Sylvia's Journal

How much difference a week makes! Fruits have arrived from the south and the east (Pakistan I suppose). Along the streets there are vendors with their carts full of ripe and juicy mangos, melons, cherries, apricots and other fruits I associate with midsummer.

I slept 12 hours and it still wasn’t enough; I still feel a little shaky. We stayed in our jammies most of the morning, foregoing our usual walk in Bagh-e-bala or elsewhere. It is nice to be home and today I didn’t mind our limited freedom.

I am finishing Malalai Joya’s book (A Woman Among Warlords). I don’t care that much about the book, its writing more than a little akward, but I am in awe of her courage. and wished I could watch the Iron-Jawed Angels movie with her, to show her that she is following in the footsteps of many aunties elsewhere in the world. They all risked life and limb, as Malalai does, fighting for justice.

I wish I knew how to support her. The only way I can think of right now is to help pull the women I meet and work with out of their lethargy and passiveness if they haven’t already done so on their own; to encourage them to change from victim to agent. There is much fear (not unsubstantiated) and becoming a (female) agent in this society is no small matter. But there are already many; if and when they connect they can really be a force for change.

We have a new female staff member, Chris, who is from Australia. She will be the first and only female Program Manager (of seven), so that will make two of us in our weekly meeting of directors and program managers. I told my male colleagues that this is just the beginning and that, before they realized it, we would outnumber them. Ha, the infiltration has begun!

Although it was supposed to be a day of rest I am so far behind in reading my mail that I had to sit at least some time behind the computer, catching up, doing expense reports, reading CVs of people I am supposed to interview and finish the performance reviews that are all behind schedule.

Axel was also working, also in his jammies, and concluded at the end of the day that working is hard work. He got what he wanted, a real job, but now he’s got to do the job.

We had dinner in front of the TV and watched, for a very brief moment, Afghan child idol, an awful show with awful children singing awful songs, before we switched to watching House on Axel’s computer. He downloaded 16 episodes. After watching two House episodes his awfulness started to get at me.