Sylvia's Journal

The weekend has started, my first week completed. It was a good week with me mostly downloading information about practices, work, relationship, politics, and roles. I have my work laid out for me and a list of things I need to pay attention to. The list keeps getting longer.

Although I have learned some Dari words, I have not made much progress on hiring a Dari teacher. It doesn’t turn out to be as easy as I thought. So, in the meantime, I keep using lunchtime with my male colleagues as a lesson and use electronic flashcards at night. Someone told me I am learning Farsi, not Dari; yet the program was sold to me as Dari. At least everyone understands my practice sentences – they just tell me I am learning complicated sentences and these can be simplified. That is encouraging.

I have now completed the conversations with each of my team members about how we will work together, preferences, worries, roles, etc. Out of that I constructed a short term agenda which I am sharing with me boss who returned from Pakistan and caring for his sick child. I am glad he is back so I can have a similar conversation as I have had with my people, with him.

I am slowly shedding my old role of consultant on temporary duty (called TDY in USAID-speak) and taking on my new role as senior manager and technical director for management and leadership. On Sunday I will move into my own office which has been cleaned today and will get a bookcase and a printer on Sunday. I have established my new authority and position vis-à-vis people who were above me in the pecking order in my earlier role; and finally I think I have found our new house so I can move out of my consultant room and set up our own space.

The house, still in great disarray, is lovely and I will consult with Axel later tonight, but Ii am already sold: it has a terrace and balcony across the width of the house, a wild garden that will be tamed with roses and whatever I want; a neglected grape arbor that we will revive and much inside that needs fixing. But I can see the result already in my mind’s eye.

Tonight we are going out to the restaurant that was on yesterday’s agenda. There are still many blue flashing lights on the street. I was told that this is not an extension of the steel belt operation but some formal event at the Office of Fraud Control that has moved in next to our office. I have heard that everyone wants to work there because of its potential to make good money.