Sylvia's Journal

It was a balmy spring day in Kabul today. Early in the morning I sat outside on the terrace for the first time in weeks, studying my Dari lessons in the warm late winter sun.

Together with the three current residents of Guesthouse zero we went for our usual Friday outing to Baghe-e-bala. We were once again let into the Bagh-e-bala pleasure palace and climbed to the roof with its great views over the North-eastern part of the city. In the balmy spring weather I could have stayed there for hours – there is so much to see from there.

After our walk we splurged at the Intercon hotel for one of the better lunch buffets in town; pricey here but very reasonable for American standards. We invited our guard and driver to sit down and help themselves. They piled up a mini buffet for the two of them, an amount of food I couldn’t imagine they could eat but they did. We calculated that this meal cost about 20 times what they would spend on a lunch.

After lunch the driver dropped the guys off in Shar-e-nao while I went to Wazir Akbar Khan for my weekly Thai massage. My continuing shoulder problems produce all sort of muscle and tendon compensations that mess up my upper back big time. The weekly massage helps.

Afterwards I joined the men on Chicken Street and found them on the second floor of Hamid’s rug shop amidst piles of the most amazing carpets; Axel busy learning the language of carpets and Peter, a carpet connoisseur, pointing out things that are worth learning.

For now we are just looking and seeing what is there. We think we have all the time in the world.

Back home we found that our new house mate, Julie, had already arrived. She is here for a two week consultancy on strategic leadership communications. The strategic communications part will be the easy part of the assignment, the leadership piece will be harder since things are a little in flux at the top. But at least we have an appointment on Monday with what is currently the leadership, so that is promising.