Sylvia's Journal

Our movements for this last day before the elections were a little restricted. We were told to stay at home between 11 and 3, the hours of Friday mosque activity. Mosques are one of the favorite places for provocateurs and if anyone wanted to derail things for the elections, our security staff decided, we’d better stay home during those hours. And so I changed my 11 o’clock massage appointment to 9.

My Philippine masseuse is also a medicine woman. When I mentioned that I had painful knees and woke up with both my arms asleep this morning she summoned her Afghan trainee and proposed an hour and a half massage that include ‘medicine’ work on my knees and arms. Having four hands work my body was truly a double happiness experience, especially when she threw in a facial at the end for free. I emerged from my ‘treatment’ feeling rejuvenated, no pain, all oily and fragrant from the various lotions and creams they rubbed on and in me.

While Axel slept, recovering from endless exercises to relieve the residual pain in his body caused by the long trip from Manchester to Kabul and our oversized luggage I played in the kitchen. First I turned 3 kilos of local tomatoes into 3 liters of fresh tomato juice, for Bloody Maries and then used up the dried figs in an Afghan version of homemade fig newtons.

We took the cookies to Ted and his School for Leadership, Afghanistan (SOLA) where Axel has been teaching since last winter. A new crop of extraordinary young Afghans had gathered around his large living room table for an orientation and a, rather informal, application process. Ted was explaining that this after school program is not about grades or numbers and that he only wants good Afghans and good Moslems.

How would he be able to tell, someone asked. “I want young Afghans who have a sense of country,” he replied, who want to lift their country up, “and I have a good intuition for spotting people like that,” he added. Ted is looking for young Afghans, boys and girls, who are committed to use their education for the betterment of their country, and so, will return to Afghanistan rather than skip to Canada. He then proceeded telling us one story after another of amazing leadership by very young ladies. I was very moved.

Sitting around the table with these young eager people reminded me how much I have missed teaching. I do hardly any of that now, as all of the leadership teaching in our project is done in Dari or Pashto, something I cannot do. But in SOLA the teaching is in English, to prepare the kids for study in the USA. I made a commitment to teach at least one hour a week, and if I can handle it, more than that, after work hours. Currently there are no female teachers for the girls and Ted, in his usual loose manner, counts on things falling into place, including the teachers, of which he has only Axel right now. I was one more piece of that puzzle that found its place today.