Sylvia's Journal

There were demonstrations in town, along our usual road to the ministry; something about land, promises and ownership in Kunar province. It was a peaceful protest. Still, we drove along the edges of town to avoid the gathering. Here you never know if something might turn ugly suddenly.

At the ministry we discussed the new nursing standards for hospital care – a 5 cm thick tome describing the exact procedures and standards for some eighty common nursing tasks. Except for the people who developed the standards none of the rest of us had read the hundreds of pages. But we did ask questions about implementation and the scoring of the assessment forms.

Making nursing care more legitimate (by setting standards and assessing people) is one first step of improving the hospital experience and trying to keep Afghans from going to Pakistan and India.

Later I heard that the wife of one of our guards died in a private hospital here in Kabul because her high blood pressure was treated with drugs that lowered her blood pressure so drastically that all systems shut down. It was one more of thousands of preventable deaths. That’s why people do seek care outside the country.

In the afternoon we met with our donor to discuss our plans for the extension we hope to get. In the middle of the meeting we heard loudspeakers giving tinny messages (in Dari as it turned out). Someone quipped ‘maybe we get to go to the bunkers!’

Everyone was told to stay inside (this is normal – there is not much of an outside) and we resumed our meeting. This scenario repeated itself a few times but we never got to go to the bunkers. Apparently something or someone suspicious had been spotted on the periphery. The barbed wire was pulled across the road. Everyone is a bit on edge after yesterday’s Defense Ministry suicide bomber. It all turned out to be a false alarm and we were able to return to Afghanistan without any problems at the end of our meeting.

For dinner we took Ankie out to the Sufi restaurant and gave her a last chance to gorge herself on great Afghan food. She is leaving tomorrow for Holland – now that the cheese and the Dutch chocolate Easter eggs are gone there is no point in staying any longer. We are sending her home with authentic Darjeeling tea and two cups and saucers.