Sylvia's Journal

Amidst all the bad news from Afghanistan I am getting some encouraging news from there: M. called me to say that the office had a wonderful International Women’s Day celebration and recognized that perseverance does pay off. She was not able to mobilize the women but she did mobilize the men and from what I heard it was a success.

I was in Lesotho on International Women’s Day and no one seemed to pay much attention. In Lesotho the women are running much of the government’s business, a result, I was told many years ago, of women educating themselves while their menfolk went off to the mines. Still, the political drama that played itself out at the top was entirely a men’s affair. I did see only women, not men marching off to some caucus after the split – but it was the men who split, not the women.

The other good piece of news is that Z. got accepted at a school in Rhode Island. This was a glint in our eyes two years ago when a shy Z., hardly speaking English, first showed up at my SOLA classes. But her enthusiasm made her stand out and catch up quickly with her more advanced class mates. I remember fondly reading A Thousand Splendid Suns, or Three Cups of Tea, and how she would be so upset when she got to the end of her allotted paragraph. We need one more piece of good news and that is the visa stamp in her passport. We are holding our breath.

From a more peaceful place came another piece of good news today. The wife of one of the colleagues I spent much time with the last two weeks gave birth to a baby girl, their first born. The baby arrived more or less at the time of my departure, having patiently waited for her brand new dad to be totally available to her and her mom.