Sylvia's Journal

My immersion into Afghanistan is entering the rapids. Now that people know I am going to live here they all want to be my teachers about the culture and what things on the surface tell about what’s underneath. Opinions and viewpoints are presented as facts that state what and who is good and what and who is bad. Each story is told with the conviction that it is the absolute truth. I have no way of knowing the difference. Axel and I have much reading to do to get even a very basic understanding of what Afghanistan is. What to read is not obvious. What I thought was a good book was dismissed as shallow. The only one book that everyone agrees on is a must-read is Louis Dupree’s ‘Afghanistan,’ a book that I read years ago and will need to read again.

I met with what I have considered my team in the past to go over the program we are collectively responsible for. I am seeing the consequences of parachuting in and out twice a year with little day to day guidance about the process of teaching leadership. Things have gotten a little off track, words and concepts have drifted away from their original meaning. I have some untangling to do. I can’t tackle this until I come back because at the moment I have little formal authority to do so.

One of the things that has gone off the rails a bit is the attempt to strengthen leadership at the central level. It is much more complex than at the provincial level for the simple reason that there are many advisors who each tell the same people how to do better the things they are doing. Predictably, we have run into other capacity development initiatives from the WorldBank, UN and the EU, each with its own traditions. The resulting confusion makes all of us less effective.

After lunch we went to the ministry of health across town in the small office van that shuttles back and forth each half hour. Axel joined us because the film festival venue is along the way. These bus rides are always very animated because there is much joking. Some of these jokes are similar to the jokes that the Belgians and Dutch make about each other, or the Scots and the Brits; here it is between provinces. Axel learned about peculiarities of people from Konar, Logar and Wardak.

At the ministry we found some 100 plus newly graduated doctors in a huge hot auditorium listening to a lecture about community health. About one third of the audience was female and I congratulated the entire group with this accomplishment. I jokingly added that next year I’d hope to see women in the majority which was met with a storm of protest from the men. The women just sat their quietly, mouths closed. It is remarkable to see how threatened men are about women becoming more prominent. Some jokingly said that they wanted to fight with me over this. I offered to stay after class and talk, emphasizing the word ‘talk’ rather than ‘fight.’ The language itself is revealing. The men are used to tackle conflicts through fighting. But in the end everyone stood up and packed their books to go home – it had been a long day; so much for fighting.

I had to use a microphone that produced an echo behind me as if I was an announcer at a large stadium event. It was hard to shake anything loose from the audience, they are trained to sit still and absorb the master’s words. I was introduced as some sort of super guru and Dr. Ali told people about my plane accident (I understood enough Dari to recognize the words for pilot and plane and could figure out what was happening). The men stared at me with mouth open as if I was some creature from outer space. The women kept sitting there with their mouths closed but their eyes were scanning me up and down and sideways. I would have given anything to know their thoughts.

In the evening we picked up a former housemate Janneke from Holland who is now working for and lodged by an American consulting firm on the other side of town. All my current housemates piled along in the car because everyone likes to get out of the house when an opportunity presents itself. We ate in an Iranian restaurant that serves large quantities of meat and rice. This made Patrick from Rwanda very happy because he is not getting enough beef. The only thing missing for him was the beer, but Iranian don’t serve alcohol of course.

I received a cultural briefing from Steve about saying yes and no. It reminded me of Martin Buber’s saying that all problems we have with our fellow men stem from not saying what we mean and not meaning what we say. This is probably going to be the toughest challenge for me: when people invite you one is not supposed to accept but instead expected to say no, at least three times. Such invitations are not really meant as invitations and they should be declined. I think I have already made some faux pas because when people invite me or give me something I always enthusiastically accept. I come from a place where this is polite and the opposite is not.

Maria Pia has moved to our guesthouse with the fighting partridge that Said left with her. It runs around free in her room and pecks at everything. This includes the key board of her computer. It found the ‘delete’ key and managed to delete an email from one particular person, as if to tell her not to worry about its message. The bird is a genius because she has other things on her mind.

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.

We met up with Razia and Wazmah at the Istiglal Lycee in the center of Kabul for the opening ceremonies of the film festival. Being one of the few foreigners walking into the place we were immediately captured on camera. Not just for a while but for a long time, our every movement recorded. There was no need for a special invitation as we were invited with open arms and provided with all sorts of information, most of it in Dari.

There were some glitches and the opening was delayed by nearly one hour during which the temperature rose steadily. A few other foreigners were representing the biggest sponsors: the Goethe Institute, the French Cultural Centre and the British Council. Patrons and artists mixed in the audience, the latter recognizable by their attire, although I could not make up my mind whether the men in shiny suits were sponsors, government officials or film makers.

Axel is very good at introducing himself to anyone at any time. I don’t think he is going to have a hard time networking himself into Afghan society, at the least that part of it that speaks English and likes foreigners. We returned from the festival with several new contacts, one the head of the festival’s organizing team and the other the director of the French cultural center.

We spent an hour and a half listening to speeches, mostly in Dari, by sundry officials, with occasional translation in broken English. The master of ceremonies was the professor of film making, with a penchant for poetry. I was sorry I could not understand him when he recited poetry, sometimes in Dari and sometimes in Pashto. Even without understanding it was beautiful to watch him recite and listen to is melodious voice. If I wasn’t already motivated to learn Dari I would be now.

After about one and a half hour in the musty and hot auditorium we got to see the trailers (too short) of all the Afghan and some of the international films. I wish I could go and see them all but unfortunately the festival is more or less during work hours. Axel is planning to go as much as he can.

After the trailers we were treated to a short documentary about watching movies in Afghanistan. The footage showed pictures of destroyed cinemas (presumably by the Taliban) and old men sitting in living rooms and tea houses watching semi-clad females dancing and singing. Unfortunately the film was entirely in Dari so we missed what all the old men were saying. We knew it was funny because the audience broke out in laughter repeatedly. We gathered that the documentary was about the love-hate relationship of the Afghans (men only) with films: entertaining and titillating on the one hand while rejected as perverse and inappropriate for Afghanistan on the other hand.

Once again the entire thing was primarily a male event. The only female who made it onto the stage was German, from the Goethe Institute. A few Afghan women were present in the audience, and then of course there were the Bollywood actresses, nothing more than objects of lust.

Respiratory disease is a big problem in Afghanistan. Although mine is not acute it feels like my lungs are filled with dust. It reminds we of the period in Senegal when the Harmattan winds blow and everything is covered with a fine layer of dust all the time, no matter how much you clean. I wake up coughing several times a night and am struggling with something like a cold for the first time in many months. I hope the H1N1 flu has run its course because if it hasn’t, we are in trouble here.

The government resumes its work today but we have another day off (unless one works in the government or on something together, as some of my colleagues do). We went to the high school tracks which are not as well maintained as those at the German school. The uneven and over-watered terrain and the lack of shade trees made it less enjoyable. I think I got a mild case of sun stroke and it took me the rest of the day to recover. It was probably 35 degrees Celsius, much too hot for doing anything in the sun.

I showed Axel around on Chicken Street, taking him to my favorite places. We stayed away from buying, except for a birthday present for Tessa. We walked around a furniture place with exquisitely carved tables and chairs that took our breath away; figuratively because of the beauty and craftmanship of the traditional pieces and literally because of the Central Asia dust that is in and on everything. With this kind of furniture available it is hard to understand why people furnish their places with the large and ugly stuffed furniture that is so popular here. Modernity!

We returned home for a late lunch, leaving the others to buy more stuff on Chicken Street. I napped until it was time to go for our Thai massage. I don’t think Axel had ever had such a massage. The diminutive Thai masseuses use the leverage of their bodyweight to massage the various muscle groups. It can be a bit intense at times but it was exactly what the doctor prescribed. I think we are going to be frequent customers in that place.

In the evening we drove to Razia Jan’s place down the street. Razia is from the South Shore in Massachusetts and lives here in Kabul part of the time. She has founded a girl school in a village some 15 km outside Kabul which we hope to visit some time. She is also on staff of an NGO that supports women rug weavers and their families in Bamiyan, paying them fair market price for their rugs and marketing them in Kabul and in the US.

Razia told us her extraordinary life story which took a significant turn after 9/11. That event, in all its tragic consequences, also mobilized an unknown number of people, Afghan and non Afghan alike, into spectacular altruistic action that continues up to this day. In our short time here we have heard several such stories already.

Razia told us about her encounters with the men of the village where the school is located and her efforts to keep them from elbowing out the girls. This is a common problem all over Afghanistan. Men are used to serve themselves first, leaving the scraps for their women. When the men told her that boys needed to go to school rather than girls, they argued that boys are the backbone of the country. Razia answered that girls are the eyesight of the country and without the girls the men are blind. There is ample evidence for that all around us.

Razia had invited another Afghan-American woman, Wazmah, from New York. She is here for her doctoral thesis research on media, culture and communication. Wazmah’s film, Postcards from Tora-Bora, was shown during last year’s Afghan film festival. This annual event, now in its fourth year, happens to start today. Although Axel had spotted the website it contained no information about where; meeting Wazmah was fortuitous. It’s on our program for today, and maybe on Axel’s for the next few days.

Today is Friday which means weekend. There is a routine that I know well but Axel doesn’t. The only difference from the weekend routine I last experienced is that the contract with the German school, hidden behind major fortifications, has run out. A new contract (of the use for one and a half hours of the athletic track and fields) is now with the Habibia high school a little further up the road. It is the place where the Afghan intelligentsia has been trained for generations. For a while it was out of commission, entirely destroyed in crossfire and then fixed up again.

I had my ‘expectations’ conversation with my new boss. I had given him my vision for next year when the project (and thus my contract) ends as well as the actions that I plan to undertake to take me there. We had a wonderful and very frank conversation.

My new boss lives on the edge of many dividing lines: as an Afghan he is head of an American project and thus has to please the American people (or at least those who represent this constituency). The project is designed to help the Afghan government, so he has to please that client too, which includes a steep hierarchy crowned by the most senior officials in the ministry of health, some he knows very well personally but, as a non government official, he has to show deference to all of them. He supervises three expats and also has to keep MSH headquarters in Boston happy. And then there is the staff, some are from the same ethnic background and others are from places that have traditionally been warring with his.

On top of this he is held responsible for the judicious spending of enormous amounts of money, for staff scattered over the country, some in very insecure areas like Kandahar and Khost, and held to performance standards that are high under the best of circumstances. He is a little stressed.

The new ‘surge’ in Afghanistan is piling more complexity on this already stressful state. We submitted a plan to help the US government wean the population away from a hodgepodge of Taliban and Al Qaeda groups by paying attention to things ordinary people badly need, like a place to take their sick wives and children, something the these various fighting groups can’t or won’t provide.

My Dari is improving slowly. We eat lunch, whenever we can, in the staff-run cafeteria where a simple and delicous meal costs 1 dollar. I sit in the men’s section because I am like a third gender, the advantage of being a female foreigner. That is where I practice my Dari and learn a few new words each day. It is easy to learn Dari here (as opposed to learning in the US) because everyone loves to teach me and I am encouraged by all. I am hopelessly in love with this place.

Last night we went to another guesthouse where our colleagues served cocktails and beer. It was a busy place because Maria Pia’s Afghan family had arrived from the north. Wafa’s hair was cut and Said wore a preppy tea shirt. They are ready for this new adventure in their lives, just as Axel and I are, going in the opposite direction. The only thing is that I knew what to expect before heading out here. They have no idea where they are going (or if they have an idea it is probably heavily influenced by the American rambo-type movies that Said loves to watch).

Said had brought his bird, a fighting partridge, which they try to get us to take care of after they are gone. I found the creature a little too nervous for my liking. It did have a nice plastic cage with a carpet on the bottom, we are in Afghanistan after all, but I think we will decline.

They are supposed to leave in less than a week’s time but only if their brandnew Afghan passports are stamped in time at the US embassy here. Everyone is sitting on pins and needles. Maria Pia has been able to secure donated business class seats for all and the experts at Massachusetts General Hospital are on standby to sort out Said’s twisted limbs. I wish I could ride along and watch their faces as they travel away from old and ancient Afghanistan into the New World of America.

We returned to our guesthouse and sat on the porch on our plastic peacock chairs eating yet another delicious meal prepared by our cook. We have a great bunch of people here and are getting to know them better. This is the attraction of living in this guesthouse. If you want to be alone or hang out with interesting people, you can.

We tried to watch our bootlegged copy of the movie The Proposal that I had bought for 2 dollars in Addis. It includes laughing. This is not a track, but real people laughing in a real cinema someplace in the world where the film was video-taped straight from the screen. Our watching experience was a good deterrent (punishment?) to secure anymore of such movies. The copy was OK until halfway through the movie.

Between the recurrent power outages and the defective copy it became too much of a hassle and the audience trickled away until only the two of us were left. Although we have a suspicion of how the movie ends, we don’t know how the storyline will take us there. We did see the scenes filmed in Manchester and Rockport, with mountains inserted in the background. I like that look.

I spent most of the day sitting in a conference room watching about 30 people plan their department’s services. The entire event was in Dari. A female colleague was teaching/facilitating and I got to see how she did this and what happened. It was all very revealing despite the language handicap. I was looking for patterns of behaviors, how people deal with stress and conflict and picking up a few Dari words in the process. This is a good time to observe because soon I will be so used to how people work together that I won’t notice things anymore.

I played no formal role but when I noticed something changed in the dynamics of the group I investigated what was going on. I also delivered some messages about disruptive behaviors when the female workshop leader was uncomfortable doing so. People here get away figuratively (and I suppose literally as well) with murder because there is great fear to confront, especially if the culprit is male of higher social status. Sometimes when I confront people they get prickly, sometimes they open up and spill out why they acted the way they did. You can make ennemies and friends this way, I did the latter (and possible the former).

While observing from the periphery of my vision the workshop dynamics and process I turned 65 pages of reporting data into a deeply layered mind map in order to help me see more clearly the broad and complex landscape of this project. With the new ‘surge’ proposed for the insecure provinces this is going to be even more complex.

I am sticking my toes in the water to better understand why people do things that they claim they don’t want to be doing and the many constraints that, real or imagined, are used to justify non productive or self-defeating behavior. Chris Argyris would have a field day here. I am climbing one ladder of inference down after another. Some people squirm when I do this, others are delightfully frank. Culture is invoked a lot and the effects of stress are painfully visibly, yet few see it or care to admit (most of these people are men).

My new-found friend invited me to dinner. I was accompanied by Axel and Steve. He is a fairly young doctor, delightfully frank and straightforward. It is rare to hear an Afghan tell us foreigners that the workshop we organized was a waste of time, his and others. I have definitely entered a workshop culture: when in doubt, hire a consultant and do a workshop. I can’t remember hearing many of our clients protest this approach so straight into our faces. He was absolutely right and I hope I can reduce the number of workshops a bit.

The Lebanese restaurant, across town, was heavily guarded by young men in combat outfit with a variety of guns. I can recognize the AK-47s now but there were some others that seemed even more dangerous. We were whisked through a covered ‘sluice’ much like in some banks where the entrance and exit doors are not allowed to be opened at the same time. For a brief moment you are in a holding pattern. Then we entered into a brightly lit (except when the power went out) restaurant with people socializing, drinking beer and wine, as if this was downtown Boston.

At the end of the room a bunch of US military guys, buzz cuts and with undulating muscles sticking through their tight drab jerseys, were relaxing drinking whiskey and beer. Since they were drinking I assumed they were off duty. But it was fun to imagine them ‘guarding’ some US powerbroker in a backroom of the restaurant, making deals or twisting someone’s arm.

After being served a complimentary chocolate cake we drove back at breakneck speed across a deserted town, populated by men with guns (presumably good ones) and delivered back at our guesthouse zero. It was a wonderful day and I can’t wait to settle in more permanently. This may surprise some people.

We celebrated our 2nd re-birthday as Sallie Craig calls it with a dinner at a lovely Afghan restaurant. Eight people came along to celebrate with us, all of them lodged in MSH guesthouses, most of them colleagues from Boston and DC. We toasted with real beer and wine – a treat – and were served a sequence of small courses with several Afghan delicacies. We were sitting outside in a lovely garden, walled off from the busy town center by high walls. We could have been in the country side. Wood fires in large braziers both lit and warmed us as night fell. In back of me large and well manicured bushes of weed separated the garden from the restaurant’s veranda.

Earlier in the day we had paid a visit to the Afghan Research and Evaluation Unit, an organization that commissions and publishes research about all aspects of Afghanistan’s society and reconstruction. We were like kids in a candy store and helped ourselves to all sorts of publications to deepen our understanding of what is happening here.

On our way back we stopped at one of the supermarkets that cater to foreigners and paid about 50 dollars for a small shopping basket with essentials such as shampoo, toothpaste, a Japanese tea kettle, some tissues, a kilo of dried mulberries, chai and tissues. For that amount of money we could have bought some exquisite old jewelry, rugs or wall hangings on Chicken Street. Now we know that we should stay away from imported goods if we can (or import them ourselves).

Back in the office, still empty because of all the travelers, we settled in for real work. For Axel that meant sorting out how to survive in an office (and electronic) environment that is dominated by Windows users. Connecting to the internet at our guesthouse requires some special software (or a new computer). As a Macintosh user he is a minority here.

I had my first meeting as a member of the senior management team; unofficially, because I am not yet approved in my new position by the US government powers that be. Those powers are extremely busy sorting out the on-the-ground implications of the revamped US strategy in Afghanistan, led by powerful figures in the Obama administration. Things are definitely going to change here and people are gearing up. We are not sure what to gear up for, except for an enormous influx of people coming to implement this strategy, accompanied by the necessary cash. For some Afghans this will mean employment and survival; for others it will be the opposite.

Today is the second year since our miraculous survival in that pond at the end of the Gardner municipal airport’s runway 36. We plan to celebrate it in style, in a nice restaurant someplace in town.

Yesterday Axel was introduced to my new boss and colleagues and the compound where MSH is housed, a 2 minute ride around the corner. We are not allowed to walk which is beginning to hit Axel. But one of our Indian colleagues who shares the guesthouse with us went for a walk downtown. We don’t know whether he can do that because he looks more like people here or whether that part of town is considered safe. But of course what is safe one day can suddenly become unsafe.

We received an extra detailed security briefing, one that I now know by heart, for Axel’s sake, while sitting in between a revolver on my right and the TV showing the latest bad news from Afghanistan at the other side of the room. Yet we are quite comfortable here. The security people know what they are doing and have been with MSH for a long time. Of course you can always be at the wrong place at the wrong time, but you can do that anywhere in the world even in places that are certified as safe.

We are beginning to get invitations to people’s places, from the Afghan intelligentsia that we are networking our way into thanks to Ghia from Massachusetts, who knows many Afghans. We are very grateful for these contacts with interesting, bright and courageous people who probably know others like that. It’s a good start.

At noontime we went home for a quite lunch together and then a long nap. I am having some sort of allergic reaction to either the dust or dry air, producing many sniffles, much coughing and red eyes. Since most of my colleagues are either in Bamiyan or Herat there is no rush to be in the office so I can take it easy. Today it will get busier as people will be trickling back in and tomorrow there will be a workshop that I am to play an, as yet to be identified role in.

Guesthouse zero now has plastic garden furniture. Axel dusted it off and we sat on the terrace enjoying the beautiful afternoon, the roses, the grapes dangling in bountiful clusters from the arbor, reading, while drinking our pretend gin tonics (soda water with lime).

We are contemplating our living options. One is to move into the entire second floor of the guesthouse I have been staying in for my last few trips. it has 3 rooms, 2 bathrooms and a small kitchen, a balcony and a roof terrace from which we can look down on the street and into the compound of the Ariana broadcasting corporation.

With a good cleaning and a replacement of ugly curtains and lamps, we could make this into a pretty nice place that is already fully staffed and furnished. We would be living with one other permanent staff, Steve, and then the transients, consultants who come and go and always include interesting people. Right now these transients include an Indian, a Rwandan, a Virginian, a New Mexican, a Bostonian and us. Tomorrow a Nepali will join the team.

We talked with Sita on Skype after discovering on facebook that she had been in the emergency room for an accidental stab with an exacto knife, exactly into a major artery. Seeing a picture of Sita, eyes closed, in a bloody hospital bed on facebook shook us up quite a bit. When we discovered it she was already on the mend, sleeping soundly at home with hero Jim by her side.

When we talked at the end of our day, the beginning of hers, she described the scene as fit for a horror movie with blood pulsing out of her arteries. We were glad she lives close to a good hospital; as if I needed a reminder that such things are not to be taken for granted in this country. Here she would probably have died as so many others do for much less spectacular afflictions. This and our recovery from the crash deserve an ‘alhamdulillah,’ no matter what Richard Dawkins says. We are very grateful.