Sylvia's Journal

A forced day at home, actually a national holiday for Afghans, was for me a day of sleeping in and working at home – catching up, taking care of delayed maintenance so to speak.

A few of us met at one of the guesthouses to figure out the processes and jobs involved in turning a long medical equipment wish list into actual deliveries sometime next year. This is the kind of stuff I knew nothing about when working at headquarters. My learning curve about these matters is steep.

Axel and Sallie Craig prepared a fajita dinner, and Paul helped us eat it. The meal was served outside in the garden, with candles and wine. As appetizers we had the smoked salmon that we had brought back from our June visit, served on toast and with capers that we found in the local supermarket. It was all very civilized and normal, as if we were back in Manchester.

Since the airport has been closed for all but VIPs, every time we heard a plane go overhead we wondered who would be inside it. And then we wondered about the sequence of activities during tomorrow’s Kabul Conference and the messages that the organizers want us, the public, to walk away with. Right now we are clueless.