Sylvia's Journal

Many of the very senior people do things that we find inappropriate for people at that level in our world back home: director generals (all medical doctors) who deal with logistics for meetings, acting ministers who correct English. I find myself the de facto secretary of a group that is planning for a, supposedly important, strategic retreat of movers and shakers in the health sector.

I told the chair of the meeting, one of the Director-Generals, that I didn’t want to be the one sending the emails with notes and convening meetings, as that was the ministry’s job. It’s not that I don’t want to do the job but we are trying to stand behind our counterparts in the ministry. More often than not there isn’t anyone to stand behind.

I offered to help him build the skills of the 8 members of his secretariat. One of them speaks some English, the rest don’t. Some of them have computers but not all. A secretariat here is an old fashioned one: filing atom-based rather than byte-based correspondence in old-fashioned binders with marbled covers.

He was grateful for the offer but then reminded me of the realities of the
Afghan job market: anyone who can write, read and speak English and use computers is a hot commodity in the job market. We could bring up the skills of the younger and more promising secretaries but as soon as they’d acquire the coveted skills set they are wanted by the better paying national and international NGOs.

When I was still at headquarters in Cambridge I imagined that all our projects essentially did ‘technical work,’ helping our counterparts in ministries of health all over the world make wise decisions about health policies, data, finances, drugs, etc. But here we are sometimes like a secretary pool or a shopping center that dispenses computers, video cameras, tea cups, meeting room tables, even toilet paper for training rooms (in addition to millions of dollars worth of drugs that are guaranteed to unexpired and unadulterated).

At first I got irritated by these requests. We sometimes refer to this as ‘donor shopping: you try the Americans and if they say no you ask the Europeans, then the Japanese, etc. until someone say, “sure!”

I got spoiled living in the US with new computers every few years, cameras if we need them, good chairs and desks, heat or airco, a cafeteria and vending machines, unlimited supplies of copy paper, pens, pencils, new toner for the copy machines. I never had to imagine doing without all that. But in many parts of the world that is exactly what people have to do without. I can’t remember when I last made a photocopy. It’s good we are so adaptable.