Sylvia's Journal

All through the day people came alone, in pairs or small groups to do ‘tapos’ (paying one’s respects) with my staff, office neighbor and father of the two injured boys. Having read the ethnography about this tradition I recognized it and realized that I too had to do this, even though it may not be expected of me.

I have asked to tag along with one of my female staff members, sometime this week to visit the stricken family. I lent her the book and asked her to report to me about its currency (it is nearly two decades old) and its applicability to people living in Kabul. But from what I saw today I think it holds. After all, what is 20 years for a tradition that dates back hundreds of years if not more?

I had a long conversation with one of my colleagues from HR/Head Office who is here on a short assignment. I realized how starved I was for conversation with a female colleague (my Australian colleague Chris is in the US) about work-related issues, especially with someone who understands the two contexts I live in, my own and the traditional Afghan one. “It’s potentially a collision course, if you think about the widely differing worldviews and upbringings that are present in the project,” she said with a smile, and I nodded. I knew that already and it is actually a miracle that I can be effective at all. She is from Indian descent and thus had an even greater appreciation for what I am up against.

After our talk I found myself googling Exit, Voice and Loyalty, the title of the organizational classic written by Albert O. Hirschman in 1970. For Americans Exit is the expression of choice in case of dissatisfaction with the status quo. The whole country is, after all, the product of people (immigrants) choosing Exit (from their country of origin) over Voice. For us Europeans it is not. Now half American and half Dutch I find myself wavering between the two options of responding to the tensions that are the result of living in a world where my values about relationships between the sexes are so at odds with what I see around me.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on one’s view, I am a little more Dutch than American, with my roots in the Lowlands, and so I tend towards Voice, driven for a great deal by the concept of Loyalty. I ordered the book today because I think it is time to re-read it. I am sure I will read it differently than I did 20 years ago when I was first given the book at the beginning of my career at MSH (and was thinking hard about Exit). I will read it this time to find some advice on how to do Voice and Loyalty.