Sylvia's Journal

Thwuck, thwuck, thwuck went the helicopters, rattling our thin glass windows in their poorly constructed frames. They veered south, no more than 500 feet over our heads. A first one batch of 5 and then another batch. In between there was the rumble of low flying planes, labouring towards something that required this much airpower. Off to the unruly, unruled and unrulable south?

The people flying these things, Americans I supposes, are also working in Afghanistan, just like me. For them working in Afghanistan is an entirely different ball game. I sit here with the door to the garden open, listening to the twitter of birds and the voices of children, playing real ball games.

I am reading Dexter Filkins’ The Forever War and in doing so catch a glimpse of the stuff that happens far from our beds, the ugly stuff about this (and Iraq’s) forever war. It’s the picture that most people have of Afghanistan. It is very different from ours.

This morning I handed out the pictures Axel took during our outing this weekend, to the drivers and guards who came with us. The neat thing about Axel’s graphic design skills is that he has everything set up to print out pictures. When we go on a walk to a place we have been before, he prints the pictures and we hand them out, nearly like a Polaroid, except much nicer quality. It is what I have always wanted to do but am never set up to do. People love to have their picture taken here, even women (we do ask first of course).

At work we are cycling into our annual performance review and work planning period. Back in Boston I hated this time because the process was designed by accountants. But here I am part of senior leadership and thus have some say over the process. We use it as a time of reflection and capacity building in house, a use of time I find useful and productive.

While I was at work Axel went with driver Fazle on his day off to deliver the cleats and shin guards and jerseys to the womens’ soccer team, practicing in the far northwest corner of Kabul. This to make sure that the girls had first dibs on the goodies. I asked Axel to take pictures to bring back as proof. He did.