Sylvia's Journal

Getting up was a little hard because we went to a wedding last night. Such events always end late, this one around 1 AM. We left long before that; still I went to bed way past my bedtime. My sleepy start to the day magnified some of the crises that are brewing all around us, all man-made (some by ourselves, some by others), all messy and difficult to deal with.

I am still trying to empty my mail box, paying dearly for not having maintained it while we were in India. But the work got delayed because of an entire morning of meetings and an afternoon of trying to understand the roots and scopes of the various crises.

We had our usual Thursday morning program managers meeting where all the team leaders get together and tell what’s cooking and what is on their plates. It’s a good forum for reminding us that all our activities are supposed to add up. I am happiest when I see people get out of their stovepipes and, in addition to informing, also add, comment, inquire, complement (and compliment) each other.

The second meeting was to explore the possibilities of using ‘zaqat’ and/or ‘sadaqa’ – two forms of Islamic charity – to help hospitals create a fund to provide for the poor and alleviate pain and suffering. We quickly got into theological debates about definitions and what the conditions were for one or the other. My colleagues reverted to their local language to express themselves about a topic that doesn’t lend itself well to translation into English. It was fascinating and I learned a lot, although I also realized that my understanding of Dari is practically nihil when it comes to conversations with a religious theme.

After work I went to my SOLA class. It was a joyous reunion with the girls. We had not seen each other for several weeks. I talked about our trip and they asked questions about Sikkim. They asked about Sikkim’s religion and whether people indeed worshipped cows, a religious practice none of them could fathom. The mention of Ganesha the elephant god and Hanuman the monkey god, two of many thousands of Hindu gods, elicited many giggles. It gave me a chance to put in a plug for religious tolerance.

We continued reading the young reader version of Three Cups of Tea. After three lessons we have made it to page 16. It is slow going, taking turns reading one paragraph at a time, asking questions about understanding, checking on words and, sometimes sidetracking into broader general knowledge topics. The word malnutrition led to one of such conversations. No one knew what it meant. From there we wandered into being skinny not being the same as malnourished and yes, obese people were actually malnourished. There were some giggly comments about some of the girls being a little pudgy and other skinny, requiring me to explain that malnutrition was something more serious.

Some of the girls have made tremendous progress in their reading skills while others had slid back over the four weeks of no lessons. We heard this from the teachers in Sikkim who hate the vacation because of this backsliding. I gave them a little sermon about not giving up, moving centimeter by centimeter to their very distant visions and that practice makes perfect. Everyone nodded. We are reading not to get to the end of the book and tick it off our to do/read list but to marvel about the wonders of this world, the good and the bad, that we need to learn about, if not by direct experience, then by means of a good book. This approach to reading has produced some wonderful conversations – often a high point of my week.