Sylvia's Journal

Three of us entered through the unassuming metal blue door, into the massage place that looks nothing like it from the outside. In fact, its location between gray blast walls and barbed wire makes the business that gets conducted inside rather unlikely. I wonder what the men who walk from the highly protected US embassy to the highly protected military base, through highly protected streets, not accessible to anyone else, thought of us, three ladies, who slipped through that blue door.

M and I got our massages while P had her eyebrows done. While I was away in Holland and India Lisa fell on or against the woodburning stove and burned her arm badly. The German clinic took care of her and she is back in business with the ghastly burn still looking fresh. The massage, a relay kind of massage with different people working different parts of the body, was, as usual, blissful. M is coming back for more in a couple of days. I stick to my one-a-week routine.

We had planned to go for a long walk in Bagh-e-Bala but Axel is still sick and we canceled our plans. While he napped I took another stab at the complex sampler embroidery, doing and redoing the stitches over and over, counting the tiny threads until my eyes were all red and painful. At the massage place one of the girls is doing the traditional Afghan embroidery on regular fabric, picking up two threads that are tiny compared to the ones I try to pick up. She does it so fast and so perfect that I felt rather clumsy.

I stitched and knitted (babies are still being born everywhere) most of the afternoon, finished Anna Karenina (it gets a little boring towards the end) and starting Antony and Cleopatra – good for another couple of months of exercising and knitting.

I interrupted the craft work for a moment to prepare a presentation that is expected of our Afghan delegation to Egypt, a trip that is to start next week. I will come along if my visa-stamped passport comes back in time; otherwise I will stay behind.

M and P joined us for a wonderful dinner, coming with goodies for us and leaving with health related goodies for them. In between the coming and going we discussed hours worth of serious and not so serious topics including a good dose of gossip. We haven’t seen each other for a long time and there was much to catch up on.

Today was one of those days when I wondered about the contributions I can make. It is so very difficult to work here, not just the work itself but the human relations part of the work. Sometimes that realization energizes me but today it depleted me. The emotions that were dancing below the surface in our interactions were stark and strong, like the ‘khakbad,’ the dust-filled winds that fill one’s lungs with unwanted particles of God knows what.

It was good that today was also SOLA teaching day as my interactions with the girls sweep the dust away and make me feel hopeful again. Today 6 girls showed up; I never know who will show up and at what level their English is. We had two newcomers, one a very young girl who has only been studying English for a few months. Although her English was far beyond my Dari at three months, we are reading a book that is way over her head. Still, at the end, she said she enjoyed the lesson.

I have them pick random chapters and then have these read out loud, everyone gets to read about half a page. Today’s chapter contained a love making scene, an illicit one between two unmarried people who have fallen in love but the fighting between the mujahedeen tears them apart as one of the families escapes to Pakistan. The love match is not to be because of family obligations – a constant refrain in this part of the world.

Reading Khaled Hosseini with the girls has made me realize how poetic his language is. When I read the book back in the US some years ago (in the summer after the crash), I read fast like a high speed train, not taking in the beauty of the landscape as I hurried along in the book. Now we are as in a local train that stops every five minutes and I see the beauty of every paragraph. It is a very different experience.

I explained about metaphors and had them pick them out from the text; every page has at least two. It has become a game, ‘who can find the metaphor?’ One of my students is far ahead of the others. She serves as my talking dictionary and stood in for me while I was away. She could be easily bored, having the most extensive vocabulary and having read the book already (in a record 3 days) but she is very engaged. She is the first to find the metaphors.

The first snow had fallen while we were away. I didn’t stay. Today the second snow fell. When I left the office the sky was white with flakes gently falling down. It is a lovely sight which is why I could never live for long in the tropics. I love winter for that reason. But when I came home the snow had stopped and our terrace was like a skating rink. That’s when I like winter a little less.

I spent half an hour explaining to Axel the complexity of today’s events at work. There is the complexity of work in my own organization and the tenfold complexity of working with the ministry.

I visited a department that is in the process of being upgraded into something with more authority and power. The formal transition has not been made and may not be made for some time but informally the process for the change in status is, albeit somewhat hesitantly, underway.

I asked whether the transformation was generally seen as a good thing and if not, who were the nay-sayers. The first response was that everyone was in favor as there had been a formal meeting with one of the top leaders and no one spoke out against the decision for the upgrade, very much favored by the chair of the meeting. But the second response was that after the meeting, in the hall ways there had been much disagreement.

Just like any other organization, here too there are two sides of an organization: the formal one with its rules and regulations, its organogram, its pyramid of relationships and nested units. And then there is the other side that is made up of alliances and relationships, debts owned and accounts that need to be settled. Those links cut through the hierarchy like veins in blue cheese; they bypass the hierarchy and everyone knows it. That’s what the talk in the hallways is about.

Sometimes I wonder how things can ever become more straightforward and transparent and whether I can contribute at all, especially in this culture where family networks trump everything. Abolishing the shadow and opaque side of an organization (whether public or private) is ultimately what leadership and good governance assistance is supposed to accomplish. It is a tall order and rather elusive, remaining a distant vision for most people I have worked with.

Today I accepted that simply asking questions that make people think about what they are trying to accomplish may be the best I can do at this time.

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.

I rushed to the ministry this morning to find out that I was, mistakenly, called to a meeting of a committee I am not a part of. Given that a ride to the ministry and back takes at least one and a half hours I lost a good chunk of the morning, a morning during which I was supposed to clean out my mailbox and review tons of attachments. The only thing that made this not a total loss was the Dari practice I got from my colleagues during the shuttle ride as they helped me read a children’s poem about a kite.

A thrilling thing is happening: after initiating our visa renewal process on November 23 our two passports have finally been taken to the Ministry of Interior Affairs for our new multiple entry visa stamps. With lots of luck I get mine back in time to secure a visa for Egypt. A study visit to Aswan is in the works, with a departure planned for January 29. Oh the suspense!

Another extraordinary thing happened: I received very honest and pertinent feedback from two of my staff about the symbolic meaning of what I do and don’t do. One of my teams, I now realize, is not getting enough of my attention. That is because they are so good – the team’s program manager works hard and gets his work done without making much noise. I also don’t know much about their work as it is outside my sphere of expertise. I came to realize that I was paying mostly attention to those staff members who are in charge of activities I know something about and where I can add value; they also happen to be in closer proximity to my office.

The more I think about it the more I am thrilled that I was actually told about my shortcomings in my face rather than being ‘reviewed’ behind my back. Critiquing your boss is risky and rather countercultural here even though we all encourage people to be frank and open and to ignore the hierarchical divides. A colleague once told me he prefers working for a foreigner because he can be more forthright and honest because the cultural constraints about social interactions are not operating in that relationship the way they do in relationships between Afghans.

The experience of hearing about my shortcomings reminded me that there is much we miss in this culture so different from our own; that some people may never get such feedback. I suppose that there is probably much talking about us foreigners, in a language we don’t understand and when we are not around; about and our right, wrong and odd way of managing our work and our teams.

It is now quite cold at night and in the early morning. The bed warmers we bought in Holland are worth every one of the 2900 euro pennies we paid for them. We plug them in an hour before bedtime and then find a warm cocoon waiting for us. I can’t think of anything more luxurious and decadent!

Today I tried to catch up on things and succeeded only partially, not having much chance to clean out my inbox. The entire morning was spent in a meeting with all our program manager – first the usual reports and then a more in depth discussion about what we can/should and cannot complete before the close out phase of our project start in July.

At lunch time I made a quick trip to meet friends at the Afghan Midwives Board meeting, in their brand new offices. I met them again for dinner later at the Safi Landmark hotel which presents a luxurious face of Afghanistan that few people outside the country know of: glass-walled elevators moving noiselessly up and down a giant atrium with a coffee bar at the bottom and fancy boutiques selling luxury goods on the ground and first floors. It could have been Dubai.

These visits with the midwives lift my spirits like little else here. There is so much energy and commitment that it is hard not to be optimistic. At the same I am acutely aware what these young ladies are up against, how fragile the status of women is, and thus how much they can realistically accomplish.

All through the day I was confronted with some deep divides about philosophies about development and how we go about our business. These discussions are always full of emotion as the frames we use are so much a part of our professional identity. It is also what makes work here so very interesting.

We left our lovely Delhi ‘boutique’ hotel early in the morning. We learned from one of the managers that the hotel is actually owned by an Indian OB/GYN and his Indonesian wife. All the exquisite art work, fabrics, paintings and photographs turned out to be from Bali. They also own a series of shops that sell beautiful home decoration fabrics. It will be our favorite place in Delhi whenever we come back again.

Moving through Delhi Airport was a breeze this time. Our entire brief experience of Incredible !ndia was nothing like those first few hours in helly Delhi on January 4. We will come back when the next leave comes up.

We flew back with 20 Afghan young men who are employed in the civil aviation sector. They returned from a two-week training in Singapore on aviation management. We sat next to one of them, a young traffic controller who, in my view, made a much better career choice than all those people who want to become a doctor. He had received an FAA scholarship to finetune his training in Oklahoma City and then got to go to Singapore.

He is another one of those Afghans who grew up in a refugee camp, learned Urdu, Hindi and English in the process and opted for a technical training rather than the highly overrated medical education.

As one of only two Afghan traffic controllers, more are being trained right now, he is employed by both the Afghan government and ISAF (Kabul airspace is being controlled by ISAF at this time). His future looks very bright, a lot brighter than many of the newly graduated docs.

We flew over the magnificent snow covered Hindukush mountains. So far Kabul has remained without snow; an unusual situation this deep into winter.

Back at our house we found the dining room and bathroom of our house pleasantly warmed by the two bucharis we still trust (the other three are now permanently off after the two misfirings that covered the house in black soot).
The rest of the house was exactly what you would expect of cement in zero 5 degrees.

We unpacked, distributed the goodies we brought back across the house and to the guards and then enjoyed the meal left by our cook. I had given him a German cooking show DVD dubbed in Persian. Tonight’s meal showed that this had been a good move.

And then we caught up on the news which we had ignored during our trip to both Holland and India. We noticed that things had shifted: Ivory Coast had made way for Tunisia as the news star. I was once again reminded of the saying, “everything will work out in the end. If it hasn’t worked out it is because you haven’t come to the end yet.” That was certainly true for our trip which started so poorly. It will work out that way for Tunisia too.

We are not celebrating MLK day here in Afghanistan (in spite of his message being very appropriate for this place) and so tomorrow I will be back at work. First order of business is getting our new visa for Afghanistan; the old one expires tomorrow. The immigration officer noticed that we got in just in time.