Sylvia's Journal

Due to the shortened workday/low energy at the end of the day here our biweekly call with Boston could not take place as usually at the end of our day (too late) and the beginning of our Boston colleagues’ day. The poor things had to talk with us around midnight while we were sitting in our boss’ office, fresh from a good night sleep. Of course this only applies to us foreigners who don’t have to get up in the middle of the night to pray and eat. During this month there is really no good time to talk with colleagues who are 8.5 time zones away.

I change my return flight from October 1 to September 7. It is official now, at least within the office and among friends, though the formal notification to our donor has not been made but will hopefully be done before the weekend. I had some fantasy of getting Axel out here two weeks from now to help me pack up and accompany as I say my goodbyes, something he never got to do. But after a visit to the super lung and asthma specialist, and still suffering from dog hair, he is not so sure he wants to risk a flare up – the air in Kabul is not any better than when he left. I still can’t see the mountains surrounding the city on most mornings when I look out of the bathroom window.

I was summoned to SOLA again, an easy call to respond to. I had not seen the girls in several weeks and had missed them. Z. shared with me the project the girls have embarked on: teaching the kids in a nearby orphanage English. The girls are already paying back to society the goodies they received at SOLA. Z. spoke very little English when she showed up on SOLA’s doorstep over a year ago and now she is an English teacher. It is all very exciting and wonderful. We went over the elements of a good plan and how to organize the project – requiring a purpose, an outcome, staff (volunteers in this case) and materials.

While Afghanistan is blanketed under assistance that counts into the billions, these girls are making a budget that consists of 5 Afs here and 40 Afs there – peanuts. I asked them to calculate the supplies cost per orphan ( acouple of dollars) and then make a plan of who to approach. They are going to do this in a very systematic way – it’s a great learning opportunity about leadership skills: scanning, focusing, aligning/mobilizing and inspiring. The latter they have already done by the former still need some work. And then there are the management skills: planning (needs some work), organizing (needs some work), implementing (soon) and monitoring and evaluating (needs a separate lesson).

We then watched the Whale Rider, one of my all time favorite movies about girl power. Each time I see it I have to cry – I was not the only one. We watched it with Ted and five of the six girls, the 6th one was in charge of preparing Iftar. I gave her the DVD to watch later at her leisure, after the cooking and eating and cleaning was done.

By the time the movie was over it was also time to leave so we will postpone the discussion of the movie till Sunday when I pledged to return.

Steve took me out for dinner and then we said our goodbyes. He promised he will finish the chicken curry – a last hurrah from the cook but too much for me, tomorrow morning at 4:30 before he heads out to the airport. I think I will sleep through all of that as it is weekend after all.