Sylvia's Journal

We have a new lodger. Katie has arrived from Boston. It is her first time in Afghanistan. She’s very cool about being here and brought us some cool gifts: fermented grape juice, yellow and pink, and fair trade coffee. She is a connoisseur of both and shares that interest with Axel.

While Anddy will try to perform a miracle with his team in Kabul, I am going to Bamiyan with Katie, my boss and one of my staff. Katie is also expected to perform miracles, hers are related to monitoring and evaluation. She needs to know what it is like in the provinces, who works there, what they do with data and defining success. Hence our trip out of Kabul.

We are taking the 9:00 AM flight that will circle the entire country before landing in mid afternoon in Bamiyan. The direct flight takes only 40 minutes, but here nothing is direct.

Security has cleared us. It is not easy to take people to the provinces as the pool of allowed provinces is rapidly shrinking. Even the usually peaceful northern provinces are increasingly declared off limits. We can still go to Bamiyan, Herat, Mazar, but that is about it. And now the people in Bamiyan are angry at the (only) female governor and want her to resign. It has something to do with the Kuchis, a kind of Afghan gypsies, nomads, who are fighting with the Hazaras about land and things more complex than that.

Today I finished the big Dari book that I have been studying for 4 months. I have completed all 25 chapters, memorized the bulk of the vocabulary lists, completed the exercises and tried to understand the more complex phrases contained in its 300 pages.

It’s close to a miracle. I can now converse, albeit slowly, with lots of mistakes and with much thinking and looking up of words, with our household staff, guards and drivers. They understand me, more or less. However, my own understanding of them is still rudimentary and the risk of miscommunication is considerable higher than when I didn’t speak any Dari at all.

With the big book completed I am moving into phase 2 of the language program, learning to read and write. I am practicing my letters, still drawing them, rather than writing; discovering which part goes on top of the line and what below it, much like a first grader learning her letters. It’s a lot of fun and I am looking forward to my next lesson on Saturday.