Sylvia's Journal

Today I went for a visit to the new house, khana nao, aka khana si-o-seh (33). In one week much had changed. I found an army of MSH staff and contractors cleaning and buffing the place. Only the kitchen was not done yet but the new cabinets were waiting outside to be put in next to a brand new American size refrigerator.

The living room is multi-cultural: not quite my taste of shiny dark wood couches and chairs with a Chinese motif, made in China or made by Chinese people in Pakistan (everything here comes from China or Pakistan it seems), on one end of the room and the locally produced Afghan tushaq mattresses waiting for their covers on the other side of the room. The Chinese furniture is for people with bad knees while the Afghan ‘furniture’ is for people with flexible and supple knees.

A stylish dark wood dining room set is the center piece in the dining room. This is for the weak-kneed people, while the rest can eat off the floor in the living room, Afghan style, from a plastic cloth spread on top of the brand-new carpet. The cook and housekeeper were already on board and buffing their own places in the back of the house. Everyone was all smiles when I came to inspect and I felt a bit like the English landholder madam who comes home to her estate and is welcomed by all the staff flanking the entrance. It wasn’t quite like that but I am not used to have all these people laboring for me.

Back in the office we are preparing for major office swap moves as some projects are expanding and re-arranging reporting relationships which requires much back and forth consultations on a variety of options. I am also mentally preparing for the departure of half the senior management team, leaving me the most senior technical staff in place, side by side with the deputy who is a master of operations. I will be involved in my first financial management consultation call with Headquarters – talking about matters of millions and financial affairs I have successfully avoided in my career at MSH. That’s part of the stretch of this new job.

I am being let in on squabbles and jealousies between government officials, with fairly senior people taking me into confidence, even traveling all the way over from the ministry to our outskirts office. I am a little guarded about these confidences as it is risky to take sides and get pushed into one camp or another. I know that all the information I get is filtered and incomplete.

I received the Obama cloth from Ghana that made its way from Ghana to Addis to Cambridge to Kabul and is now decorating a table in my office (note the fresh box of tissues). Everyone who comes in gives Obama a pat on the cheek, encouraging him to keep inspiring everyone despite the Afghan and Iraqi messes we are all in.

How is it that all the tissue boxes are empty at the same time? A cosmic alignment of some sort? I have never been in a place where there are so many tissue boxes, one on every horizontal surface. How can they all be empty at the same time? These are the important matters with which I occupy myself after yet another 11 hour workday.

Working long days is easy when there is no one waiting at home and reading and thinking is pushed to the outer edges of the day because in between there are meetings and ceremonies to attend. Today there was another hajji vaccination photo op, this time with the minister and the US ambassador himself, the top man, as opposed to the other 3 ambassadors that our country has posted here.

On our way to the ministry I realized I had forgotten my ‘chadoor’ (or ‘doekje’ as we Dutch girls call it) – this of course was a problem given that I would be in the presence of excellencies, media and hajjis, and I don’t want to offend or distract from the importance of the photo op. And so we stopped by the side of the road and my boss jumped out and got me a small scarf, the one that gets knotted under one’s chin. It made me look like a Russian babouchka, but it did the trick and can now serve as a large handkerchief.

We listened to speeches while tea and cake was served by our own personnel that we had brought along for the occasion – an unusual form of technical assistance. When the ceremony was over the male and female vaccinators did their job (of vaccinating). I couldn’t see the poor hajjis, male and female, who had been carefully selected to get vaccinated in front of the excellencies with all the media in attendance, shooting (video) and snapping (pictures). All this news will appear in the invisible newspapers and on TV. It will bracket the not so heartwarming announcement from Karzai’s rival that he is pulling out of the race, leaving everyone wondering, what now?

In the meantime foreigners are being evacuated left and right as the aftershocks of the UN guesthouse attack ripple on. Unlike us, they are working and living in the area where the attacks took place and their headquarters are worried. These working and living spaces are far away from where we are ensconced in our ordinary looking houses that are blended into middle class neighborhoods. Our office complex is a good neighbor, not a magnet for dark forces as the downtown expat places are.

Our house is nearly fixed up, getting ready for Axel’s arrival. The wall to wall carpet has been installed, the walls painted (“Lemon Ice”), the security fortifications made, the blast film put on the windows, the new water heaters put in, wired for internet in every room, the wall in the back extended by another four feet and a safe haven under the stairs.

Today I had to select the material for the curtains and the tushaqs (the traditional mattresses that serve as couch, bed and dining room ‘chairs.’) The samples I was given to choose from were hideous, one even more than the other. I picked the least hideous two fabrics (still hideous in my book) that probably don’t go at all with the lemon ice paint on the wall, but I was in a hurry and the choice was presented as a life or death one. It is such a shame that in a place where the old furniture and textiles are beautiful beyond description I am to choose from such ugly things. At least it is not our permanent house for ever and we know there is a much more beautiful place waiting for our return.