Sylvia's Journal

While I am struggling with my own contradictory feelings about working here, the devastating news reached us of the team of medics who were killed in Badakhshan. More heart break. The loss of these lives is indescribable. One of the members of the team attended to our medical needs at a local clinic; others are or had been students at the language school we attend. When we arrived there for our Saturday classes everyone was in tears. Thinking about the lives lost takes my breath away. Only silence can comfort right now.

We are scheduled to go to another fundraiser tonight, for an organization called Parsa. Some people have already cancelled but I find myself obliged to go. The event is at the same place where only a few short weeks ago the team of medics held their own fundraiser. I don’t think this one will be canceled as Ramazan is near, but I don’t think it will be a happy occasion.

We said goodbye to Meghann who has left for the US and her new life as a midwife. As a farewell gift she gave us hoola hoop lessons and her folding travel hoola hoop to keep. “As long as you keep hoola-hooping, you cannot get fat,” she assured us. I could manage to keep the hoop above my hips but Axel has no hips and so his performance was not very good. We will practice, we promised her.

In my Dari class I started working from Afghanistan’s official 2nd grade textbooks – printed cheaply and poorly on thin paper. I can’t read all the letters because of the low print quality and the reproductions of photos are so grainy that I can’t do the exercises that ask me to name what’s in the picture.

The first lesson is about God, the second about Mohamed, the third about knowledge and the fourth about school. It is strange for me to see these topics, coming from a secular society where the lessons for a second grader are about dogs and cats, boys and girls, families, play and school.