Sylvia's Journal

I just put Axel in a steaming hot bath. He was practically frozen stiff after spending three hours of teaching in an unheated house. His Afghan students are not fazed by this and their bodies don’t seem to cool off the way ours do. When Axel said goodbye to them and shook hands, theirs were warm, his were like ice cubes. I gave him a whiskey on the rocks to heat him up from the inside. He should be OK in half an hour.

I was dressed in a woolen overcoat and managed to stay warm during my one hour in the same cold classroom. We have started to read A Thousand Splendid Suns. Today only three girls showed up. Traveling after dark is difficult if not impossible for young girls or single women and so it seems we may have lost a few for the winter.

Not being able to find enough copies of the book to purchase one for everyone I copied the first 11 chapters so we could start. I know this is not quite proper and I hope the publisher accepts my apologies. I would have bought the books if I could have but Axel’s two attempts across town left us empty handed.

The reading levels of the girls are wide apart. One girl is maybe at 4th grade level, another at 6th grade and a third is at 10th grade. I sympathize with their challenge of learning to read and understand English and reading with the right intonation as I am learning to do the same in Dari.

The girls took turns reading a few paragraphs. We then went over the words they didn’t know and then I asked them to tell me in their own words what they just read. One of the girls had already read the book (as well as the Kite Runner) but didn’t mind reading it again. She will be my assistant because her vocabulary is considerable and she is able to explain many of the new words to her class mates. When they finally found the corresponding word in Dari I learned a new word as well; sometimes I was able to come up with the Dari word myself.

Although we were only at the very beginning of the intensely sad story, in this first class we already had tears even though the real sadness hasn’t even started. “Why do men hurt women’s feelings? Where do we begin to change that? What can we do? How could we possible change the men?” were the teary words from S. Instantly M. came to the rescue with words wise beyond her years, “Start small, start with your small brothers, cousins, nephews. Teach them about being considerate, treat women well.”

We were able to calm her down and read on but I am a bit worried if the first chapter already makes her cry, what will happen when we come to the really depressing parts?

In sharp contrast to this experience late in the day, several of my colleagues and I met earlier with the medical chief of the international security forces and his sidekick, a young woman who looked like she was just out of college but turned out to be an internist from Pensacola.

Getting the military folks to our compound was a major accomplishment. I exchanged many phone calls and emails with the gentleman in charge of transport. The military don’t know anything about the names of roads and neighborhood of Kabul as we and the Kabulis know them so none of our usual directions worked.

I finally gave them the longitude and latitude coordinates thinking that the military would know how to find us that way. But the reply was, “sorry ma’am, we don’t use that system.” In desperation I sent them the Google Earth map, which I couldn’t open myself, complemented by some extra instructions by phone. That seemed to work as they did arrive and dropped their officials off at our compound at the appointed time.

We had a good meeting and could have gone on for hours if they hadn’t been picked up by their details. There is much good that the military can do in the medical field – they have the expertise, the equipment, the means and the goodwill to give things like emergency care a huge boost here. We explored ways in which they can support the ministry and how we can work together. We saw a side of the military that few Americans get to see.

When the drivers and security people came back to pick up their charges we were not quite ready with our working lunch. Our kitchen staff sat them down in another conference room, flack jackets, helmets and all and served them the same fancy Afghan lunch we had given our guests. I was relieved that we had enough meals (as I would have ordered just the right amount). My Afghan colleagues commented that if you expect 6 people for a meal you cook or order for 18. That is exactly what they had done.

It is really bad form here to not have enough food when you have guests. There can never be too much food. And so we were able to feed the drivers and logistics officers a real nice Afghan lunch, something they don’t get in their army barracks. All was new and wonderful to them, even the Afghan naan (bread) that we so take for granted.