Sylvia's Journal

The first roses are out of the bushes that were planted last October, the first act of fixing our house. Bags of cement are heaped on top of each other by the front gate. This is to ‘sanitize and prettify’ the area in front of our house wall.

It is now a strip of broken tiles, soil and dog poop, probably teeming with fleas and other creatures that accompany the many stray, motherless and unwanted dogs that have selected our wall as their home. They are the kind of dogs that people throw stones at and that would keep me from walking out of our gate, if we would be allowed to do so. They are filthy and make a ruckus day and night. I am not enough of a dog lover to take them on as a project.

Stray dogs like this these are occasionally removed by municipal health officers who give them meat laced with strychnine. One of the provincial health teams that we support in the north had taken this dog problem on as a (minor) public health challenge, mostly because of the dog bites that show up at health facilities.

We always insist that such management and leadership projects produce measurable results. They took pictures of the dead dogs and had a graph showing that the number of patients with dog bites who presented themselves at the hospital had been reduced from 40 to 0 a week. The result was compelling albeit it not one that made a huge public health impact. Still it was good for the kids that would have been bitten.

Our garden furniture arrangement is now complete with glass table tops Axel bought yesterday. I sit outside on the veranda as much as I can: early morning waiting for the car and after I get home – our peaceful existence here stands in such contrast with the recent violence in Kandahar.

I spent this morning in my office attending to supervisory work, the annual performance evaluation process. It is a new task for me who has hardly ever supervised staff. I like it. Unlike many of my colleagues who find the annual performance evaluation process quite annoying, an annual chore, I find it a wonderful opportunity to do the kind of coaching I like to do.

In the afternoon three of us attended the after-action-review of the strategic health retreat at the ministry. I was pleased to hear that people appreciated the design process through its result. It was the same process that they at times had resisted. My next intent is to show people an Open Space event so that they realize we don’t necessarily have to spend 6 months planning a 3 day gathering. I think I have now established enough design credibility that I can take them a little further next time.