Sylvia's Journal

For the government Saturday is the first day of the week, for us the last day of our weekend. Sometimes we have to give up that last day, as was the case today. I attended a gathering to put the final stamp of approval on a hospital strategy that has been in the making for over a year. It was the crowning event. The Acting Minister attended the entire event, including lunch. She will be a major player in aligning and mobilizing other ministers around this strategy that aims, in the end, to accomplish full hospital autonomy.

The entire meeting was in Dari. I tried to follow the slides, projected on the right side of the room. Those were the ones in Dari. I kept frantically thumbing through my dictionary to look up the words on the slide before they disappeared. It was a relief to have few slides and each slide with very few words. This is a bit of a novelty. I could see the hand of our hospital consultant in the production process.

Speeches, questions and answers were all in Dari which made it a little difficult for the foreigners, some ISAF, some US government, and some EU folks, to follow things closely. There were many opinions expressed, even by people who had not even read the strategy. The minister shook the strategy document in front of everyone asking, how many of you have read it? It was another one of her light touches to gently confront people with the importance of doing their homework.

The total immersion was for me yet another Dari class, which I continued a few hours later with my Dari teacher Najla. She tested my vocabulary by asking me questions in Dari and then requesting answers that used as many new words as possible. In the second hour I tried to read some of the poems from the book my boss has given me. My teacher suggested I just read a few stanzas of the first poem which goes on for pages and pages. Without understanding much of the meaning of what I was reading, I am sure I butchered the treasured poem.

For dinner we worked our way across town to visit Adriana who lives in the UN compound. It took us a long time to get there because of the Shia celebrations that block whole streets and a US army convoy that doesn’t just stop all traffic but also makes our phones inoperable. Once on Jalalabad road we drove several times past the well hidden compound before finding it in the thick smog that comes from wood and diesel stoves, dust and bad gasoline.

Inside the compound is a parallel universe, parallel to the other parallel universes around town: the American compound, the Green Village and the bases. I am glad we live in Afghanistan and not between gray blast walls and barbed wire. We could just imagine the security consultants with their clipboards pointing out where all the soft spots were, putting the fear of God in the UN operations and security folks while doing a brisk business in concrete, wire and related products.