Sylvia's Journal

I am tapping into the holdings of electronic and audiobooks of our local library in Manchester-by-the-Sea. I have finished the 55 km book ‘Helping’ by Ed Schein. It is finished now and I have I can be a better helper and help receiver as a result of it. My next choice is The Big Oyster by Mark Kurlansky, if I can get the download completed before tomorrow morning. It is taking some time.

Our Thai massage spa has checked out it seems (‘everything must go’), unfortunately; the Thai ladies are returning to Thailand. This required a search for a new massage place. We found one, it is called Fig Spa. The website is fancy and the menu of choices is quite elaborate. Most days are for women only, except Wednesdays. For men a male masseuse will come to your house for 10 dollars extra on the day he is not on duty at the spa. I made an appointment for next Friday.

I had a meeting in the middle of the day to complete our investigation of allegations made against one of our consultants. The formal report should clarify next steps for several people involved in this unfortunate affair. I arrived at the appointed time and then had to wait 35 minutes for the rest of the committee to arrive. This left only 25 minutes for our deliberation that had to be conducted in two languages because two people were not bilingual (me hardly and an Afghan gentleman not at all). I hope we can put this affaire to bed, an expression I had to explain in Dari where the words made no sense at all.

Axel hung out at a nearby Turkish restaurant which was nicely cooled (unlike our house); together we drove back to our Dari class through endless traffic jams – there is a major push to get the roads properly paved before Hillary, Bang Ki Moon and other notables arrive in this city – enormous road construction equipment is blocking traffic. The appearance of progress is important, not just for the Kabul conference participants but, psychologically, also for us. My only fear is that all this road construction activity will stop once the notables have left.

Tomorrow we have a new guest in our house from the Head Office. Sallie Craig is moving in for a two week consultancy. She used to live here when I was at the Head Office. Now our roles have reversed.

Tomorrow our senior leadership team will also be complete, a foursome again after nearly three weeks. It is a new team that is tackling old challenges. But after listening to Ed Schein, I realize that we are not a team yet and have to reconstitute ourselves from scratch again.