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.

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.

We both spent the entire day inside, Axel because there was nowhere to go and I because it is finally my turn to be miserable with a full-fledged cold. It is good that we have tissue boxes on practically any horizontal surface, compliments of the people of the United States of America. Axel is feeding me liquids and watching over me, as a devoted husband should.

Because of my sorry state I did not make it to my physical therapy appointment nor to a meeting at USAID that was called at the last minute in an attempt to get decisions made before the departure of many of the Americans who have been saving up for this R&R.

We watched the coming and going of new and old ministers on TV as they finally made their appearance before the members of Parleman as they call it here. I saw our minister of health sauntering into the parliament building with a boyish grin and a cap that made him look very young. I assume he will pass muster. Technocrats is what they are looking for, not politicians. This is funny coming from members of parliament, all of them politicians, several of whom, I suspect, have, as we say it in Holland, butter on their head (which means you have to stay out of the sunlight).

We are beginning to watch the weather in the US, especially the weather in Atlanta and Boston on the 23rd. With snow storms on the eastern seaboard I am reminded of the risk of trying to stick to a schedule when flying in and out of Boston in the middle of the winter. We are asking everyone to keep their fingers crossed, as we are doing too.

We are no longer going for our weekly airing around Habibia highschool. Lately the guards wouldn’t let us in. A new arrangement has been made with the Ghazni Olympic stadium. It is the place where supposedly adulterous women (women who had been raped I suspect) were stoned to death and men executed while people watched from the bleachers, during the Taliban days. It is also the stadium where we watched a bushkazi game 31 years ago.

Now it looks like an innocent and run down old stadium. It’s better than Habibia because it is protected from the street and we are just about the only people there except for the ultimate frisbee team and a few people practicing boxing. When you walk up the bleachers you can walk around the stadium and look out into the city: a lovely Moghul type of mosque on one side and what looks like the Afghan cousin of the Air and Space museum, the poor cousin, on the other side.

We joined Steve on his weekly Chicken Street outing for a few very specific items which completes the Christmas shopping.

We had invited a few people over for dinner, a young Afghan midwife who is going to study public health in Dhaka, her brother who is my friend on facebook and two colleagues from MSH.

Although we have a refrigerator full of dishes that the cook prepared for the weekend, Axel was intent on cooking himself. He had bought some cans of various beans. When we returned home from our walk and shopping expedition we realized we did not have a can opener. We asked the guards how they do this and they indicated they open cans with a knife. Axel preferred something a little safer. We also wanted to serve a spinach salad but did not know how to wash the spinach given that we are not supposed to drink the water. We are wondering how the cook has been washing (or not) the vegetables that we eat raw.
When we forget to buy something or missing critical things like a can opener and bleach (to use for washing the spinach) we can’t just go back to the store; it requires calling the transport office and asking for a car, even if the store is a quick and easy walk down the street.

The driver didn’t understand why Axel couldn’t just use a knife to open the cans; and why he needed bleach (‘white maker’ in Dari) was entirely beyond them, but he insisted and they took him to a local grocery store, while I made another Dutch apple pie since we have too many apples and the previous one was a great success.

It was nearly as if we were living on our own and taking care of ourselves, bleaching, cooking, cleaning; only the noises that come from the guards at the back of our house, and the low planes droning overhead remind us that we are someplace else.

It’s getting cold now in the morning and there is, according to Axel, hoarfrost on the ground: tiny solid depositions of water vapor from saturated air which occurs when the temperature of the surface is below freezing. It occurs generally with clear skies. This reminds me of flying: rime ice is not a good thing when you are flying; I learned that from my private pilot exam book which is better than learning from experience.

I am still programmed to look up at the sky when I hear a small plane going overhead. I can’t help myself. I miss flying and wonder whether there will be any time to fly during my short stay in the US.

We received our passports which probably meant that a threat was made to go public with the petty bribery attempts. It seems that the threats and the giving in are part of a ritual that happens over and over again. Someone must be thinking that one day the trick will work. It is of course the big bribe cases that tend to be more successful and go unpunished. Even though the major of Kabul is indicted he still goes to work every day. Some heavyweight must be protecting him and publicity apparently made no difference. Power always wins.

While I was trying to tie various loose strings together, Axel has started his Christmas vacation now that the language school has closed. He went into town for some Christmas shopping, something I don’t particularly like to do. I am enjoying living in a Christmas free zone, although there are signs of Christmas here and there. I did receive my first Christmas gift (a local candy called Antique Gaz) today from one of my (female) staff with a real Christmas card attached. Since this is not a local holiday I was very much touched by this gesture.

Now that everyone around me seems to have been through one form of flu or another I am afraid it is my turn. I can say in Dari that my throat hurts and ask for salt to gargle. I am drinking copious amounts of hot water which is a little problematic given the dearth and state of most female bathrooms. Luckily it is weekend now and I can sleep long and late and have my own bathroom, two actually, close at hand.

We had our conversation about the American counter-insurgency strategy (COIN) and our position on working with the military, something people in Boston want to know about. I enjoyed the conversation because there are so many stories. I always used to tell the young women I mentored that they should make sure they put all the stories they hear in an imaginary backpack that they should be carrying along all the time. Each new story should be carefully wrapped and placed in the backpack. One day you will need it. Maybe this is why older people have back problems: too many stories.

We listened to the quarterly report presentations of our colleagues and I was struck about the difference with the quarterly reports I listened to only 3 months ago, right after I got here. People may say that capacity building is a slow process but I see people improving in leaps and bounds.

After lunch we left to see the minister of health to talk about one of my primary responsibilities: strengthening leadership at the very top of the institution. Such conversations are always delicate because they have a premise embedded in them that something is wrong at the top. Not everyone at the top is willing to hear that. I had prepared a brief note that spelled out some of the special conditions that make leading at the very top so challenging.

We arrived in the now familiar room, taking our seats behind those who were in audience. Over a period of about 15 minutes people came and went, papers got signed, and there was much talking (mostly in Pashto and Dari) and smiling and handshaking. When people in uniform came in and seated themselves behind us my heart sank because I thought ‘there goes the intimate conversation!’ But then, as fast as they came, they left again.

Finally we were alone with the chief and only his assistant in attendance, pen in hand with a blank piece of paper for notes. When we had made it clear why we were there the assistant was dismissed (“I am sure you have much work to do!”) and we could finally start our intimate conversation about the difficult challenges of leading at the very top. We talked for over an hour and left with doors wide open for new beginnings (after the new cabinet is voted in by Parliament), building the top team, reflecting on learnings and travelling to health facilities in the periphery that are struggling. The work with the top team is the central piece of my job and so far, after three months here, I had not made much progress.

Whether the doors will remain wide open until I come back from Holland remains to be seen but we have passed the first barrier (to get an audience and be heard) and the next ones will be smaller. I consider this my Christmas present, which was augmented with a silver lapis lazuli ring from his Excellency himself and wishes for a merry Christmas and a happy new year. Today was a good day, a very good day.

We started the day with the blast in Wazir Akbar Khan, more or less where we were driving the other day and where we felt rather creepy; so we were right. Luck here is to some degree being somewhere else. We feel quite safe in Karte Seh, far from the Wazir area.

The day ended with shots that were fired on our street while we were having dinner. The guards rushed out with their walkie-talkies and we waited inside for what would happen next. Ten minutes later the guards knocked on our door with big grins on their faces saying something that we understood as ‘firing in the air for joy,’ their movements confirmed our interpretation. Such joy!

In between those two fiery events Axel learned more Dari and I prepared for all sorts of meetings: one with our colleagues here to create a viewpoint about MSH in Afghanistan, something that is needed because of the many requests on the US East Coast for such an opinion. This meeting will happen tomorrow and is somewhat of a challenge: trying to get highly opiniated older (white) male experts to produce one voice together is going to be tricky but we’d better as otherwise the Head office will produce the voice.

We are also getting ready for our quarterly review meetings (called During Action Reviews, DARs here) and the resubmission of our technical proposal for a project extension that will bring us to September 2011. And finally there is the weekly meeting with our donor located not that far from where the blast was.

On the way to our meeting my boss told stories about the Taliban days which include all sorts of variations on highway robberies, always by men with guns and always with the thought that this is the last minute of his life, and then the story takes a turn for the better. He tells the stories with a grin; they are funny in hindsight but not then and I am reminded of the resilience of people here. I think about my work experience at MSH headquarters with a punctured tire as the worst experience.

Our USAID meeting was long, making today another 11 hour day, but interesting. I could see our counterparts in USAID listen intently to what implementation of great ideas looks like on the ground: messy and not according to plan. While we are talking stories emerge about petty attempts at corruption (like: I will give you a travel advance if you promise to hire my cousin’s car or stay in my aunt’s guesthouse; or, I will hold up this bureaucratic transaction in the hope that I can get a small piece of the pie.)

Our own passports are in a holding pattern for similar reasons, at the passport office. We have a few more days before we will really need them. Our security man laughs about it as it is an old ritual until someone says they will tell USAID or bring in our own warriors. That always breaks the hold, we are told. This is another one of those trust falls.

We talked with Pia over the phone to check out the rumor that the DAI offices are targeted (close to the Kabul blast and another in Paktya where local DAI staff got killed). She feels safe in Jalalabad’s DAI compound but people are on alert. It was a very bad day, she confirms. We are relieved she is OK. People text each other in such circumstances.

While Sita is radicalizing in Copenhagen and demanding a different kind of Christmas, Tessa is busy preparing for an old-fashioned Christmas for this family that she thinks hates Christmas (not true), and we live amidst diesel fumes contributing to Afghanistan’s carbon footprint in exchange for staying warm.

Watching Copenhagen from here is a different experience altogether. Given what is happening (or not happening) in Afghanistan, global climate problems are conceptually remote when you wonder about when things will blow up again, try to stay warm or recognize that there is only one way to get home for Christmas.

Consultant Ankie has left and we are home alone again; the next consultant who will be rooming with us, Susan, won’t be here until early January after our return. Ankie has left us a ‘kaasschaaf’ (cheese slicer) and a huge chunk of Dutch cheese. It was nice having her here and speaking Dutch again. I already miss her.

In the meantime Axel is beginning to build up a network of contacts on his own which includes a surprising number of Dutch people. Tonight he is dining with Martijn and/or Mathijs in their heavily fortified compound in a part of Kabul where many foreign contractors hunker down as if under constant siege.

We are still waiting for the announcement of cabinet positions and hear rumors of tense conversations behind the scenes. Although most people believe the minister of health will remain, nothing can be taken for granted. Whether he leaves or stays we think that there will be occasions for using words such as ‘new beginnings.’ I also hope that one of such new beginnings will be a focus on senior leadership work after I get back – one area I am very keen on because, as one of my staff said earlier, ‘we are busy painting the ceiling under a leaky roof.’

This morning I walked into our Herat conference room where we have our program managers’ meeting each Sunday at 9 AM. I found several of my colleagues standing quietly, looking somber, jaws tight, in their dark clothes. I quipped, ‘hey, what’s the matter, did someone die?’ and immediately regretted my words because that is exactly what had happened.

One of our colleagues had lost his father-in-law to a stroke; another lost a cousin over the weekend at a wedding when something when awry in the handling of guns used to shoot in the air out of joy, an odd habit that is rampant in parts of the Arab world and here as well; and the third and fourth were deaths that occurred during a house search in Laghman Province, by coalition forces; the kind of deaths that can quickly lead to more deaths to revenge the first ones. The relative of these two is one of our housekeepers, who walked around all day with eyes red from crying.

And here I stood, the only female, the only one wearing something other than grey/brown/black, with my brightly colored Bangla scarf and a smile on my face that quickly froze. Deaths is a lot closer in this society that it is back home but that doesn’t make each loss any less painful. I had learned how to say ‘my condolences’ in Dari but of course had forgotten the words at that moment. Actually, words aren’t all that important at such a time. We can speak with our eyes and hand gestures (hand on heart), and the response comes in the same form.

Although there was a whole day that followed, this sad opening of the day stayed with me and made other things less important.

Axel was not well enough to go to Dari school this morning so I took his place. The lessons are given in a nondescript house in our neighborhood, a low profile operation. It is within walking distance but we are not allowed to walk and instead drive there in a roundabout way because the car cannot cross all the open gutters between our house and the school.

Inside, the school is a well organized outfit with tiny class rooms, all heated by small diesel and wood stoves and pots of tea always available. After each hour the housekeeper rings a small bell and the students appear from behind closed doors to huddle around the stoves with a cup of tea in their hands.

There were Susan and Robert from the international school, an older couple. Susan lived here as a child and we discovered we have a common acquaintance, someone else who lived here as a child; a young woman from Canada who has worked for over a year with a women’s education organization where no English is spoken and has taken some time off to catch up on grammar. Another young woman from Colorado is doing the 6 week (daily) intensive.

I had two different female teachers, one hour with each. You can request various programs depending on why you are learning Dari. I choose conversation. We asked each other the kinds of questions women ask each other: married, children, house, work, etc. I tried to answer in my best Dari. I realized that I have entered a new level when I dreamed in Dari sentences and woke up with Dari words on my tongue. This was probably triggered by my dinner immersion from last night. I can now have a simple conversation, however imperfect, with an adult speaker who speaks slowly (not with a child). This was the goal I set for myself by December 31. It looks like I on track.

The rest of the day was catching up on work that I have been pushing ahead of me into the weekend. The weekend is nearly over and there is no room to push the work any further because of deadlines, especially since the week that starts tomorrow is the last full week before our departure.

One of the deadlines was a proposal for the Organization Behavior Teaching Conference in new Mexico, next June; the title of my proposal is ‘More than Money and Arms.’ The wish I sent along with that proposal is that it gets accepted and my boss and I attend together; this requires he gets a visa which, for older Afghan males, is a major stumbling block. Incha’allah, they say here, if God wants it, it will happen.