Sylvia's Journal

I tried out my new Punjabi (tunic and baggy pants) outfit made by M’s tailor from the cloth I bought at the agfair some weeks ago. It is beautifully tailored and very comfortable even though the tailor thought little about the quality of the material. My housemates liked it too. Unfortunately the weather is a little too cool for this spring dress.

Today was the first day I needed a heater in my small concrete office. Our yard was covered with a thin layer of frost this morning. All across the compound and in the guesthouses the diesel stoves (‘bucharis’) are fitted back into their winter spots requiring much moving of furniture.

I had to remove an entire bookcase. I pulled out dusty books that I had forgotten about – reading I thought a year ago that I might need but didn’t. It reminded me of how little the work I did before I came here I am actually doing nowadays.

I am preparing an event that draws on my somewhat rusty design and facilitation skills – a visioning workshop with one large urban hospital that has been limping along from one crisis to another. There must be a way to turn it around, like one can even an oil tanker – slowly and in a wide circle with all hands on deck. That’s what I hope we can do next month, when all important hands are back from abroad, even Axel and myself.

Axel went to the Kabul International Fair that is being held in the Loya Jirga tent, the one provided by the Germans for the first Loya Jirga way back in the early 2000s and then used for the Peace Jirga in July; the same one that had rockets shot at it – out of the media limelight all is quiet there now.

He came back with a bottle of locally made extra virgin olive oil, pressed using age old methods with the technical assistance from the Italians (of course), two plastic bags of fresh full-fat milk (a forgotten delicacy for us used to UHT milk) and a local pasteurized cheese (we are discouraged to buy the unpasteurized cheeses that are sold down the street, displayed on pushcarts on bright green fake grass sheets).

We are wondering if some of the new local enterprises that owe their success to technical and financial assistance from development organizations will soon find themselves without that support. The removal of the private security companies is turning into a big crisis. There is much rhetoric about this move by Karzai. Everyone appears to be painting themselves into a corner that will be hard to get out of.