Sylvia's Journal

We know that the week starts on Sunday but it felt like Monday, so we are one day ahead of reality. I am on the last leg of this trip and the days are rushing by. There is much to do, to ask and to discover.

Axel went right on discovering new people and places. First came his delayed registration with the ministry of interior, as a foreigner – a process that I have learned to complete on arrival at the airport. It requires a passport picture which he did not have. After several stops at different parts of the ministry he got a special card that needs to be handed in upon departure. I don’t know what would happen if you did not have that card but we don’t want to find out.

While he was away I was taken to another ministry (of health) and met with one of the teams that we have handed the leadership program to – a group of young male and female doctors who are very successful in transferring skills, in their turn, to new graduating doctors. They do this with great enthusiasm, referring to Dr. Ali and me as their parents and grandparents. We know they are doing well because requests for their interventions are pouring in: the blood bank wants to become a leadership center of excellence, and so do a number of the private health facilities. All want their staff to lead and manage better. One of the young female doctors even addressed the annual congress of OB/GYNs with lessons about leadership. I asked her if she had been nervous. “No, not at all,” she answered with a big smile. To me this felt like a cultural revolution.

The young doctors are also among the star performers in a virtual change management program that we run out of Cambridge. They take this very serious and I am cheering them on from the sidelines, wherever I am in the world.

Axel and I arrived back from the various ministries in time to have lunch together in the employee café where we met two new consultants, from the Washington DC area, both very interesting people with a long and deep international career. After lunch Axel went to the film festival and made more new friends whenever he escaped from the hot and airless auditorium of the lycee into the slightly cooler foyer, while I continued my workday at the office.

I was asked to sit in on meetings that are relevant to my future job here. In one meeting a group of consultants from another organization came in for an introduction to our project for which they are designing the follow on. Together with some of our MSH colleagues we formed a microcosm of how much of the world runs: 9 older white males, 5 slightly younger Afghan males and me the only woman. Since I am not yet in my new (very senior position), I chose to observe. It was a role all of us in the minority were put in anyways, whether we liked it or not.

Even though the conversation was about rebuilding their country, the Afghan males were entirely ignored. I was also, except when anyone mentioned gender and then they looked my way. I finally had to say that, being a woman did not make me the gender specialist. They didn’t even think that was funny. I can’t wait to be official. Then I will try to put such meetings on another more inclusive track. The Afghan males are too polite (or maybe intimidated) to say anything about this. But I asked them and they told me. Although they are used to this treatment, they do notice and they suffer, quietly and each in their own way. I will meet with one of the white guys later this week (he does think I have something to contribute after all). I plan to ask whether he noticed something was awry.

In the evening we networked our way further into the society of émigré Afghans. Wahzmah’s uncle is leaving for the US today and invited us to the family house in the middle of Kabul. There we found people speaking in various tongues: a French nurse from the Herat burn center speaking in her language with some older gentlemen, brothers, from the ministry of culture and information, speaking at least 4 languages, an Italian anthropology Ph.D candidate from Boston University in Pashtuni dress, ex military and security man, speaking English, Italian, French and learning Pashto, a young female film maker and director of an animal shelter from Karachi, speaking whatever people speak in Karachi and perfect English and some other people who I never figured out. Our host spoke Turkish, French, Arabic, English, Pashto and Dari, and most people spoke at least two languages. And then of course there was the Dutch me.

Dinner was spectacular, as we have come to expect and seduced me into at least two helpings and Axel into one too many. Over and after dinner we were treated to a host of opinions about what happens here and what happened a long time ago. We are sucking everything up like thirsty travelers.