Sylvia's Journal

When I told the spa ladies that there would be three more visits they pulled out all the stops: a pedicure, a manicure (wasted on me, a nail biter), a massage and a facial. I spent hours in the backroom and kitchen of the armored vehicle sales office.

With a little over 4 weeks to go I am starting to give away things I don’t want to bring back to the US. For Lisa and her staff I packed up some massage oils that Axel had bought but which I can’t really use on myself, plus some nail polish and tiger balm, unopened since we returned from India. In return she filled the Starbucks bag I had carried the goodies in with goodies from her spa – a facial cleaner, anti-wrinkle cream, lip gloss and skin cream.

For lunch I joined my reporter friends from India at the Wakhan Café and was able to hook them up with contacts for their upcoming trip to tell a story about maternal health in Badakhshan. We also talked about the emphasis on sustainability from the new leadership in the US compound and how healthcare is supposed to pay for itself as the US government contribution will be drastically reduced in the coming years. It will be very turbulent and risky.

I returned to Chicken Street, as if the Steve fever had infected me after he had gone. I bought the last of the items requested by Sita and then returned home to join her on Skype with a facilitator couple she had run into who, like me, trying to connect people to each other by more congenial workshop, conference and event designs. They are part of a group of like-minded individuals who don’t think that powerpoint presentations by experts are helpful to connect systems to themselves. That conversation made me realize how I miss having a professional support network within reach.

While I was finishing my dinner the landlord showed up with wives, children, mothers and what not. The guard had asked my permission to let him in and I agreed but decided not to come out to greet him and his entourage. They poked around the garden and inspected the pears, apples and grapes. The women walked up onto the terrace and pressed their noses to the glass to peek inside my living room – it was rather intrusive. I tried to ignore them and decided to hold firm on not meeting them as my dislike was instantaneous. The whole family consisted of overweight people, confirming a stereotype of fat landlords who are riding the wave of foreigners who are colluding in distorting the local economy. Not only is he making a killing on the rent (over 2000 dollars a month for a house that probably fetched 90 dollars a month during Taliban time) but we have also improved the place quite nicely, so the next renter can be charged even more.

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.

Today I had another long meeting in a windowless room. This time we met in the basement of a large garish poppy house – the office of one of our sister organizations, for our monthly meeting with other USAID health projects. There are familiar faces, friends, very dear friends and colleagues with whom we sometimes work together. Everyone told everyone else what each project is doing and we look for overlaps, duplications, common interests (like data quality) or using each others’ materials.

Afterwards Steve and I skipped to Chicken Street; Steve to pay off his debts and buy Afghan socks ordered by his wife; me to get two traditional Afghan instruments, the rhubab and the tabla, for Sita and also to get sizes and prices of the rugs she was eyeing. Steve, having less debt than he had expected ended up buying more stuff such as a large milk container of the kind Dutch farmers used to put by the side of the road for pick up by the cooperative tractor before things were mechanized. How it got to Afghanistan we don’t know – maybe they have them here too.

It was beautifully etched and turned into an ‘objet d’art’ that has long ago lost its utility as an agricultural implement. Steve has a weakness for such things and the merchants on Chicken Street know it. The thing had been scrubbed and oiled and was so smelly that I won’t let it into my house. With this and another instrument and God knows what he added another few kilos to his ever growing pile of stuff that will become part of my shipment.

I bargained with the owners of the Central Asian jumble shop until we agreed on a Ramazan price for the instruments that left everyone happy. I also sized and priced the rugs that Sita and Jim had identified as interesting in my ‘last call for rugs’ to the home front. Carpet dealer Wahid helped me measure each one and then put a price on them. I emailed all the data back to discover that after the instruments Sita has essentially run out of money. That happens easily here.

We dropped our loot off at home to return to the office for the last and most useless hour of the day. Energy levels of our staff are dipping down to levels close to stupor earlier and earlier and the entire compound feels drained at 3 PM when the buses leave for home.

Tonight was my second attempt to organize a jailbreak for someone who lives in the US government bubble, a friend of a friend. I had invited her last Friday but realized too late I had given her the old directions to our house that have Axel’s phone number on them as well as the number of my old phone. I never checked.

The USAID driver got terribly lost and no one answered the phones she called and so she returned home. My nicely set dinner table, candles and all, was for naught and the food shriveling up in the oven. Steve, having earlier gone to a barbecue given in Kanuk House had already eaten and so my dinner party sizzled.

After having acquired the right phone numbers we set another night (tonight). It would be just the two of us as Steve had already made his own plans. I hadn’t put the candles out but everything was ready when the phone call came that she needed a few more signatures from superiors before she could leave the bubble. This is not an easy thing, apparently and dinner time had already arrived so we gave up again.

And so, not expecting to be successful a third time she will invite me into the bubble to share a nice all-imported-American-food dinner in the cafeteria. It is like going for dinner to America except for the barricades and sandbags. Her need to escape has diminished as she has gotten her transfer to her dream post in Latin America – reward for a year of bubble living – and leaves Afghanistan for good in 3 weeks.

Sitting for two and a half hours in a small windowless room underneath fluorescent lights, behind barricade upon barricade is not good for my psyche. By the time we emerged from the meeting with our donor I felt completely drained. It was a good meeting in that it provided an opportunity to clarify and refine assumptions and next steps, though it did not require my presence specifically. I wouldn’t have minded to be informed later.Sometimes this inclusiveness is too much.

Back in the office I finished bottle after bottle of water when no one was looking.The only energy I had left for the remainder of the day was watching the video that was made of the conference. There is about 4 hours of footage recording every minute of every speech with some pans mixed in with close ups of the audience. It is not a great piece of artistry but an honest record nevertheless. I have to watch all four hours to determine what we will do with it.

Anyone who ever speaks in front of a microphone should be forced to watch a video of his or her performance. Since I was one of the speakers I got to watch myself and discovered that I mumble. People here are polite and won’t risk offending a foreigner by giving that kind of feedback, so watching myself was useful. I have a few more hours of watching the remainder of the video. It is turning out to be an ideal activity for the hot and sleepy last hour of the day since anything else would require too much energy.

Back home, sitting in my cool living room and watching endless re-runs of the London riots I finished the tiny cashmere sweater for Sara’s baby, just in time to go home with Steve and, hopefully just in time for its arrival. It is made from the wool that I picked up at the wool factory – I have seen it spun from its raw material – soft fluffy goats’ chin hairs.

Now on to the next project while I wait for things to clear up at work – promised signatures to appear and my resignation being called in. Neither has happened so far.

My representational duties took me to the Serena hotel, only my third time there in five years. A sister (sometimes competing, sometimes collaborating) American organization was helping the ministry to launch its strategy to improve quality of health services.

Organizing a conference or workshop during Ramazan is in some ways easier as you don’t have to deal with tea breaks and lunches and the factor of people disappearing after lunch is not an issue to be considered when designing the program. On the other hand the energy levels dip deep down quickly, not to get up until after the sun sets.

When we left the conference room each one of us was presented with a lunch box that included two sandwiches, a small packet of ketchup, a juice drink, a handful of the chips that fit together like spoons and come in a tube and some dates. I was so hungry that I had eaten everything by the time we reached our office.

The rest of the day, at work and then at home, I edited what I hope will be blog posts about how the leadership program has changed things in the lives of people who have participated at one time or another.

For dinner Steve and I we went to the Gandamack Lodge, a lovely guesthouse in the middle of town with a beautiful garden where I have been dining a lot lately. Although the food is overpriced and not spectacular the setting is lovely and they serve wine. We picked a spot with a corner bench below a grape arbor with bunches of nearly ripe grapes dangling above our heads.

Arranging dinner with friends is complicated here and now more so than ever. First there is the checking whether the friends are allowed to go to the selected eating establishment (everyone has their own allowed and non allowed lists it seems with only very few that overlap). And then there is the timing of the outing. Our dispatcher told us we would have to be picked up at 5:45 to make sure the driver and guard would not be stuck in a traffic jam and miss the breaking of the fast exactly at the time of sunset.

But by the time our friends arrived, two dropped off by a very grumpy driver who was going to miss the breaking of the fast, the entire restaurant staff disappeared to break their fast – leaving all of us diners to our own devices for nearly an hour. As it turned out, by coming early we had secured ourselves drinks and appetizers before everything shut down. With this regime a dinner takes a few more hours than usual.

Sabina and Andrea showed up from Delhi to investigate maternal health in Badakshan while Connie and Frank, co-teaching volunteers at SOLA, came from their Eupol barracks. All four of them are native German speakers even though they stuck to English for Steve’s sake (I can understand them fine but the speaking is a little rusty).

I returned to Connie the English vocabulary books she had gotten for Axel to teach from when he was still here. I suggested she try to use them and eventually leave them at SOLA. I also gave her the Cat in the Hat, a book Axel had ordered for the girls to practice their short and long vowels. She promised she will take over that task. But for now the cat is either out of the bag (an expression our Afghan colleagues love) or in a Eupol bullet proof vest.

Steve said he was going to fast for 36 hours but changed his mind around 4 PM. That was a good thing since the cook had prepared a meal that was too much for me. Now things are back in balance and the food supply reduced to manageable levels. Such a luxury, I realize, while I watch the desperate situation of the Somali displaced.

A and I met with A’s future boss at the ministry, Doctor J. I am very pleased that I sent the two off to Dubai for a course on management and leadership as the effect of his two weeks of training is visible. Upon his return Dr. J. has taken the bull by the horns and is moving ahead of us, drawing us along for support rather than the more common practice of technical assistance agencies heading out in front of the ministry, dragging willing or unwilling counterparts along.

It is what was supposed to have happened a long time ago. Watching him taking the lead makes me giddy with excitement. I whisper softly to myself, “move, move, while you can,” as there are always unexpected (and sometimes rumored) leadership changes that can make all the difference, positive – we hope, but sometimes negative, setting everything back by a few miles, months or years.

It is very hot in Kabul these days. Every day it seems a little hotter than the previous day. In the Human Resources section of the ministry the electricity is often gone as they say in Dari. In the stifling heat, as if to play a joke on me, my hot flashes kick in. In those situations it is good to have a chador – I use it like a towel.

On the way back, stuck in traffic, the airco in the car could hardly manage. I felt faint from hunger and thirst and wondered about my colleagues as I am not even fasting for the full 16 hours they do. But when I go to the ministry I refrain from eating and drinking. Back in the office I was parched and drained a small bottle of water in one fell swoop.

I went home early to receive the supervisor of the packing company underling who came yesterday and was found to be wanting in his surveying of my packing and shipping needs. The boss walked around with a clipboard and a measuring tape and identified the items, mine and Steve’s, that needed special boxes. He thinks I may be a little heavier than the young man indicated yesterday. He left me with paperwork to fill in for insurance and US customs. I think I have about 5 weeks to do this. The day of my departure is still not clear. It depends on whether I receive a pink slip this week or whether our contracts officer notifies our funder of my resignation. Whichever comes first plus 30 days will be my departure date. I am still thinking mid September.

Everything is slow, lethargic, even the hours of the day that usually go by so quickly. The weekend was endless, long enough to knit a baby sweater and watch a bunch of movie and about 6 repetitions of everything on EuroNews, BBC and Aljazeera. No one can say that I don’t know what’s happening in the world.

In the morning a young man from the moving company came to survey the stuff I plan to ship back home. He scribbled down some notes on a piece of paper and guessed 800 pounds. I think he is a little off and he will be even more off if Steve goes on another shopping spree – something that is entirely possible.

Since Steve appears to like the buying more than the having, I am taking two magnificent instruments off his hands – for Sita and Jim. To complete their wish list I will have to go to Chicken Street at least one more time.

At the language school another student was asking me why I continued to take lessons when I know I am leaving in about 6 weeks or less. I explained that there are some people in the world who love learning languages, especially if there is a chance at immersion, and other people who dislike learning languages and that I belonged to the first group.

I can only take one class once a week now because of Ramazan – after work hours is too late so all that remains is Saturday. My teacher and I agreed I would do one hour of Dari and one hour of Pashto. We are reading moral stories inspired by former Education Secretary William Bennett, translated into Dari.

One of the stories is about the Dutch boy who sticks his finger in the dike and saves a town (altruism) and others are about honesty, courage and such. I am to read the Dutch story (that isn’t Dutch) and tell it in my own (Dari) words next week.

In the second hour we are studying Pashto. Learning Pashto this late in the game may seem silly but I love it. I want to make some progress on my Pashto which has stagnated a bit since my Monday class ended. I completed the short course but am far from saying anything meaningful. My new teacher, the head teacher of the language school, suggested an approach that seems a bit more effective than that of my previous teacher. We are using an adult literacy primer to avoid the confusing transliteration of the short course I completed. It is printed on cheap paper and with pictures that have been photocopied from poor photocopies. Another example of technical assistance, I suspect, that has not produced much of a legacy to be proud of.

It is hard not to go to Chicken Street when you have Steve as a house guest. The pile of stuff for the US has increased a bit more but now I am keeping things on display – our living room is getting increasingly interesting.

After a pedicure and massage I joined Steve at the Wahid’s where the repaired carpet was waiting for me. The repair job, for 200 dollars, was extraordinary. These things are done in people’s homes in family businesses where the craft of carpet repair is handed from parents to children, generation after generation. Wahid was so enchanted with the carpet , a Caucasian from the area just north of Baku, that he offered to buy it from me if ever I would get tired of it.

After Wahid we paid a visit to Mr. Khoshal which means Mr. Happy in Dari. He is indeed always smiling and was very happy to see Steve, someone who has contributed considerably to his business. We pawed through piles and piles of embroidered pieces from Central Asia, some in their original state and some cut from clothing. It is a mystery to us how people living in ill lit places, or as nomads, in places where there is no JoAnne Fabrics when you run out of yarn or lose your needle can produce those tiny perfectly consistent stitches; just threading what must be a very small needle seems like a miracle.

We broke our 2nd shopping spree in a row with lunch at the Bistro, a restaurant that caters to foreigners, and thus is open during Ramadan. Our driver and guard were not very happy with our long stay in town as the day was hot and the waiting long. I look forward to be able to simply get in a car and do what I want to do without imposing on others, even though driving us around is part of their job.

I am knitting like crazy to get a baby gift ready to return with Steve next Friday for a baby that is coming this month, alternating a sampler for Sita and Jim for their upcoming first anniversary. This means that I watch lots of TV or movies.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

In my best third grade written Dari I wrote a note to my boss asking for permission to go on a shopping spree with Steve, leaving the office an hour before the end of the work day. He wrote me back, in handwriting that I couldn’t quite read on my own, in poetic Dari, that it was OK. My next goal in my lessons is to be able to read handwritten Dari. I can already read some of the graffiti on Kabul’s mud-brick walls.

The reason for this workday shopping trip was the appointment I have made with a shipping company to come and survey my household goods that will be shipped back to the US soon. I wanted to make sure that some last minute purchases would be included in the estimate. Just like the books I have been bringing home from the office.

Canadian friends followed us in their own car to Chicken Street where Steve took them around to his favorite shops. Of course now that he is no longer living here he had to rein himself in and not buy more stuff himself, just being a guide and making social calls. But my upcoming shipment is a great opportunity for him to add a few things to his own collection which, after I gave him a positive nod, he is now enthusiastically doing. It’s a win-win: I have room, he wants to buy the stuff and the shopkeepers need to save up for Eid.

Some of his acquisitions (from last December when he was here for a few weeks) were already waiting in another guesthouse and have since been moved to mine. The small room where his treasures are stored is filling up slowly, just like his room did when he lived in Kabul. I am sorry I did not chronicle it more closely – I could make a flip-book of the expansion of the stuff.

I would have liked to buy lots of the Nuristani carved wooden furniture, some brightly painted, some old, some new. But I have to remember that we don’t have any space for more stuff back home and I don’t have a guaranteed income after October 1; so I limited myself to two things I have been eyeing for a long time.

In the Central Asia jumble shop I priced several instruments – a last opportunity to bring some home for the musicians in our family – these things are either too large or too fragile to carry home by myself. I expect Sita and Jim to say they want me to buy all of them. I don’t know whether they can be restored to full use – something I assume our musicians have in mind. If not they are certainly magnificent pieces of craftmanship.

The driver picked Steve and me up at the usual time and mentioned “I am resigned.” I was just verifying whether this was in the passive or active tense (had he resigned from the job or was he asked to resign) when it dawned on me that this was the first batch of people who had received their ‘termination’ letters – a 30-day notice requirement under Afghan labor law. We have to give these notices because our project extension has not been formalized by the US government and the current ending date is September 30, 2011.

And so the close out has started to become real. I too will receive my notice, next week. In my case the giving notice and receiving notice adds up to the same thing, with a probably departure date around September 11. It’s a fitting day to leave Afghanistan I think, reminding me why I was here in the first place but also that the ripples of that day have not faded away. On the contrary, here the dust clouds of that event have still not cleared. An extraordinary documentary about Osama Bin Laden that I watched on AlJezeera (English) this morning had the same message.

Despite all our communications with our staff that these notifications are formalities – we can’t quite believe that the doomsday scenario of a total project closure is really what the US government wants – having the letters in their hands made many people nervous and suspicious (why me and not him?) as some people got their notice today and others will get them in two weeks. Deep ethnic rifts and other rivalries instantly rose to the surface.

We, the senior staff, try to explain that a project as large as ours cannot be closed in a few days. Some 200 people have to show up at the administrative offices to clear their advances, return computers and any other equipment, and get various superiors to sign off that they leave clean and clear. And staff is just a small part of the closing. There is real estate, millions of dollars of drugs, inventory to distribute and a thousand other things. Normally a close out of a project our size takes 6 to 4 months; we have less than 2 – hoping, hoping all along that the signatures would materialize in time. We still hope but it is getting close to the wire. A bit like the debt ceiling thing.

This turbulence comes at difficult time. First there is Ramazan in the hottest month of the year, then there are the countless acts of revenge and intimidation by insurgents, Taliban or others, across the country, the unease left by the American’s announcement of withdrawal, the talks about the second Bonn conference with endless speculation and rumors about the role of the Taliban.

One rumor that is being aired on various TV stations is that Karzai is keeping several ministries in the hands of acting (caretaker) ministers so that these can be offered to the Taliban. Health is among them. Among my colleagues they make jokes about serving the old Taliban minister of health again, a lawyer mullah who became a health mullah overnight. If true it will probably undo a lot of our work, especially efforts to bring more women into the healthcare professions.