Sylvia's Journal

After checking in on my sick computer at the computer hospital (diagnosis complete, ill but not fatally) I joined some of my colleagues on the long ride across a congested Kabul to the ministry to report for duty.

Soon after I arrived HE and I left again to attend the celebration of World TB Day at the Medical School. We drove in a car with special plates that let us go through the US estates and roads that have been taken out of circulation. This provided a considerable short cut although it was essentially back to where I had come from. As a result I spent two full hours in a car.

Shadowing a VIP is a little awkward when there is a red carpet and a receiving line; by virtue of arriving together I got a similar VIP treatment and a first row seat. We had to wait for an hour for the acting president of the republic (the actual one being out of the country), a general whose name has at least 20 page numbers in the index of Ahmed Rashid’s latest book.

I must admit it felt a little uncomfortable at times to be sitting only meters away from someone who in his past and current symbolic role surely must have many enemies. Of course he is surrounded by tons of people with big guns and suits who talk into their collars. This only partially comforted me.

The World TB Day celebrations in Afghanistan are celebrated under the motto ‘peace is a guarantee for health.’ which many American would deny although may be not anymore now that the Bill has passed.

As usual, the event was opened with a recitation from the Holy Quran by an iman, brightly dressed in his beautiful robes. This stood in sharp contrast to the young cantors who appear at most other formal openings, of lesser import, and who always look like they were lifted from their beds or picked off the streets in their shabby and crinkled dude clothes.

Halfway through the speeches the most adorable little boys and girls, who had walked in earlier holding hands, were called to the stage where they performed two cheerful songs exhorting us to work hand in hand and now towards the eradication of TB. They did this with many hand and arm movements and finger wagging to emphasize the importance of their message. One little boy relied heavily on the cues from the two girls on his side and I was sorry I did not have my flip camera with me to record this.

After the songs and amidst loud applause from the audience they received large gift bags, for some half their size, from the vice president and a pat on the head. I was able to show this to Axel on the 8 o’clock news.

Back in their seats at the back of the hall the gift bags were emptied with noisy sounds of delight while Her Excellency the acting Minister of Health was giving her carefully crafted speech – worked on during our ride in the morning.

After the VP had left I decided it was time to find a women’s bathroom in the Kabul Medical University. This turned out to be a big challenge despite the large number of female students I observed. The enormous distance I had to travel and the difficulty of finding this one bathroom made me wonder whether female Afghan students actually need a bathroom.

This is one thing Axel and I can’t get used to: the ease with which people here accept things that would create great indignation at home and produce angry letters to the dean or in the student newspaper. Coalition building here is a political action, not something you’d do to get more female bathrooms.

We drove back with our follower security car turning on its siren whenever a random car threatened to separate us. Once again I wasn’t all that comfortable to be so close to power in a place where power can bring you down swiftly.

By the time we arrived back at the ministry my shadow period was over. I joined my counterparts and colleagues at the Results Conference, day 2 in the middle of a presentation by a Canadian orthopedic surgeon about the processes in hospitals that keep doctors from learning. I was ecstatic about my timing: not only had I found a doctor interested in organizational learning processes, I also found someone to translate my MRI reading into ordinary English.

By the time I reported back to work in our own compound in Karte Seh there was another full workday waiting for me with meetings and presentations and email that has accumulated to over 400 during my computer’s convalescence (it’s still kept overnight for observation).

During the rest of the day I experienced both the joys of working here and the frustrations: joys of seeing my very competent and caring staff at work and frustrations because another conference (number 3 in a row) is called on short notice which requires us to undo all the preparations for an event in Mazar-i-Sharif planned for that same period.

But the worst bad news was that my two colleagues who were going to present at the Geneva Health Systems Forum were denied their visa to Switzerland because there was insufficient proof that they would return to Kabul. They traveled to Islamabad in February and dropped off their passports. They returned yesterday to Islamabad to retrieve them, hoping for the stamp they didn’t get. I don’t think I am going to be as accepting about this as they seem to be.

It was a sobering reminder of how difficult things are for Afghans: finding a women’s bathroom in the medical university and traveling to present at a conference in Geneva. People may think life is difficult for us here but it is nothing compared to what Afghans have to suffer every day.