Meghann came over for dinner. Meghann is working with midwives this month before heading back to the US to become a midwife herself. But she should have been working for DAI, living in the DAI compound in Kunduz if things had worked out with her contract, some months ago. But things hadn’t and so she was not in Kunduz the other night when the compound was attacked.
Such is life. Some people call it Providence, others call it luck. I am not sure what to call it but I was very happy that she was with us tonight and not traumatized on a flight home.
The boss was back today. I had not seen him in nearly a month. We spent hours going over everything that was on our plates, left from before, new stuff, very urgent, mildly urgent and not so urgent right now. One of my staff who spent the last month in the US was also back and so I don’t feel so lonely anymore.
He told me about the short experiential workshop he went to in New York. Experiential learning is not for the faint of heart and even less so for people from this culture where learning is something teachers make you do, and something that requires much lecturing. He had learned about technical versus adaptive challenges and the notion of ‘work avoidance’ (when the hard work of bringing together people or groups who can shed light on the adaptive challenge requires you to change the way you have been (adapt) and behave in new ways with others).
With another colleague, sitting around the table we thought about what the US is trying to do here; tackling Afghanistan as if it is a technical challenge, which means that somewhere there is the solution, that we know how to do this, when, in fact, we are all clueless. But how could you admit that to the world and to those who lost kin and limbs here?
Sylvia's Journal 
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