Sylvia's Journal

Organizational dynamics is the bread and butter of my professional life but sometimes I get caught in them myself. I had a run-in with our accounting chief about something that can cost me close to a thousand dollars. An invocation of unbendable rules set me off on the wrong foot. I do remember something in the department’s mission and vision that is about serving their customers but I found little of that in her dismissive attitude. I still need to count to 10 each time I relive the scene. I am gearing up for battle and am looking for allies.

On the positive side I had a long talk with my fellow crash survivor about what happened then and in the two years in between, the dynamics between the two of us and the wish to reset the relationship. We compared scars, physical and emotional, we talked about our new relationship now that I am physically moving away and we talked about matters of money and debt. It was a conversation I had wanted to have for a long time. Over time I had come to accept that it would not happen, especially not before moving to Kabul. And there we were, sitting on a bench overlooking the Charles River, talking frankly about all that had gone wrong. Now we can each resume our life without dark clouds hanging over our heads: one of permanent injury (no longer true) and the other of a lawsuit (also not true).

I left for the airport in the hope I could welcome Maria Pia, Said and Wafa to Boston. Little did I know that while I was waiting at Logan our very own Department of Homeland Security was giving them a last scare and hassle in Atlanta. They missed several flights and were held for 5 hours insisting that critical pieces of paper were missing, more of this unbendable rules stuff. As it turned out they were wrong (rules can be wrongly applied!) and the exhausted and worried party was finally released to continue the journey to Boston. An exhausted but happy Maria Pia called me last night, returning all 50 of my messages. I was able to greet Said over the phone in my best Dari. The ‘getting out of Afghanistan and into the US’ part of the long saga is completed and a new phase of surgery and rehabilitation is about to start. The latter may be just as difficult and agonizing as the first, and probably even longer, but there is hope, and that matters a lot.