Sylvia's Journal

The flight to Kabul was a bit harrowing even though I knew we were in good hands, with 3 very experienced pilots in the cockpit, our friend Courtney one of them. The clouds were thick and low and there had been rain and thunderstorms over Iran and a good part of Afghanistan. Our approach into Kabul was expertly handled despite zero visibility.

We are safely home now, in the heat and dust and at altitude, which takes some getting used to.

Our grape trellis was painted while we were away, a nice cream color. The leaves and the few bunches of grapes that were produced by our recovering vines were also painted. As a result I don’t think we will have an abundant harvest. This is no problem as abundant harvests will be available at all the other guesthouses, the office and most of Afghanistan.

I missed the first half of my Dari lesson because I had simply forgotten my time slot. I had not had a good night sleep and as a result had been up and asleep at the wrong times, woken up by the language class administrator’s call.

The rest of the day, one of my two last Thursdays off, I alternated between cleaning out my mailbox and reading the first book of Stieg Larson’s Millennium trilogy. As predicted by everyone, I could not put it away and I am ready to start book two within 24 hours of starting on book one.

We had dinner with all my expat colleagues and some new ones at Steve’s house. One of the Steves has already left and the other is leaving next week.

This is a cause of anxiety on my part as I will suddenly be propelled to old kid on the block who knows little about the special expertise of either one of the Steves. Although I have had nine months of senior leadership experience here, it was a shared experienced with three people more senior and more experienced than I. Now it will just be me and the boss. Hence the anxiety.

The McCrystal disclosures in RS magazine are the focus of dinner conversations, of course. Many people are happy that he is out. What Petraeus will bring is anyone’s guess, especially since we are not convinced that his Iraq accomplishments are things we want here (or, for that matter, could even be possible here), if one would call these accomplishments at all.

The public health director (or hospital director, not sure which one) of Kunduz was killed in a blast – supposedly intentional according to our ‘event analysts.’ I believe it is the first open attack on public health and it makes us wonder, once again, where are we heading?