Sylvia's Journal

The Strategic Health Retreat made it to the front page of the Afghanistan Times; Obama and Karzai in the left column and our event, the Third Annual Strategic Health Retreat in the right column.

We completed the event more or less on time despite some incursions: unprogrammed presentations and questions and answers. It is hard to say to the health advisor of the president ‘time is up,’ but someone has to do it or the program gets really off the rails, time-wise that is. When you are on the last day of an event and the minister has to close and she also has to be someplace else before the day is over there is a really hard stop.

We had just started to become a community and get to know each other when we arrived at the end and this temporary community dissolved. Over the last three days, mostly through observation, I had gotten to know many of the participants better than I have done in months of individual interactions. I don’t think people realize how much they reveal about themselves in public events like this.

After the closing event we all piled into the car and drove to the office where JD got to say his parting words, received a present from the boss and took pictures of our Kabul dream team, the four of us who stay behind. We are sad to see him go – he was yet another great guest in guesthouse 33.

With this event over I have rounded off my first six months here. When I arrived the planning team for this event was just convening. Although I knew some of the people in the ministry I was in no position to direct the preparations, which were preparations for a powerpoint+question+answer event. My hope was that I could shape the design and the process by which we arrived at an agenda, slowly. As the months went by our small MSH team remained engaged, unlike other stakeholders invited to join the planning group who, one by one, peeled off. And so it became eaier and easier to influence the thinking of the group.

I hoped to model good process, good design and good facilitation and much patience. I think I did that, which should make things easier the next time around.I even could have gotten Sita to scribe had Steve and I launched that idea a little earlier.

While I was wrapping things up at the Intercon Axel met Hadji Kazem, our office gardner who looks like he has stepped out of a ancient Chinese novel. He cut our grass, trimmed the roses and other bushes and a made it clear to Axel that he is in charge of both office and guesthouse gardens. I know what wonders he does for our office grounds and so I have full confidence that he will administer our small plot well; Axel has realized that here is yet another thing that he doesn’t have to worry about. It is all part of the good life here in Kabul.

We are going to Mazar, it looks like, on April 2 for a leadership event with the northern and western provinces. We hope one of the deputy ministers will accompany us. Axel will too, so he can experience life outside Kabul before he gets a paying job and won’t have the spare time to come along with me.