Sylvia's Journal

We have our tickets for Frankfurt on the Safi flight of May 5. We leave at 9 AM from Kabul and will be in Germany early in the afternoon. From there we will take a rented a car to Holland. The only thing that can come between us and this trip is the ash cloud in Europe.

That same ash cloud has become the last and probably final and insurmountable obstacle for my already severely tested Afghan colleagues who simply tried to get to a conference in Geneva. They braved three trips to Islamabad, crossed borders without a passport, an arrest in Islamabad and now this. After all their trials and tribulations they have finally been halted by ash, such bad luck.

Oblivious to Europe’s ashes we spent most of the morning getting the best price for our trip to Holland, still a 2000 dollar price tag, but about 1000 dollars less than what we initially calculated. Although Axel complains about the time it took us to get our fare and reservations, I think it was worth it.

I skipped my usual PT session because I had timed things wrong. I have made an appointment with Leslie, the embedded American Navy PT who will interpret my MRI report from Beirut and maybe fine-tune my exercises. I am in much pain again from an inflammation somewhere in the shoulder joint.

After Dari class we were invited by an Australian couple who are relatively new in town. They brought their 3 year old along who is pining for her playmates in the Solomon Islands from where her mom moved her to join dad in Kabul.

The dad left Holland for Australia when he was very young and remembers the 6 week boat trip as an endless ordeal of 6 weeks of sea sickness. He still speaks some Dutch. He is the second Dutch born Australian I spent time with in the last few days. His wife served us a blueberry Bavaroise on tulip plates and then lent us a spectacular cookbook written by Australian Lebanese on their ancestral cuisine (Lebanese and Syrian).

And now my five day absence from work is over. The email box is full to overflowing and there is much work to do and much to catch up with.