Sylvia's Journal

This morning I witnessed one of the ways that this country is shooting itself in the foot. A member of parliament visited the office of a director of a training institution and insisted that her daughter be granted admission, bypassing the usual registration procedures. The request was given some weight by implying that if the wish was not granted there would be negative consequences during next week’s voting procedures in the parliament when the president re-introduces the caretaker ministers. Ours is one of those.

There is much intimidation like this and much fear about consequences. even if they are sometimes nothing more than threats. Last year I learned of one of such threats which turned out to be an empty one once (another) director had called the person bluff. The threat was empty. But knowing whether to call someone bluff or not is risky business because you never know. There is much fear in the country and understandably so.

Warlords and their cronies still have much power and can protect incompetent or dishonest people from having to live by the rules that everyone else has to live by. It causes much grief and headache for many serious and committed people I know who have to manage these situations. It also uses up much of the little energy they have left over from simply living in extended families and under much social pressures to conform, to do the job they were hired to do.

I made two round trips into the center of town for meetings which meant over 3 hours in traffic, nearly half my day not counting the time spent in the meetings themselves.

I used my afternoon outbound car ride into town to study my Dari assignment which is reading a newspaper from December about the elections. I used my colleague as a dictionary. On the way back he used me as a dictionary, testing English expressions on me to see if he used them well: like the difference between blow-by-blow and nitty gritty, what puddles and slush have in common and what it means to ‘be versed’ in something.

We both love languages, learning someone else’s language and trying out whether something is OK to say in the other’s language, like ‘can I say “I got off late?”’ and me: “yes, you can but don’t leave out the word ‘off.’” His mastery of the English language is far superior to my mastery of Dari but the enthusiasm with which we learn a new language is the same. Maybe I was a linguist in my previous life or this is just preparation for my next one.

We ended today with the monthly get together at the Dutch embassy for our monthly allotment of grape and/or hop-based beverages, and lots of haring and cheese this time.

A speech by the ambassador assured us that the Dutch ministry of foreign affairs has activated evacuation planning in light of what is happening in the Arab world. Axel asked whether we were on the Dutch list and I said we were not because we are on the American list. “Why?” he asked, impressed with how the Dutch have already organized their four phase alert plan, with the last phase being the airlifting of Dutch citizens off Afghan soil. The Americans tell us to check out their website – no personal speeches like that. But then again, there are only very few Dutch people here and many, very many Americans.