Sylvia's Journal

I dreamt last night that I lost Axel, in a crowd, couldn’t pick out his blue and black jacket – from then until I woke up I wandered around in my dream world, looking for him – the alarm brought him back to me. Small victories, huge relief.

During the workday I nearly got lost myself in the paper mass that accompanies the annual performance review process. Today the rubber hit the road as I gave my first ‘not met expectations’ judgment, quickly followed by two more. I knew I was going against the grain of this society which prefers politeness over honesty (as I see it) or, as they see it, over directness. What I considered blatant under performance was called ‘met expectations.’ People are hedging their bets. You never know what will happen in the future and so it is better to not make enemies – there are enough of them here already, why risk making more. Your underperforming colleague can one day become your boss.

It is safer to say that a colleague met expectations and so I am finding the term ‘expectations’ rather meaningless; they are all over the map. Except those of my boss who I seemed to have disappointed. I think he expected some magic tricks from me about changing the behaviour of top officials – I am thinking as hard as I can how I can lead horses to water AND make them drink. So far I haven’t come up with anything good. It’s not for lack of trying.

The paperwork and the performance interviews filled another 11 hour workday (but I am done now, with all 27 of them). As a result I have fallen hopelessly behind in processing emails, replying, deleting, reading and whatnot and have reached a point where I am not even trying anymore. Sometimes I am just trying to be too good, too efficient, too organized in a place that is all but that. It is also not something I am being judged on. I am being judged on whether the management and leadership capacity of people at the central and provincial ministry offices has improved. My biggest challenge, aside from doing just that, is figuring out how I could demonstrate that I have been successful, if ever I could.

I felt my frustrations mounting as the hours ticked by and the people wanting things from me (now) kept reminding me. But then, reading the local newspaper on the way home, everything was put right back in its place: ‘girls school bombed, 80% destroyed in Ghazni.’ ‘Governor and police chief in Nuristan not on post of months and selling food donations in the market for cheap, not only depriving the intended beneficiaries of their food but also undercutting farmers trying to sell their stuff at real cost.’ And someone doing work for us has been caught undermining the very ethical behaviour we are trying to model.

Although a war metaphor is not something I like to use, I can’t think of anything else than soldiering on.