Sylvia's Journal

We found our two gates, one for people on foot and the other for cars, to be reinforced with a quarter inch of steel plate. All the guesthouses are fortified like this as well as our office compound entrance gates. It worries me a bit. Is this in reaction to something I should know about? Or an after the fact move (the compound in Kandahar inhabited by contractors was destroyed because a car full of explosive drove through the gate)? Or is it because our operations chief is moving back to the US next month and wants to make sure everything is in order when he leaves? This is how the attacks on our minds are more severe than the real ones. We are separated by ever more steel from Afghan society.

Another piece of steel, in the form of a water tank, was hoisted, we don’t know how, on the roof while we were away. This is to provide a back-up, I suppose, when the summer drought kicks in, as it always does, in a couple of months.

Right now everyone acts as if there is no water problem here. Dusty roads are sprayed with water to keep the dust down; the cook, after he changes from his western clothes into his Afghan outfit at the end of his workday, always washes his car with plenty of water. He rides out of our gate dressed to the nines in a spotless car.

The guards scrub the terrace every morning and afternoon like only Dutch housewives can do better, but in Holland water is never a problem. And then there is the garden: the roses and the grass get a good hosing at least twice a day now that it is getting warmer.

I am sitting on the clean-scrubbed, but dusty again, terrace overlooking our neat suburban garden. The roses past their bloom have been cut, we now have snapdragons and calendulas planted in the open spaces between the roses, the stock is showing its first buds and a few tiny lettuce plants, inherited from the previous occupants of our house, have grown until full heads of lettuce. There is a little tomato volunteer that the gardener is treating like a king(let).

Axel is off to SOLA, refreshed from a long nap. I took a nap too and am trying to catch up on email so that I can make the best use of my one day in the office before I head out again on Friday. This very quick trip to the US was, until last week, considered plan B. It seems plan B is now activated. Plan A, my Afghan colleagues going to the US, appears to have been discarded. Still, I put in one last ditch effort to get my Congressman and Senator involved in the process that was supposed to have provided the two of them with visas to the US. With only 4 workdays left we don’t think there’s much of a chance. Hence the plan B.