Sylvia's Journal

We have a new housemate, Sara, who was only supposed to overlap one night with Susan. Axel moved his office to accommodate this double occupancy. But then we learned that Susan lost her wallet with her passport inside it and everything changed. Afghanistan is not a good place to lose your wallet and passport, especially not the day before your departure.

A bunch of people sprang into action and are trying to have the right piece of paper issued by the American consulate so that airlines will let her onto the plane and on her way home. Susan can leave tomorrow after all. Not at 8 AM as she had hoped, but maybe on the afternoon flight, the one that stops in Kandahar on the way to Dubai.

Oblivious of Susan’s woes most of my day was focused on the quarterly worldwide meeting of the MSH family that takes place tomorrow night (for us) and tomorrow morning for our colleagues in the western hemisphere, with people listening from nearly all continents and many time zones.

My boss is presenting the Afghan program, now in its umpteenth incarnation after the first MSH team landed here in 1973. Steve and Peter were on that team; this fact makes many of us feel old.

And so today was about rehearsals: first with our IT colleagues to get the technology set up right; then among ourselves a first dry run, then a practice presentation via video conference with our colleagues in Boston (using that much bandwidth shut down the internet connection for everyone else). And tomorrow, long after our workday is over, we’ll do the real thing and keep our fingers crossed that all the rehearsing and the technology checks will pay off.