Sylvia's Journal

All the loose ends are tied up, except one about our return trip. We had to fix a reservation error via Skype with Holland where a deep freeze only days before Christmas is causing massive delays in telephone traffic. I was put on hold for the longest time, praying the electricity wouldn’t quit on me while listening to the most atrocious and loud Christmas music. Eventually we sorted things out, a Skype miscommunication that cost us dearly, 50000 miles and 100 euro more for what was supposed a free trip for Axel from Boston to Amsterdam. We discovered the trip had already happened on November 30th and not, as we thought we had booked, on December 30th. There is a lesson in there of checking reservations carefully.

I have handed the baton to one of my staff, a new experience since in the past when I went on leave there was no one to hand the baton to and I just kept checking my email. I am planning to do that only for social reasons. We do have an arrangement with my co-directors: only emails that have URGENT in the subject line are to be looked at (with a promise to have none or very few of those).

During my last trip to and from the ministry of watched the traffic around me more intently than usual and realized that there is something profoundly different about traffic here and in the US or Holland. People may complain that my two home countries are over-regulated, but compared to the non regulation here, such (over) regulation is a heck of a lot better.

People and animals cross the road or what’s available of the road whenever and wherever they want. The road is sometimes not much of a road. Everywhere, probably part of some big road project, drainage ditches are being hacked in the road and piles of rock and dirt continue to accumulate on the remaining surface. Some of these are small side roads, but many are main arteries in and out of town.

Participating in traffic is based on the premise that everyone is on his own, and that there is no collective responsibility to make things work on the roads. Red and green lights, pedestrian crossing, traffic rules are really collective commitments to give everyone a fair chance at moving ahead.

I marvel at the ability of Afghan drivers to get themselves into a total jam, everyone occupying every empty inch of the road and even sidewalks, and as soon as an inch opens, someone jerks into the new space further jamming up the works. Occasionally I have seen someone get out and create rules on the spot, like ‘you there, stay where you are, and you there, move!’ But only once in my three months here.

The same principles of immediate satisfaction, impulsivity, and unenlightened self interest are at work when uncles or fathers ask for compensation from those who offer to educate their girls, or when employees steal money that has been made available to rebuild a piece of this country, their country, or that was to provide medicines, food, schools, anything for the poor. All during the ride I wanted to jump out of the car and grab people by their shoulders and shake them saying ‘don’t you get it? We are all in this together, you lose, I lose, you win, we all lose…But how do you get that across when that’s what life has been like for most people here.

And now we are getting ready for our long (road/air/road/air/road) trip back to Manchester by the say. Departure at 5 :30 AM tomorrow morning. We can’t wait.