Sylvia's Journal

Saturdays aren’t always days of rest for me because I am here to support the central ministry of health. They work and sometimes call me. This morning I combined a meeting at the ministry of health with a visit to my physical therapist, across the street, and the husband of one of my staff.

Fahima treated me in a room that was not heated. The small ‘country stove’ was lit when we came in but the room never got warm. She reviewed my exercises and established weekly goals. I am working on range of motion and a little bit of strength. She prepared me a schedule for the week – some exercises I have to do every two hours. That is going to require some discipline.

I came in late to an organizing committee for one of the many large ministry-wide conferences that are supposed to happen every year but have slipped a bit since last fall. The committee has been meeting for awhile and so it was hard not to come in and spoil the party with criticism. But I do have lots of questions. I tried to ‘read’ the group, even when they speak in their own language, as not to upset the apple cart, determining where to draw the line between breaking down and building up.

I noticed, whenever the group reverted to Dari, that I can understand significantly more than 3 months ago. Dari is no longer an entirely secret language although I still have a long way to go before I can fully participate in local language discussions.

After our meeting I had an appointment with another senior ministry official who happens to be married to one of my team members. I had requested a meeting so that we could discuss his wife’s professional development and share what opportunities are available. Such topics are private and individual in the US but here they are family affairs. We discussed family and women’s professional development over a wonderful lunch that was cooked in the office on a little petroleum stove behind a screen. How people can cook the most wonderful meals like that remains a mystery to me. I need a fully equipped kitchen to produce a similar meal.

In the meantime word reached me from Holland that the lung condition maybe treatable and may not be as fatal as we thought yesterday. All prayers are much appreciated and we are feeling a little less depressed. It was hard to concentrate on work when you are worried about someone near and dear like that.

In the late afternoon (‘digar’) Axel and I went to our Dari class together. Our classes are separate – we learn in different ways and at different speeds and so we have different teachers.

I added a whole new series of complex constructions to my bag of Dari tricks, all of them requiring a shift in mindset in addition to learning the words. I learned that ‘I forget’ in Dari is ‘something slipped from my memory,’ and ‘I am late’ is ‘lateness came to me.’ The general belief that life happens to you is reflected in such constructions.

I enjoy my classes tremendously and wish I could spend more time on them. But for now 4 hours a week in class is all I can handle, given that homework takes another couple of hours.