Sylvia's Journal

Seeing the traffic on the main street leading to the other side of Kabul, our destination, the driver turned around and took the long but unclogged way across the mountain to the other side of town this morning. This included a steep drive over unpaved roads that hardly deserve the name, past small but clean informal settlements stuck to the side of the mountain. Little bright-eyed raggamuffins stared at me and our fancy car. It is an entirely different world up there. I felt like I had gone on a field trip and enjoyed it despite the bumps in the road. Unfortunately I had not brought my camera, so no pictures.

Eventually we emerged on the other side of the mountain in the part of town where the European Commission has its heavily fortified compound. It is located right next to the Indian embassy which has now become nearly impenetrable from the main road. The enormous concrete blast walls that had been removed sometimes after the previous blast were put back into place and only special-plate cars were allowed in. That included ours.

The compound looked pristine, grass cut, lovely flowers, fresh paint, no broken windows. Yet I learned later that many of the windows had been blasted to pieces and the ceiling of the EC’s conference room collapsed. Everything has been cleaned, fixed and replaced and life went on as if nothing had happened. The families back home never knew how close their loved ones were to the Indian embassy and may never know.

The European Commission is revamping its development assistance strategies and is sending consultants around the world to explain it. The process by which this was done was an interesting contradiction to the central message of dialogue: we were lectured at for the entire morning. When the consultant told us that he’d go back to Brussels to tell people what he had learned I raised my hand and asked him, ‘learned what? You have been talking at us for more than 3 hours.’ I just couldn’t help myself.

I do not have any tolerance to sit for hours looking at an expert standing in front of an slide projector, no matter how good the content (the ideas were excellent, it’s just that they did not seem to apply to him). He was a good sport and challengeable and told me what he should have done (buzz groups); pressured even further why he had ignored his own best judgment, and be congruent with his message, he mentioned time pressures, which is something all of us understand. This is the difference between theoretical concepts and the realities on the ground.

I got a few whiffs of the competition between the Europeans and the Americans and the strong resentment that the US approach seems to engender among its European counterparts. Even though, as a Dutch-American, both sides in this drama are ‘my people’ I found myself surprisingly detached from the strong feelings on both sides. Holbrooke’s name triggered some very strong reactions, never mind that he works for the Great Inspirator Obama. Maybe it is time to read The Ugly American again.

In the afternoon a smaller working group on health convened and it was indeed a listening session. It was fun being facilitated rather than facilitating myself and I watched the Danish consultant-facilitator with great interest, seeing what he was trying to do. It was a useful exchange for me as I learned much about donor issues and people’s perspectives on what’s working and what is not.