Sylvia's Journal

I had thought it was a good idea to bring the conference supplies with me to the Intercontinental Hotel as I was to go there anyways to check on the room set up for the Third National Strategic health Retreat that starts tomorrow after 6 months of preparation, nearly the entire duration of m y stay in Afghanistan.

My colleague in charge of logistics would have had to come all the way across town in heavy traffic (on his day off) and then turn around to go back to the hotel halfway back to his home. We are talking hours in the car.

And so I offered to bring the stuff. Little did I know what I had offered. When the driver arrived I asked where everything was, looking into the empty back not seeing any of the supplies I had asked him to bring. I speak in Dari now with the drivers and dispatcher which means that some messages don’t quite get through. It is the price of practice.

I went back with the driver to the office to pick up the bags and boxes that I thought would be waiting for me. Of course they weren’t but it is weekend here so none of the skeleton weekend staff knew where to find everything. After a few phone calls we located the materials and the car was loaded.

When I arrived at the exit gate of our compound I wasn’t able to produce a gate pass and without a gate pass nothing except personal belongings can leave the compound. It is a control measure that makes sense here but not one I am used to. It makes you realize how many of the controls in the US have been internalized and how much trust there is back in our HQ offices that people won’t take what doesn’t belong to them when they leave the office.

Because of all these controls, and the severe consequences for abusing trust, we are never worried about things being stolen when we are amongst our own staff. But the price for this is filling in papers and getting signatures, the right signatures. I naively signed for my own gate pass but the guards wouldn’t let me through. The rule is: you cannot sign your own requests. This is of course a good thing from a managerial perspective. Clearly, our guards are well trained not to budge in the face of people more powerful than them. I think it was fear, for the consequences, that allows them to say no to me.

I tried not to let my impatience come through and with a sigh went in search of a signature – this is tricky as there are only three people above me who could sign and at least two of those were not around. But finally, with the right signature on the right piece of paper I left the compound to find myself in a giant traffic jam on our way to the Intercon. A friendly policeman was willing to change the traffic rules for a moment and let us through across what looked like an impermeable road.

We arrived one hour after the planned arrival and were met with more obstacles; the frequent attacks on the Serena Hotel have made the Intercontinental Hotel the venue of choice for high level meetings. As a result, security has been stepped up. If you think you can just drive up to the hotel with a jumble of boxes and plastic bags in the back you are wrong. Not only did our cargo require a thorough searching at the entrance gate, we were also not allowed to drive up to the entrance of the hotel itself.

I had made friends over the phone with the banquet manager and thought a simple call would clear such misunderstandings. But security is security, and once again no exceptions were made. We had to unload our wares and re-load them in a shuttle bus that took us up the hill to the hotel. There, everything had to be screened again before we could take ourselves and our stuff to the fifth floor. I don’t think I will ever promise to bring stuff again.

The whole affair took so long that I was not able to see my physical therapist before our meeting at the ministry to introduce our headquarter folks to the new (acting) minister. Nor was I able to get my PT session after that as the rest of the day was tightly programmed: lunch, presentations, Dari lessons and guests for dinner. I am taking a little rest while Axel is putting the final touches on our dinner tonight: an Afghan variation on fajitas or a Mexican variation on Afghan food.