Sylvia's Journal

The gender thing reared its ugly head again today, once more in a way I had not anticipated. Now, looking back, I can see how gender was just one element in a soup made from form not following function, issues of authority and power, a calling to account for under performance, self management and such things as pride and self esteem. I am dealing with the double whammy of gender and culture which made for giant bubbles that can pop easily. Today one did.

The whole affair had caught me by surprise. I had some inklings that something was brewing and stewing but I didn’t realize what the main sticking points were (oh, this should have been a poem with so many metaphors). It will take some time to digest and calm down before we can look at the facts and come up with solutions. They will have to take into account this very particular context that led me to make decisions about who reports to who that would seem irrational anyplace else.

Later in the morning I was, like yesterday, called on short notice to the ministry, this time for a meeting of an ad hoc committee that I had actually volunteered for in a moment of great optimism about the committee’s task. With 7 people sitting around a table we tried to revise a strategy for one ministerial department. None of us really knew about the subject matter, which has a common sense side and a technical side, but all of us had opinions, except maybe the one person representing the department.

After one and a half hour of doing and undoing track changes in a word document projected on a screen, and grappling with the definitions of such words as goals, objectives, interventions and approaches, we had made little progress. Still, I thought it was time well spent as we explored and clarified what the department’s work is and what belongs elsewhere in the ministry. Sometimes such work is done by outside experts who fly in and out. It may be more efficient and of better quality, but no one owns the consultant’s deliverables after he or she flies home again.

On the way home from the ministry I pulled out a book of poetry for children that S. had given me. I listened to the Dari (or rather Farsi) recitation by a colleague and then learned the meaning of the couplets. The poems are lovely, quite evocative, and very hard to translate literally into English with words such as ‘a singing to oneself that comes from the source.’ I am determined to learn the first short poem about a kite that escapes and spins like the earth to become as small as a butterfly. There may be much wrong with the way Afghans are educated, but this early exposure to such lovely poems can only be good and I hope this tradition will be kept up.

After the work day had ended we settled around the boss’ conference table for our biweekly phone call with our Boston-based team – the beginning of their day and the end of ours. By 6:30 PM some of us were released while other continued to talk about operational issues that I don’t need to worry about. I headed out to the supermarket to get Axel his cold medicine – he had spent half the day in bed, sneezing and coughing. It’s flu time here as well.

During our vacation our cook interned with the master cook who works in another guesthouse. We are now treated daily to new dishes that are a great improvement upon his usual fare: pizza with a sand pie crust, baked cheesy cauliflower (we now think that the ‘caul’ in cauliflower comes from here (Gul=flower)), and for dessert a marriage between carrot cake and pecan pie.