Sylvia's Journal

The predicted snow showed up in Kabul, not Herat. Axel took a picture out of our bathroom window (one of the few we can actually open on the mountains side), and concluded these were the biggest snowflakes he had ever seen.

I had another uncomfortable night under the 30 pound blanket and with the tiny sheets. In the morning I told the hotel management that this was the only hotel, over 3 dollar a night, I had ever stayed in where you had to make your own bed. I also requested to not replace my towel everyday which comes also wrapped in plastic with a tiny pink shampoo bottle that shay Ivan and a piece of soap that is wrapped in Chinese characters.

I explained that many hotels in the world are trying to be a little greener by not washing everything every day and I told them about the little cards that one finds in hotel bathrooms that say: towel on the ground means clean towel; towel on the rack means keep it another day.

They thanked me profusely for the feedback and promised they would take care of my requests. But when I returned to the hotel in the afternoon it appeared that only part of the message was received: They had left me my old towel (no new Ivan bottle or soap packet) and they also left me my tiny sheet which I found re-folded and put on top of the Chinese blanket. I got to make my bed by myself again. I gave up.

Our planned after action review got off to a very slow start today. Our guard noticed that with the provincial health chief called to Kabul yersterday afternoon for business everything became a little slack in the office. People showed up late (apparently a meeting by some other US funded agency that pays ‘sitting fees’ was more attractive), then they took about an hour to organize themselves to sit down, and just when everyone was seated someone reminded the group that someone’s nephew had died and they all got up again to offer the family their condolences. And so we didn’t start until about 20 minutes past 11 AM for the 2 hour session.

I used the waiting time to study my Dari lessons with our guard who kept given me the answers for the ‘fill in the blank’ exercises. This is how I was able to do my homework and have it instantly corrected as well. It was a very good use of my tiproductive morning.

While we waited I also learned more about how change comes to this country: very, very slowly. My colleagues sometimes get a little discouraged about how hard it is to change people’s work habits. I used the image of an oil tanker and how you can’t change its direction directly but have to use the trim tab and push it in the direction that seems counter intuitive.

Here the intuitive mode is changing people by punishing them for undesired behavior. The problem is that it doesn’t work because if you punish someone with connections (and everyone has connections) you can expect a phone call from someone more powerful than you who will remind you that you don’t have any power and please undo the punishment. Fear of consequences is what keeps things the same. This is what we, who are tasked to be change agents, are up against. And so I keep thinking ‘trim tab, trim tab, trim tab.’