Sylvia's Journal

We are making some progress, we think, on getting a management and leadership department established in the ministry. We met this morning with the person under whose directorate the department will sit. A course about management and leadership he attended with one of my staff, in Dubai, for which I was criticized (why now? Why them?) is paying off. His attendance at the conference last week put benefit upon benefit and he seems engaged and mobilized to change how things have been done before. I think this is a good and practical definition of leadership.

We explored the form and modality of a leadership program within the general directorate for human resources; funny how something I was tasked to do and had wanted to do from the time I arrived may finally happen on the cusp of my departure. He invited us to have a regular Sunday morning meeting – this too is good as people usually don’t want to make such a commitment unless they find it useful. Usually it is us asking for meetings, and us trying to push a string across the table. This pulling is very encouraging.

It looks also as if the staff, we have been advocating for, to populate this department, can finally be recruited, at least from the ministry’s side. But since we are, for now committed to paying for them, this time it is us who need to stall as we are still waiting for the project extension documents to be signed. Until they are, our project ends on September 30, 2011.

All the women I asked today, and even some of the men, have been busy over the weekend preparing for Ramazan. It is a bit like the spring cleaning that happens around Easter, but for a different reason: no one wants to do any unnecessary heavy lifting during the coming month. And so curtains have been cleaned, windows washed, carpets beaten, pillows fluffed so that the little energy left at the end of a water- and foodless day can be used most economically.

I made arrangements with our cook to prepare two meals a day during Ramazan, especially for Steve, as the lunchroom will be closed. I can manage by taking some fruit and yoghurt in, or an energy bar, which will see me through, but that doesn’t work for Steve who needs real food. I did ask the household staff to continue putting a thermos with hot water in my office for coffee and tea; other than that I expect to lower my caloric intake as well – it is not well regarded to eat and drink in the presence of those who observe the fast.

I am following the mayor of Kabul on Twitter (KabulMayor). He started tweeting on July 24 with the words “This is my first Tweet! I’m a great supporter of information sharing and social networking. Please feel free to contact me.” The mayor and I are both following Obama who was tweeting like crazy last night to constituencies in AK, CA and CO.

I did contact the mayor to find out what’s up with the Darulaman roadbuilding project. He tweeted a few days ago that three major road project will be finished in a month. I hope that this main road we navigate several times everyday is one of those three. This project is the source of much of the dust that has settled in Axel’s lungs (and probably mine but with less ill effects). Today the mayor had another encouraging tweet: 1st phase of Kabul Municipality’s solar street light project complete. More streets have light at night. Important for Kabul security.” It’s good for the night vendors but it makes no difference for the women – taking back the night is a long way into the future. Right now they are focusing on just being able to walk the streets without being hassled, pinched or insulted.

The mayor is a brave soul. Not only is being a mayor is this country a very hazardous occupation, the major of Kandahar was just killed a few days ago, but being modern in this society (as in ‘tweeting’) is also risky where so many want the country to return to the time of the Caliphate. And then of course there is the corruption and the backlash from more powerful people who are unhappy about how the loot is divided.

Several months ago a powerful opponent of the mayor, probably someone who felt he didn’t get his fare share, threatened to have him brought to court for this or that ‘irregularity.’ The mayor’s response was, that’s fine but first let me get my job done. Since then sidewalks have been created nearly everywhere in town.

I have also befriended the mayor on facebook – he is very much with the times. Sometimes I wonder whether the ideological Taliban (as opposed to the crooks and criminals also heaped under that umbrella) have a division that monitors the electronic media and social networks as part of their intelligence gathering operations.

Last night Steve and I went to the Korean restaurant and had a seafood hot pot – a rare treat in this landlocked place. Afterwards I invited Steve to watch the Monsoon Wedding (Mira Nair) but he declined. I watched it on my computer and recognized the pattern of the Hindu wedding but had forgotten much about the movie. It is worth viewing, especially by all of us who went to Kerala. But I think our wedding was funner.

This morning I introduced Katie to Sadiq the woolman who runs the ‘wool fatcory’ – a grandiose name for a mom and pop entreprise in a decrepit old mud-brick house. Armed with cookies, juices and grapes we headed out to the far western corner of the city and visited the place where some twenty women are busy spinning, carding and knitting.

We invited the women to take a break and they obediently sat down with their backa against the wall on the flat mattresses while we tried to communicate in broken Dari and smiles. This time the women allowed themselves very little time for the break that we had introduced – maybe because it was too close to lunch time (and too close to Ramazan?) and they needed time to cook. We were invited to several lunches but politely declined, as would be expected.

We purchased wool, cashmere socks and a hat and talked about the usual topics of age, babies, children, marriage and such. I need to hand over the baton to Katie to support this group, not only financially by buying things but simply by going there from time to time and chatting and having a good time.

This morning I arrived early at Lisa’s place where I got the royal treatment: hair, feet, reflexology, Swedish massage and a mask, ‘because you’re special,” said Lisa. Sammy the hairdresser decided I should have a Princes Di haircut, “because I look like her,” as if she is still around. I did see a picture of Princess Di recently which was photoshopped to show her at age 50 – elegant with a few wrinkles and dyed hair, with a haircut that doesn’t look anything like the one I got today. It was more a Twiggy haircut, a reference no one at the salon would understand.

With face and feet soft as a baby, and very little hair left on my head, I went to the shop where foreigners buy locally produced and highly marked up handicrafts that make us feel good because they make for unusual gifts while we support destitute women. I had received an announcement that they would have a “Blue Herat Glass and Ice cream event.” The blue glass was there but not the ice cream which was cancelled for reasons unknown. I bought a decanter and two water glasses to replace the plastic water bottle on my nightstand – very stylish and very ethnic.

In the afternoon I went over to SOLA to say goodbye to Angela who is leaving for Virginia on Sunday to start her four years of college at the University of Richmond. Her departure is a big loss to SOLA but also a victory as this is yet one more Afghan girl who will come back to join her sisters who are trying to change this place. Connie from the European Police trainers, another volunteer teacher like me, showed up with a lesson plan about the Berlin Wall, German bread and Dutch cheese, complementing my cake with its ‘safar bakhair’ (safe travels) written across the frosting.

Connie always has to come with an armored car and guards, this time one male and one female. The female one was from Sweden and the male one, who patiently waited in the car outside until we called him in, was from the UK. I have met a few of these guardian angels now and all have said that their visit to SOLA is one of their best experiences in Afghanistan. They live between barbed wire and blast walls surrounded by armaments, and corruption, and have an impossible task.

Although not living in the same conditions, I too have found my time at SOLA among my most fun and rewarding experiences here in Kabul. Each time I leave the girls I feel that some good is going to come out of all the good that is streaming into Afghanistan, usually undetected and under the radar compared to the bad stuff, arms, too much money, misguided strategies and arrogance that streams in highly visible and in abundance.

The two remaining boys at SOLA, which will return back to its original state as a girls’ school, are shipping out next month to Kent School in Connecticut – one has his red card in hand (this means he will get the visa) while the other is waiting for some form from the school without which the interview at the consulate cannot be scheduled. We are all keeping our fingers crossed for all the kids who are now waiting for the much coveted visa and start their new lives.

As usual, while the kids introduced themselves, Ted provided editorial comments and context that consist mostly of stories that make you want to cry and that restore one’s faith in the goodness of people, an effective antidote to the constant barrage of bad news. He has a large trunk full of such stories and I can’t hear them enough, even though I have heard many of them more than once already. Apparently during his latest stay in the US he added another layer of stories, of random people stepping in his way and bringing things he needed but did not ask for.

Last night it finally happened: one of my dinner guests stepped blindly into the ditch that runs in front of our house. Here in Kabul, and in this part of the world, these are the drainage ditches that run everywhere along both sides of the street. They are basically open sewers. It was dark, Pierre’s eyesight isn’t so good in the dark and we were chatting when suddenly Pierre dropped down. As he pulled himself out he acted like one would expect a doctor to act, ‘oh, no problem.’

But I know doctors as I was brought up by one and have a few in the family; I was worried that he would not give himself the same advice as he would give to a patient. One of his shins was bloody, skinned from knee to foot. His driver fished one of his shoes and his cellphone out of the ditch. A little later we discovered that Pierre had put on the wrong shoes, and that it was Steve’s shoe that had been submerged.

Steve had earlier quoted me a saying from his time in Shiraz that when you fell into one of these ditches you would never leave town. We thought that had applied to Pierre but since these were Steve’s shoes this may now apply to him. It was an unfortunate ending to a lovely dinner with a few friends.

One of them first arrived in Afghanistan 44 years ago. He also read Paula Constable’s article in the Washington Post a week ago (Dread and Dysfunction in Kabul) and was even harder hit by it than me. He remarked that in the olden days typical Afghan (mudbrick) houses, even in the city, had a series of small rooms built along the walls of the compound around a beautiful garden occupying most of the space; a garden that received attention all day long.

Now garish monstrosities are built to within an inch of the outside walls leaving very little space, not even the size of a walkway, between the house and the house next door. There is no more outdoor life because there is no more outdoors, only cement, brick and tiles. Gone are the roses, the grape vines, the fruit trees. Many people who lived here a long time ago can’t find their houses back. They are gone.

Our Afghan dinner was cooked, served and cleaned up by our cook and housekeeper who had offered to stay, for the evening. Steve and I immediately accepted. That’s one thing I will miss: having a dinner party and when you go to bed everything is cleaned up and put away.

The discovery of a large cache of weapons, explosives, army uniforms, hand grenades, rifles and other instruments of death at the airport left only the very stoic among us untouched. When I left for the airport to go to India some weeks ago, I had been pondering just that question: what’s the next highly visible place for a complex attack? All the fancy hotels in town have been attacked and some of them twice already, there is no railway station so the airport seemed like an obvious target. Of course it is well protected with a perimeter that runs along the international forces bases. But then again, as we discussed yesterday with the midwives, everything, including conscience, can be bought.

One of our consultants is flying out today and is nervous but the rest of us who are flying out in the next couple months think he is lucky – they surely aren’t going to try anything now as the perpetrators have to regroup, steal new uniforms, get new weapons (that’s probably the easy part). Steve is leaving on August 13 when things will have slacked off a bit as the news and attention has worn off. Although we will also be deep into the Ramazan slack; it is not a month of great exertion.

Those of us leaving in September have more to worry about as active life resumes in Kabul after the holidays. There is always the hope that the holy month of Ramazan will put the fear of God in the hearts of the people who are supposed to do the dirty work. And so we pray.

I had lunch with the SOLA founder at the small French restaurant where you can get real coffee, real croissants, real baguettes and real ham. We discussed the fate of SOLA and are in agreement that it has to be Afghan owned and run if it is to survive the no doubt tumultuous years ahead.

We also discussed the continued denial of American visas to students who have received full scholarships and the difficult line to walk between pushing people at the consulate too hard or too little. Some people in high places really don’t like to be pushed by the ‘representatives of the American people,’ and become even more rigid. Ted is unfazed.

The restaurant with its young Hazara waiters is packing up. I am not entirely sure what the reason is but one rumor has it that the owners are getting squeezed for protection money and that it has something to do with security, threats and such. I haven’t been able to verify that as no one was there to confirm. The place already looked cleaned out, the inside furniture removed, only the second hand French books, a rug, the small shop where you can buy fresh baguettes, jam, fruit tarts and croissants and the kitchen remained. Even the starched peach and white striped vests of the waiters were gone – the boy served us in black street clothes.

The rest of the day was agony as the stifling heat in my office appeared to turn off my brain. All I could manage was clean my inbox, score the MBTI results of a colleague’s husband and write a request to the US government about distributing personal protection equipment kits that are clogging up are scarce warehouse space; and all of these things very slowly. It was one of those slack days that don’t have a place in the American work philosophy of efficiency and effectiveness but are quite common in the rest of the world, especially where it is hot.

Another hot and slow day as we are inching towards Ramadan. Kabul is blanketed by a stupefying heat. Food is spoiling easily, even a hardboiled egg I had on my desk for a day had gone bad. And so, not surprisingly, people get sick, either from food gone bad producing sometimes fever sometimes persistent stomach rumblings or rashes and breathing problems from the stifling and polluted air. Aside from some minor rumblings (I took one bite and swallowed it before realizing that the egg should not be eaten) and very low energy I am doing OK.

I was invited for lunch by the midwives and their allies in the house of the (midwives association’s) president. It is near our house, on a quiet lane off the busy main shopping street, right past the Mann Continental Restaurant which features the McDonald arches. They do serve burgers and Afghan kids apparently love going there as much as kids around the world love going to McD.

From the windows of the second floor salon, the place to receive visitors, covered in traditional Afghan style with carpets, think mattresses and pillows, I could look into neighboring compounds, all hidden from the street by high walls, and imagined myself in a rural area. I could have stood there for a long time, observing, eavesdropping on ordinary lower and middle class Afghan lives I have so very little contact with.

While mom and sister were busy downstairs turning raw materials into a copious and delicious meal, we sat upstairs, eight women in total. I listened to countless tales of corruption, fraud and sexual abuse perpetrated by people, some I knew and had worked with and some I don’t ever want to know, who are all protected at the highest levels of this country’s government.

I heard about the battles to get rid of these folks. Most of these attempts have been unsuccessful and the solution in some cases has been to get rid of oneself by quitting jobs or worse, leaving the country. It was all very discouraging and it made me regret even having had contact with some of those folks and believing the things they told me (about how good and committed they were). I now know they had dollar signs in their eyes and smelled greenbacks when seeing me, a foreigner who could get them a piece of the money pie. My sisters tell their stories with laughter even though I know they hurt deeply inside. But what else can you do if this is your home?

One clever tale was about a man, since found out for many fraudulent actions yet also still in his job, who proposed to open a ‘chance account.’ Later, in the office I asked my colleagues to explain what that was. It was, I learned, a gimmick started by Kabul Bank (now of ill repute) and followed later by others, where one could open a special account that was like a lottery. For every 100 dollar in your account you got one ticket. (Presumably) random drawings paid out to the winning numbers. Prizes would go as high as several million dollars. People could tell me about lucky winners they knew. Of course now we know that this money was ill gotten money after all and the scheme has been abandoned since.

This clever man suggested that the money for a project be put in a chance account so that, if there were any prizes, these could be pocketed. Of course, compared to the Kabul bank fraud this is all petty corruption – but we know that petty can easily slide into serious. I am afraid that the abundance of easy money took many down that path. It also makes me have even more respect for the honest people in this country.

The young woman who opened the workshop on the establishment of a nursing and midwifery council in Afghanistan, on behalf of the Afghan midwives association, was the same woman who I met a little over 3 years ago in Bangladesh at a conference that we both attended.

We became friends, not just on facebook. Over lunch at her house, just over two years ago in Kabul, we talked about personal vision and I demonstrated how to use the challenge model that we introduce in our leadership courses – a heuristic device to get from the big ‘why am I here?’ question to the establishment of a short term goal and then eventually, after having analyzed what’s in the way and what to do about it, to ‘what am I going to do tomorrow?’

Sitting on the ground we filled in the model. Her short term goal was to get an MPH and the obstacles where many, as one would expect for a young Afghan woman.

Now, only a couple of years later, she is the president of the midwives association, has an MPH in her pocket and some UN consultancies on her resume. If anyone would have foretold her future to be like this she would have laughed. She charted her course that afternoon and then went to work.

The workshop at which she spoke took place in the ministry’s auditorium which was built decades ago has been poorly maintained. It is now old and decrepit with 20 aircos attached to the wall at various places and none working – in fact a good part of the time there was no electricity either and we sat in hot semi-darkness. The heat is draining all one’s energy.

But it was another good Dari lesson as most speeches were in the local language and with the slide projector not working to show us the English slides we foreigners, only a few, were on our own. At least I didn’t have to sit on the stage which looked even hotter than where the rest of us were sitting.

In the afternoon we had our usual meeting with USAID where we pointed out that we will start close-down procedures in a few days if the no-cost extension is not signed. Everyone knows this is a doomsday scenario but we are contractually obliged (and also by Afghan labor law) to start these procedures. We hope they will shock the contract folks into finally signing the last pieces of paper so we can get on with our lives.

And so I will be one of the people who will receive the slip – I requested to be in the first batch which would put me back on American soil mid-September, a few weeks earlier than my original departure and a few weeks later than I had hoped.

A bunch of us went out to Babur Gardens tonight to see 14 short films by various young Afghan film makers and media companies. The restored harem (queen’s quarters) are spectacular and various screening rooms had been decked out with mattresses and cushions – probably in the way the place had been decked out 500 years ago.

The whole event was sponsored by the American embassy, something to be proud of. The sponsorship was not just for the development of young talent but also included unlimited cold water, juices, tea, and finger foods. Two of the films, which will all be shown on local TV over the next few weeks, were projected on a large screen outdoor in the cool night air. The rest of the films were screened inside.

After seeing another 4 films in a row in a hot and stuffy room I had seen enough as each film started to merge with the next and I couldn’t tell them apart anymore. That’s when everyone else was also ready to go home. I would have liked to see the other films at well but not all at once. Ariana TV will show them one evening a week for the next 7 weeks. I think I may watch them from the comfort of an air-conditioned room.

We have offices in the main building that are AC-ed but those of us in the outhouses, probably at one time houses of guards and household staff, can’t have AC because the electrical circuit in our part of the compound cannot accommodate the high loads of an AC. In the winter this means fumes from the diesel heaters and in the summer it can be insufferably hot, as today. Only the spring and fall are pleasant. On the other hand the view of the garden, flowers, fruit trees, grape arbors is wonderful.

While I was slowly suffocating in my small office with its three concrete walls and open door, a fan whirring papers around, I watched our aging gardener dig up the part of the volleyball field where the grass has disappeared. It was very hard labor for such an old man in such heat but he kept on digging with his helper, both with jackets on – as incomprehensible as Africans walking around with woolen caps in 40 degree heat. It shows our different tolerances for discomfort and is evidence of the amazing ability of human beings to adapt themselves to discomfort.

I had my first fresh fig, plucked from one of the four or five fig trees we have in the compound. One has to be quick picking the fruits from our many trees – I really is a case of the early bird gets the worm – I do tend to get in earlier than most others and I scan the tree for dark blue spots between the foliage.

Today by 2 PM I was totally wiped out, the combined effects of heat and a sleepless night. And so I went off with everyone else at the official end of the workday, much earlier than I usually go home. Last fall ACs were installed in our house and I am taking advantage of that now even though I feel slightly guilty about the luxury. Our guards who live in the back have a fan just like in my office and like we did last year in our house.

A colleague called from Washington trying to unravel the mystery of an email she sent to three people that got sent around the world with ever more people copied, all triggered by a quote from my blog. Although I was never copied (and she didn’t either) eventually it made its way to me – amazing. It is a reminder that if one sends an email one should always assume it will escape, tail and all.

Steve left for dinner in another guesthouse, taking the protein dishes and dessert the cook had prepared for him along as I had already dined on greens and fruit. And now I am wondering do I really want to watch Pat Buchanan tell his life story on AlJazeera to what’s his face, Riz Khan?

The grand finale turned out to be a Grand Finale after all. The conference was an all around success – the proof of that was in the pudding: senior people who said they could only come for a while stayed for hours, fascinated by the presentations and general upbeat and hopeful atmosphere. I was thrilled. Nearly everything went as flawless as it could be and the end result was very close to what we had envisioned about a month ago.

But it was also a Grand Finale because the decision to leave Afghanistan sooner than later was made final by announcing it to my boss and staff. When I will actually depart is not clear as I don’t know how much notice I need to give – the decision has lifted a stone from my shoulders.

In Dutch we say, when a difficult decision is finally made after long pondering, ‘the bullet has gone through the church.’ It’s a war term, dating several hundreds of years back, when churches were kept outside the line of fire. When the bullets finally went through the church a point of no return had been reached. That’s what has happened over the last 48 hours. As the Quakers say: ‘way opened.”

Steve arrived today and it is wonderful to have company again. I had instructed my cook, in my best Dari, to consult with the cook of guesthouse zero where Steve used to live, to find out about his eating habits: lots of meat or chicken or goat, lots of rice, no vegetables. And so he proudly showed me an oven dish full of chicken (for Steve) and a bowl of vegetables (for me).

But first I served him a G&T – this guesthouse is a little different from the others in that respect. It was the gin that had been sitting unopened since my return because I am not a lone drinker but this was an occasion to celebrate: a successful conference and company and the difficult decision made.

I don’t know how having a male guest in my house who is not my husband will be perceived and whether we will be a source of gossip. It hadn’t occurred to me at first but when it got dark, at time at which I usually draw the curtains of the living room, I decided to leave them open so the guards could see whether we were behaving properly.

I believe the time has come for me to go. The pattern of disconnect between what people saying is very important and how they act is too obvious to ignore.

I have come to this place I didn’t expect to get to but it is here now. People try to shush things by saying, “oh no, don’t” but I have heard this before. I am too tired of all this and I don’t want any more of it. I have been crying a lot and not sleeping. That should be a hint.

I came home from another intense day, teary and depressed even though I was surrounded all through the day by people who are totally engaged and with me and sacrificed their weekend day. But they don’t have the power to turn things around and influence priorities. After Sunday most go back to the provinces or return to low power admin jobs.

The conference was not canceled, a threat uttered last evening that had me up and worried all through the night and was the cause of much of my agony this morning. I had to assure the doomsayers today that things will work out OK (they will) and that we have prepared as best as we could against a thousand odds. Yet some is still unresolved such as “will those we considered champions at the ministry show up to give their blessings?” All that is outside our control and so I let go.

Back home I poured myself a stiff drink and sat down to watch TV which made me cry even more as I saw people that made my problems pale in comparison in Africa’s refugee camps and in Norway and Libya. I am in that shaky psychological state where everything that is sad and difficult makes me cry.

I went to bad at 8 PM and slept 9 badly needed uninterrupted hours.