losses.

Through one of the business school professors I met last week I have chanced upon a woman who is heavily networked into the Afghan journalist community and is sending me several emails each day connecting me to yet another wonderful person. This includes a young (Afghan) journalist who sent me a picture of himself with, of all people, the minister of health who he knows quite well; small world. Everyone has provided us with contact information and a warm welcome. This is the part of the Afghanistan story that people here don’t know about.