Sylvia's Journal

Shaking the fundaments of my assertions yesterday, a suicide bomber with a car full of explosives drove into a hospital in Khost Province and killed scores of women and children, some visiting patients and others patients themselves. At the time the hospital was exceptionally crowded because of an offer of free services. ‘How,” we wondered during our Sunday morning management team meeting, “can anyone do this? For what purpose?”

Purpose here can be anything, good and bad. In the twisted world of interests and agendas in this part of the world, purpose can be derived from the settling of accounts, payback or revenge, between families or to helping or hindering forces involved in larger and more sinister geopolitical shenanigans to secure or maintain access to resources and power over others. We speculated, an utterly useless exercise, about motives and threw our hands up.

And then we went back to planning and budgeting for our project’s last year – a major undertaking, both the planning and budgeting and, once that is done, the project itself.

Axel told us the sad news that yet another of the kids he tutored with so much love and care jumped ship to try for a better life in Canada. The young man’s reasoning is logical – getting a visa (especially for a young male, but now also for females) for the US is getting increasingly difficult. Why risk going back to Afghanistan and not be able to get back? The draw of Canada, even if it comes with an exaggerated promise of a new life, is clearly very strong. The kids in the US hear about the ones who made it – not the ones who didn’t make it.

For an ambitious, honest and intelligent young Afghan the country’s political wheeling and dealing must be very discouraging. The lower house is losing about a fourth of its members accused of election fraud. This has a direct effect on the as yet unconfirmed caretaker ministers who will have to start all over getting their votes.

Someone wondered aloud today, “why do we insist on democracy? We are not ready for this. We need a different kind of system.” I am beginning to think that this may well be true.

More dust today – everyone agrees it is worse than ever before. We can’t see the nearby mountains that circle Kabul. The sky is white and I can taste the dust in my mouth. It makes it a little less painful to not have Axel by my side. He would have been miserable and probably gasping for air.