Sylvia's Journal

I went through the day with only a fraction of my usual energy, the skin between my nose and lips raw from blowing my nose too much. Not surprisingly, I felt very unaccomplished by the end of the day. I quit at the time that everyone else leaves in the many little buses that drive people to all four corners of Kabul. That is usually the time I start emptying my mailbox and get my thinking and writing done, but not today.

Sunday is the day of our weekly touchbase meetings that cascade up from the bottom to the top of the stairs but the stair part didn’t happen because the boss was called out to see the minister and such requests cannot be ignored. I declined to accompany him, feeling too miserable to handle the one hour trip each way.

Axel came over for lunch which was a nice break in the day. He had come to get his MSH identity card to hang around his neck as our compound is instigating increasingly stringent security measures. We now have brick lookout towers, which make me think of Rapunzel each time I pass by them. Such towers were missing at the UN guesthouse. When the guard opened the little sliding door to see who was outside he found a gun in his face, the last thing he saw.

Our walls have been raised, bricked up, by some 3 feet after the surface of the street outside was raised by 3 feet. No one understands why but for the seller of crushed stone it was a good deal no doubt. On top of the new layer of bricks are sharp metal spikes and the front gate is closed. We will have what is called a ‘vapor’ lock and that’s apparently where you need a badge of one sort of another. So Axel now counts, badge-wise, as staff.

When I arrived home Axel was just saying goodbye to two people from a small NGO called SOLA a group he had just contacted by email in the morning. When the founder of the NGO showed up it turned out our housekeeper was his one time and so the visit was a nice reunion.

After they left we visited a Finnish woman who lives around the corner and sells embroidery that is made by Afghan widows and girls to make ends meet. We did our last Christmas shopping there and have now emptied our wallets and finished our shopping.

We had dinner in front of the TV watching Al Jazeera and then the BBC and then Euro News, all of them showing long queues of people waiting at airports (eastern US snowstorms) or train stations (Euro Star mishap in the tunnel). It made you say “I will never travel anywhere for Christmas,” two days before we get on the road ourselves. It’s a long leap of faith.