Sylvia's Journal

I attended my first Technical Advisory Group meeting. The Japanese were presenting a plan for urban health care in Kabul, an area long neglected in favor of more rural populations. It was interesting as I don’t know that much about urban health planning. Afterwards I walked upstairs to join our team that manages the NGO contracts. It is an expanding family. For lunch we crowded around the conference table for a noisy family lunch.

AB and I walked to the outer USAID gate and waited for the rest of our team to arrive for our weekly meeting. We killed time watching the parade of large armored SUVs exit the heavily protected compound. Each SUV (worth probably a quarter million dollars) was packed full of testosterone: large muscular guys filling up the entire inside of the car. They were going into the dangerous out-of-the-bubble world.

There is some grumbling in the Afghan government about the amount of money that is destined for this country but never makes it here because of all this equipment. For 100.000 dollars you can keep many schools going for a long time or buy four such armored SUVs.

There is also grumbling that these cars don’t have license plates. I find it arrogant and I don’t understand the reason. It couldn’t be safety because the only cars without plates are the armored US SUVs – they are easy to spot. The one that flattened the car that my colleague’s kids were driving belonged to this group. The kids are, by the way, still at the air force base in Baghram, not in Germany as I was told earlier. One is still in coma, now 10 days after the accident, the other one conscious and slowly recovering.

I went to dinner at Razia Jan’s house and we planned the mother-of-the-bride dresses (one for the wedding and ne for the day after). After she comes back from Bamiyan she will start sewing.

We heard about the explosion in Taimani, a residential area far from where we live, via an SMS from our security office. It is a place we tend to visit during the weekend because it is where all the coffee houses are. We go there for lunches, massages, movies and visits to friends.

It was not clear what motives drove the suicide kids to their act. I was told that you can go to the bazar in Peshawar and ‘buy’ these suicide kids. They have been brainwashed in the madrasas and told that God wants them to sacrifice themselves for some vague greater good. They have learned not to question what, where and why and, like zombies, have themselves strapped in suicide vests. If you don’t want a suicide kid you could also buy a degree in any field from any university in the world, including Harvard, on official paper, sealed and signed.

My Dari lessons are paying off. This morning, as the most senior person of the project present in the compound, I received our security chief Baba jan for the daily briefing. Usually, with the foreigners, he brings along an interpreter because his English is very poor. Today he came alone and gave me the briefing in Dari. I understood about 80% of it, enough to know what is going on (a demonstration but no cause for concern).

For homework today I had to write a brief summary of two stories I have read, as part of my reading and writing program. The first story was a little weird and I cringed about the message it was giving to young girls: stay home, the world is full of grumpy old bears who will not eat you if you agree to clean their house and cook for them (really!). The other day a (male) colleague told me, ‘you are brave, you go out in the world. But our women are not brave and prefer to stay in the safety of their home.’ The message of the story has clearly stuck and the vicious circle of fear fueled by lack of contact and exposure is reinforced. What is different is dangerous.

I remember feeling that way when I first arrived here, sticking to the safe (but very limiting) routine of going back and forth between the office and the guesthouse, across the street. Every day of doing this made the fear a little stronger. The idea of venturing out into Kabul, let alone into Afghanistan, was frightful. The image I had in my mind was the Afghanistan that is presented to the outside world through the main media: a dangerous and violent place with fully armed bad guys and naïve youngsters with suicide vests lurking behind every corner.

The media imagery is powerful. It also works the other way around: I have encountered many in Afghanistan and heard from Iraqis when I worked with them in Jordan, that for them New York is much more dangerous than their homes, with gangsters at every street corner. What is different and far away is dangerous.

Once we started to venture out the other lesser known side of Afghanistan emerged and we could collect enough experiences of friendliness, hospitality, beauty and charm that it could counteract the nastiness, ugliness and violence and push the balance in favor of staying for awhile. As the events of this last week show, the balance is not steady and events can change the scales. It appears that things are in balance again, for now.

Marzila and I went to a meeting with the deputy minister about eliminating gender-based violence. We think it is a great idea and long overdue. We left our office early to have time for a nice Turkish lunch in the Istanbul restaurant near the ministry. We were still early when we arrived at the ministry and so we walked over to her husband’s office for a quick hello and congratulations on his confirmation as Director General.

We were perfectly gender-balanced in the meeting, with the highest person a woman. “Ah,” I thought, “this should be a picture from the future.” How rare such a setup is nowadays. We sat with all the women on one side of the table and all the men on the other.

The ministry of health, according to the law signed on gender-based violence, needs to report on cases of abuse, both physical and psycho-social, every month. It is good to get that data but I don’t think anyone has thought through carefully how this will happen.

We were shown forms to collect the data, draft templates and I cringed; one had a column for ‘name of victim.’ Someone raised the issue of confidentiality, another how one would spot psycho-social abuse and a third wondered about enforcement. A committee will be created and we will have someone on it from our team.

My one instruction to our project’s representative on this committee would be, don’t let a bunch of people (worse, a bunch of guys) sit around a table in Kabul and decide on how to tackle this incredibly sensitive and complex issue in this country where wife beatings and slicing off nose and ears of young girls is considered the honorable thing to do. It will require a multi-disciplinary approach with women’s groups, local authorities and enlightened elders to come together. It will require much education and the attachment of consequences to (what is now) illegal behavior. It’s going to be a long road ahead.

In the middle of writing, emails, concept pieces, reports, I find my thoughts wander to this place deep into Afghanistan where the Noor Eye team was killed. I can’t focus or concentrate and can only see a picture of these incredibly committed souls as they were lined up for execution and realized they had come to the end of the road. It takes my breath away and leaves me gasping for air; the letters on my computer screen become useless symbols. “What’s the point?,” I wonder, and “Who cares?”.

Afghans around me are as stunned. Some feel a personal sense of failure – these people did things that few Afghans would do. Some call it stupid but I think many are ashamed that this happened here. Afghans have a very strong sense of obligation to care for those who are guests, foreigners and locals alike. This is why I feel so very safe here in Kabul, in our office compound and in our guesthouses.

We would never have been allowed to go on a trek like the Nooristan Eyecare team did; we aren’t even allowed to walk down the street. Sometimes we get overconfident and we walk in certain parts of town where our security guards consider us safe. But never in mountains of Nooristan, a place that is the eastern version of the Wild West. Everyone knew the risks. Sometimes people take risks and are lucky; sometimes they are not.

This morning, in our own small universe at the office, the conversations that needed to happen took place, one private and one with a small group of people over lunch. We talked about stress and the reptilian brain, about cultural and gender divides, about forgiving but not forgetting, about remorse and being sorry. There was much grace in these conversations that were highly unusual in this Afghan context: with a senior and male owning up to errors made to others, mostly female and mostly young.

I had hoped to model that good things can come from bad things. I wanted to show how hurt and anger can be transformed, yet doubting very much that this could be done here. It is hard to gauge whether I was successful; such shifts are not simple or quick. I cannot know yet whether the words spoken are only words, time will tell, but I was told by one of the young women involved in these conversations that sometimes words are more; they can be harbingers of shifts that, though small through one eye, are enormous through the other.

Still, a small seed was dropped that could grow into a decision that this place is not for me. For now the seed is laying dry and cold on the ground. In its current condition and location in cannot germinate, but something can change so it does. There are things that cannot be undone, like certain words spoken in anger. They fly out of the mouth with wings. They can never be put back. For now my heart is light enough that I can work again.

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.

His father is a shoemaker in Helmand. He helped his father fix shoes and at night he would count the money. His father then gave him part of it for his English language course. My mother, she is funny, she always wants to keep the money, he laughed, tenderly.

A year ago he rode a bike with is younger brother when shelling started. They were hit and knocked out. When he came to he saw that his brother’s head had been severed; his own eyes were all bloody.

This is the heart breaking story that one of the students of the leadership school where Axel works, told me. He had read it as a speech, in halting but very clear English in front of an audience of fellow students, teachers, well wishers and sponsors, just when we walked in at the restaurant where the fundraiser was held. A poster on the wall was entitled ‘Mr. Axel’s class.’ It an enlarged picture of Axel and his students around the table and sheets with poetry and prose pasted on it.

American eye surgeons have been working on the young man’s eye. The work is not done; he is waiting for a visa to go back to the surgeons in North Carolina. He doesn’t know if he will get the visa this time.

He talked lovingly about his parents and how he misses them while he lives in Kabul. They cannot read or write even their own language, let alone English. They are still in Helmand, a dangerous place as his story proves. It complements the other heartbreaking story of the girl without the nose, now of Time Magazine fame. Multiply these by tens of 1000s. This is Afghanistan – one long drawn out heart break in a place of stunning beauty, natural and manmade, and unspeakable violence.

A group of musicians called Sufi played and sang long mournful songs, intensely beautiful and sad as if to illustrate this juxtaposition of this country’s beauty and pain. I finally met Sabera, another student who Axel says reminds him of me because of the discipline with which she tackles life.

This was the second fundraiser we went to. The first one was to keep a school for girls going. I lounged most of the afternoon on a carpeted platform, leaning on cushions while watching Sisilia practice walking the catwalk for the fashion show of clothes made by Razia Jan.

It was an entire day of rest that started with coffee at Chris’ house, a badly needed massage at the spa, lunch with a new found friend and the fastest haircut I have ever had by a (male) Palestinian hair stylist, more artist than technician. Sisilia, watching me in the mirror, approved of my new style. She blew me little kisses while she watched in amazement how a foreigner (male) received a pedicure side by side with his female companion.

I sat in a restaurant realizing I needed to get to the airport and was already late. I called a taxi company and told them I had my own transport. The taxi dispatcher was friendly and said he would give me directions. With one hand on the phone and another busy scribbling instructions, I had no hands free to deal with an attacker who approached my table menacingly and started to take away foods. I ended up using my elbows to hurl plates towards him, in the hope of attracting attention through the clatter of dishes breaking. But the dishes fell down with a soft plop and no one came to the rescue. I was on my own and the attacker went on undisturbed. That’s when I woke up, with a great sense of loss in my heart.

The events of yesterday are recognizable in the dream. I haven’t had such a vivid dream in a long time; at least one I remember. The sense of assault is still present, so are the doubts about my presence here. Axel and I talked for a long time. He has been sensing that this was coming. We went to bed intensely sad.

Today should be better; it will be a girls’ day. First the massage, then, hopefully a lovely girls’ lunch outside with people I care deeply about. After that I will take one my colleagues’ young African wife to the fundraising party that went nowhere last week because of the ISAF vehicle accident and the drama that unfolded after that. She will be modeling clothes in a fundraising fashion show. Although I was also asked to model, I declined, having not quite the right body; but she does and she is excited about the prospect, having been sitting at home watching television the entire week with her husband on assignment outside the country. Her excitement is contagious. I think today I can forget about the dream.

Working here is like a roller coaster ride. Some days I am high and full of hope and confidence, like yesterday when the acting minister invited me to take a seat on the Technical Advisory Committee, or when the revised Basic Package of Health Services was signed. Or when I see people behaving with more confidence, strength, insight.

But now I am down in the dumps, so deep down that I am considering packing my bags and leaving. It is one of these days that I think the challenges are too big, the divides too wide to bridge and that there is little I can do to contribute to the kind of Afghanistan people dream about. For me, the arch-optimist, it is hard to even ask the question that so many other people ask, ‘can it be done?’

There are so many factors that make working here challenging. Surprisingly the security is the least of them all. Today I stumbled upon a landmine, figuratively I must add, since there are plenty of the real things here. The explosive response to my naïve stumble left me stunned and convinced that it’s this gender thing again and that it is going to break me.

We have three fundraisers lined up for the next three days – all to benefit girls in one way or another. It will provide a good antidote for the dark thoughts that are crowding in on my heart.

All week has been about gender, the socially determined roles for men and women and the obstacles and constraints that these pose for women’s access to resources, decision making and opportunities to better the lives of their children. For me the gender dimensions was pushed to the forefront because of tensions and misunderstandings that come from separate lives and probably much hurt inflicted .

For us westerners, it can be quite difficult to understand, this awkwardness between the sexes, between men and women.

Tomorrow we are meeting with a team from the US that is coming to look at how we have incorporated (or not) gender considerations into our project. Chris and I are the only two foreign women in our project. A quick scan of our documentation revealed that we have, as a project, not much to show. We scrambled all day to try to present something that is not hollow. I don’t think others understood what all the fuss was about – this gender thing is a loaded topic here.

We think this is the wake of Hillary, especially after her presence at the Kabul Conference. We noticed and advertisement for a senior gender advisor at the US embassy in Kabul; that too we think is part of the wake. During the Kabul conference, and in Hillary’s speech, there was much emphasis on midwifery education, women helping women, taking part in public life. That this is a good thing all by itself is not so obvious here. Sometimes the divide seems just too big.

Chris and her Dutch-born husband David came along to the Dutch embassy ‘borrel.’ A changing of the guard: new faces and new enthusiasm. I met a police woman who trains Afghan police, men and women. She sees a part of Afghanistan that few people see – women in uniform; brave girls with enlightened fathers (or may be starving families).

Our local (all English) newspaper, the Afghanistan Times, has two front pages: one for the people who read from left to right and the other for people reading right to left. They are different headlines. I haven’t figured out in what ways they are different.

Today the right to left front page had no news on it – only two enormous advertisements. One for the cellphone company Etisalat and the other for Azizi Bank that is building Dubai type office residential towers portrayed as artist renderings; gleaming and situated on an endless plot of manicured grasses. Where would that be, one wonders, in Kabul, or for that matter, in Afghanistan?

The absence of news on the right to left front page was unusual. Maybe the various anti-government-element (AGEs) attacks are getting tiresome and stop being news for the people who read right to left (Afghans). For more than half of the population, they don’t know any better. For us foreigners, the left to right readers, knowing about attacks still appears relevant and out of the ordinary.

A debate last night on Tolo TV (in Dari and past my bedtime), made it to our (left to right) front page. Ashraf Ghani, presidential candidate and organizer of the Kabul Conference, made a case for why the conference was a success. The key indicator should be visible in two years when 50% of foreign aid is supposed to be channeled through the Afghan government.

The implications of this intention are huge. For one, it requires a huge shift in the way the government deals with talent and prepares new talent because how else are ministerial departments going to manage this? Fifty percent of foreign aid is no small change.

The intention also requires a serious look at red tape and the efforts to both control and evade stringent transparency measures – something’s got to give because now all that is stifling anything from flowing through the system.

At lunchtime we said goodbye to one of the members of our USAID team, who is leaving Afghanistan for Liberia after a three year stay here, a one year twice extended. Most Americans employed at the US embassy compound stay one year, occasionally extended another year. It is easy to understand how one year in the bubble can be enough.

As a result of these short tenures, about 80% of the staff is rotating in and out during the summer months, each year. I asked about institutional memory. Not surprisingly, it is a problem.

It appears that the two boys have been evacuated with their wives, children and dad, to Germany. I took the news as both good and bad; good because they will get expert trauma care, and bad because it means that the military folks decided their condition was too serious to keep them here.

Life is resuming its regular course. This means the complex work with internal and external clients, preparing a farewell slide show for one of our USAID partners, looking after the young wife of a new colleague who is now at MSH headquarters for his orientation, Dari lessons, and a wedding in exactly one month. I am glad it is not going to be as fancy as Chelsea’s wedding.

At the ministry I noticed a secretary (female) checking out the Clinton wedding pictures on Yahoo. I wondered what she thought about Chelsea’s strapless dress. Seeing it through Afghan eyes it must be a little too revealing. I asked the young woman what she thought of the pictures. She pointed at Hillary and mentioned how beautiful she looked. Imagine that, the mother of the bride as the center of attention. But then again, nothing beats beauty and power.

The colleagues who ventured out to Badakhshan with me returned by road after their Saturday flight was canceled. The road trip was endless and not entirely risk free; they missed three explosions along the way, each time right behind them. But the alternative would have been another two days in Faizabad, till the Monday flight. I am glad that I left when I did as a road trip would have been out of the question for me, as much as I would have preferred it over the one hour flight last Wednesday over high mountains in continuous white-out conditions.