Sylvia's Journal

I have pushed the news of our move to Kabul out via the status and mood feature on facebook, Plaxo, LinkedIn, Twitter and Skype. I don’t think I have to make any other announcements. The reactions are streaming in from my well connected circle of friends. They are mostly positive, with a few people wondering why we would want to exchange the most beautiful place in the world for one that is ugly with poverty, agression, greed and destruction.

Axel and I travelled all over Afghanistan some 30 years ago and know that behind that ugliness is a beautiful country with wonderful people and a fascinating history that goes way back into the deep past. If you don’t believe that Afghanistan is beautiful, check out Safi Airways internet site which tries to attract visitors to ‘Adventure in Afghanistan’ with a slideshow of some of its most breathtaking sites. We are lucky that we have seen those all these years ago and have at least the memories even if we cannot go there this time.

Leaving the MSH mothership, after nearly 22 years, is a complex undertaking. There is equipment to be exchanged for equipment bought under another billing code; there is my home office to be dismantled, while I will need it until the day I get on the plane. This include the DSL line, my office home phone, printer, fax and computer. There is a change in health insurance and a physical that needs to be scheduled, and then there are the things that I need to handover to colleagues, old and new. Sometimes my head is spinning, because I am also still a full time employee with my current job description and assignments, like the trip to Ethiopia next week and the ongoing coaching of teams around the world.

It was with considerable delight that I interrupted my ‘vacation-only-in-name’ to meet with Louise yesterday in Cambridge for lunch. Over chili and mussels with fries we explored our respective fields, more energy fields than professional disciplines, and found considerable overlap in the shape, intent and motivation of our work.

We also, of course, discovered we have connections to the same people, not many, but they form important nodes in our worldwide network of social changers. If displayed graphically, they would now be bold or double-circled. Aside from people we also have connections to places, like Ethiopia and South Africa. And so we exchanged websites and names of other people and groups that are trying to accomplish the same things and, no doubt, contain more connections, new and old. The encounter was just pregnant with possibilities!

After lunch I accompanied Louise to her apartment. We walked past small row houses and tiny urban gardens and through a lovely park. I could tell that the park was the result of the same kind of energy we have in common and that we help to unleash in groups. I could imagine that at some point this park had been ugly and attracted someone with a vision, who could see through the ugliness and saw a small paradise and then got others on board. And now that vision has been realized!

Louise gave me a signed copy of her book Undoing Silence that encourages ordinary people to write compellingly for social change. That’s what she does. Thanks Chuck for making the connection!

You know that your children are all grown up and you have done a good job when they take you out to a nice restaurant and offer you exotic cocktails before choosing from an exquisite menu, and then pay the bill with their own credit cards, not your’s.

The girls and their mates took us out to a restaurant called Tryst, to celebrate a combined mother’s and father’s day. Maybe this is the beginning of a new family ritual called ‘Parents’ Day.’ It’s us who made you parents, they claimed and with that we toasted to each other, life and love with our 6 different and colorful cocktails. There were drinks with lavender, Earl Grey infusion (High Tea Cocktail), Campari, Champagne, pomegranate, honey, egg whites and a James Bond quaff with a long thin lemon twist.

We have much to be grateful about. Axel gave a solemn little speech about how many good things had been triggered by our accident, and how we appreciate and admire our own kids and their mates. We calculated that these ‘mates’ have now been in the family for 12 and 5 years respectively; they are nearly old married couples!

I am still trying to use up my vacation that I stand to lose in a couple of weeks but it’s only a half-hearted attempt as there is much that needs attention before I leave for Addis next week. This upcoming trip will be an entire month because our postponed visit to Kabul starts as soon as I leave Addis. Axel and I will meet up in the fancy hotel in Dubai on July 12th. MSH has offered to pay Axel’s reconnaissance trip for which I am very grateful.

After much deliberation we decided to accept the job offer now, ahead of time, rather than wait for the visit to Kabul in mid July. I was tired of being in this holding pattern and the MSH administrators are pleased that they can now start doing the paperwork to formally submit me as the selected candidate to the people who pay our bills in Kabul.

We have started to sort out things about the house (Tessa and Steve will move in), who will pay for what, health insurance, and the dismantling of my home office. Each topic explodes into a thousand big and small tasks. I haven’t figured out how to address these in a systematic fashion. I have several small notebooks on my desk with thoughts about things to bring, resolve, ask about, etc.

Today will be another half work-half vacation day that includes a lunch in Cambridge with Louise, someone I have to meet, according to my friend and ex-colleague Chuck. He claims we are kindred spirits, so I am looking forward to meeting her.

I went to the office in the afternoon and am already beginning to feel like a stranger. Life there has continued just fine without me and it is a humbling reminder that none of us are indispensable. I reviewed the tasks that are on my plate with a colleague to see who could take them over. This is never easy because people are already very busy. Still, others happily take over tasks that interest them; none of the things I am handing over are dull or boring.

I spent a couple of hours with colleagues to hand over my teaching load for the summer institute course that we do with Boston University. It is with great regret I do this because I love teaching this class. I have developed wonderful friendships with students as a result. We stay in touch through email and facebook and I follow them as they move along their career path, some in far places, others nearby.

Going away is a good time to bring to closure anything that has been dragging along. This I am doing as well. The remaining time before push off to Kabul has been pretty much booked now, including a few more trips to complete the handovers: Ethiopia next week and Ghana at the end of August.

Last night I sat down at my computer to update my calendar in Outlook. I put in my next trips. When I came to the end of August I put in ‘depart for Kabul.’ It asked for an end date. That is when it hit me – with one date I essentially wiped out the rest of my calendar for the near future – everything got bolded after August 31 and anything that was on my calendar after that has become irrelevant to my new life.

I thought of my friend Susan who has, as the doctors told her, entered the last quarter of her homebound journey – the cancer has spread and is beyond control. Although I am sure she is not sitting in front of her computer and updating her calendar – I imagine that she too has a different outlook on time, calendars and what was written on them; for her, commitments and other dates to show up someplace for something are now irrelevant. My experience last night gave me a teeny taste of that.

In Afghanistan I will not be using my Outlook calendar because somehow it is not set up as a meeting management tool in the office. Things happen the old-fashioned way: you walk over to someone or you call them on a cell phone to set up the appointments. Sometime you even write a letter. Imagine that!

It will be quite a change from our full Outlook calendars and cluttered appointment book that sits on the counter under the telephone in the kitchen. It occurred to me that our lives will be so much simpler: eat-work-eat-work-eat-play-sleep except on Fridays when it will be eat-play-eat-play-eat-play-sleep.

Just to make the next few months a little more interesting, the septic system failed yesterday. Instead of working on his CV Axel had to deal with this emergency. There was the immediate task of getting a ‘honey’ truck to come and pump us, all 4000 gallons of unmentionables. And then there is the rather overwhelming and bigger task to build a new septic system. When you live on ledge like we do, this is not only a complicated engineering challenge but also one with a hefty price tag which requires the kind of loan that our parents could buy an entire house with. So the CV will have to wait a bit and the danger pay will come in handy.

I had my eyes and teeth recertified for duty in Afghanistan – a clean bill of health on that end. It’s the shoulders and the resulting pinched nerves that remain problematic. After my right hand carpal tunnel surgery the hand-doctor predicted that the left hand would want to follow soon. I have arrived at that moment where I wake up each morning with numb fingers but I cannot find a window for surgery between now and my departure for Afghanistan – every day is now spoken for. Doing the hand surgery in Kabul does not seem like a good idea and feels too much like a luxury in a place where surgeons are busy repairing war and landmine victims.

Tessa and Steve returned from the Bannaroo music festival in Manchester, Tennessee, in high spirits but tired from the long drive. Dog Chicha was jumping up and down from excitement to have her parents back and the daily dose of rough-housing that we, aging grandparents, failed to give her.

Sita showed up as well and planted herself at the counter continuing her work of hooking interesting people up with one another to make the world a better place. She continues breathlessly with this mission and is having some successes here and there.

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.

Last week Axel went to a session at the conference from an Indian business school professor that was called ‘Taming the Monkey Mind.’ I didn’t know that the frantic mind that hops from one thing to another is indeed the monkey mind. I love the image. My mind was already swaying from tree to tree but now it is even more frantic as any change – even a little – accelerates the monkey’s movement. A big household change like the one coming up for us has much potential for speed and error. Thus, the message is slowing down –not one of my strengths – something to cultivate in the next 3 months.

Yesterday, during and after Quaker Meeting we both tamed the monkey and sat for hours just reading Sunday newspapers from two large cities. I had intended to bring some order in my very messy office but I let it slip – it could wait.

We played with our grand-dog and walked her to town and back. When I go into the barn where she lives with Tessa and Steve, I find her splayed on the bed with this sad look on her face that seems to ask, ‘when are my mommy and daddy coming back?” We are not doing quite as much of the roughhousing that she is used to with Steve. She lets me know this by putting a plastic bone in front of me and pretending to snarl, and then picking up the bone in the hope I chase her. We did this a few times around the kitchen. She’s like a toddler who wants the same activity over and over, while we tire or bore quickly.

In the evening we were invited to a salon-soiree or soiree-salon – a dress up event with intellectuals who radiate around Diane and Curt, many with connections to Harvard. I have never been to such an event and learned that the idea is to connect with interesting people and hear them talk about something they are doing. I was glad that I did not have to stand up and talk because I am in between doing interesting work and more focused on the mundane things such as, when can I come on home leave and how much vacation will I have. I think I can be much more coherent a year from now when the project is about the end and I should have something accomplished.

Back home we watched television programs about television programs, a closed loop of informationals that tell us we can no longer watch TV on our analog sets – this is abundantly clear as there is nothing else. A grainy picture with the vague outline of a man says “If this is what you see you have the wrong TV.”

This transition from analog to digital has been in the works for a long time but the country was not ready in February so the deadline got postponed to June 12. Apparently, still, some 10% of the population (predominantly poor, rural, old, minorities in particular) was caught by surprise. We watch in astonishment the army of TV advisors who march into people’s homes and explain what just happened to incredulous and ill-informed people – some in shock (‘what? we have to get 4 new TVs?”). I imagine the landfills in this country filling up with old sets once people get out of denial; some of these sets maybe quite new, sold not long ago (a steal!) by unscrupulous salesmen to clueless folks.