Sylvia's Journal

We completed the last prep day before it is show time tomorrow. We had one more meeting with the General Director to make sure we are all singing from the same sheet. There are a number of grey areas, mostly related to Terms of Reference, Mission, and a series of proposals towards new and different organizational structures that are mandated for the far future but the process by which the transformation will happen is unclear. The process is confounded by the fact that the local staff doesn’t have experience with the proposed new structures and the foreigners are giving different advice, depending on which donor or agency they work for. No wonder people get confused (including me).

While we were waiting in the DG’s office my colleague from Taiwan explained about a concept in her culture that distinguishes capital letter Me from lower cap me. Capital letter Me is about my contribution, in this case here, to the health of Afghans. Sometimes, as a result of big Me’s commitment, small me suffers a bit – in my case, going on crutches to Afghanistan and living the somewhat complicated life of a one-legged person in this country.

But then I see a man, whose lower body is missing, on a little plank with wheels, trying to cross the street and I realize that I am in pretty good shape. I can’t imagine how this man is keeping himself alive. It’s painful to watch him. Yet he carries a smile on his face as he ducks between cars. From our high SUV we can hardly seem him as we get closer as he is so near the ground, but our driver sees him and steers around him.

A little further down the road a fat little boy ran behind a soccer ball that his friend had kicked across the street. Traffic goes slow so he wasn’t in danger but his ball was as it ended up exactly below our wheels and expired with a loud poof. The boy’s face fell and I told the driver that he just killed a soccer ball and that I would report him to driver Fazle who is a soccer coach of Afghanistan’s national team. I am glad it was only a ball although I felt sorry for the boys. There’s not much space for them to kick balls. Childhood in Afghanistan is no picnic.

I carry with me a card that entitles me to a 15% discount for my next meal at La Taverna. I am holding on to it for reasons I don’t understand, maybe it is gratefulness; gratefulness of having walked out with that card.

Our Afghan colleagues in the office were very solicitous. They know we could have been there. They realize that our vulnerabilities fall into the category of such sudden and unexpected attacks. Theirs are more insidious, the knowledge that this, their home, will remain turbulent and that they have to live with this constant stress of being at the wrong place at the wrong time, all the time, not just, like us, for a few weeks.

Part of my job here is providing a container to hold anxiety. Not the anxiety about violence but the anxiety about the work, about counterparts and clients, about straying outside comfort zones and doing things that are different. Especially when the stakes are high (visibility of the work, attendance of high level people, perceived consequences of failure), the anxiety goes up. I am trying to explain that anything experiential, which is pretty much all I do, by definition requires an experience. No amount of explaining can satisfy the need to completely understand how something will be done. Over the weekend I was holding several anxiety containers, a few Afghan and one African, in my hand, some got a little heavy. When they get too heavy I find myself under stress.

The pace of life is slow compared to the US. I used to have difficulty with that but now I don’t mind. I am more Zen about it. Everything will happen at its own time, not necessarily my clock. As a result some pieces for the strategic planning workshop I will be leading in a few days are not quite in place. They will have to fall in place tomorrow, but even that is beginning to look a little iffy. Hopefully I have buffered my timing enough to accommodate pieces looking for a place to fall in during the workshop itself.

I checked out the names on the participant lists and found several people invited (doesn’t mean they will come) who I know from my previous tenure here. A few of them I worked quite closely with and I wrote them to say I look forward to greeting them the day after tomorrow. But then several of the emails bounced.

Our colleague from DC arrived yesterday so we are now three (ladies) in the guesthouse, which is nice company, since we will be spending much more time there than I had planned, given our restricted movements.

The attack on the restaurant where we had dinner only three days ago shook me up and produced a night full of disturbing dreams. This included me sitting in a wheelchair and not being able to navigate myself to a destination I can’t remember.

I Skyped last night with Axel, Sita and Faro, sitting in the early morning sunlight in Manchester, Sita on the eve of her departure for Davos. I already knew about the attack but didn’t want to disturb the call; seeing the little family in our sunny home made me homesick and wanting to beam myself over, out of Kabul for a moment and forget about our vulnerabilities here.

When I woke up and saw that the attack was front page news in the NYT and all over the twitter sphere I figured I better tell Axel. We skyped some more and I was able to calm down and start to think about what next. The Bollywood fashion show we were going to go to next Friday will have to do without us; our security office has placed all restaurants and hotels that are frequented by foreigners out of bounds.

We are allowed to visit families at their homes, which we did today. We spent several hours at the house of a former colleague who was visiting from her new home in Holland. We speak Dutch together, with her Dutch being much better than my Dari.

After a delicious dinner of kofta, qabuli pilao and various salads, the table cloth on the floor was cleared away and we played with the baby, drinking tea, and eating the cookies we brought. We admired the grandsons, theirs in the flesh and mine on an iPAD, bonding us two grandmothers together, whether khala jan (Pashtu), bibi jan (Dari), or Oma (Dutch).

We looked at wedding albums and witnessed the baby’s development, documented in great detail, from zero to his current 7 months as we feasted on grapes from the garden that had been kept alive from the fall. They were sweet and firm, I don’t know how they do it.

And now I am back at the guesthouse and preparing for the busy next week. I am also looking forward to our new housemate who is flying in from Dubai just about now. I had hoped to show her Kabul and all its great eating and other places but I guess her first visit will be less exciting now that these places are off limits. We’d like her to get the right, not the wrong kind of excitement. We simply have to plan more visits to people’s homes, which is actually a much nicer way to learn about Afghanistan.

The work days are long here even in the weekend, which it is today. A couple of hours after the workday ends here the workday starts on the US East coast. I am working on three assignments here in Kabul and another challenging one a month from now. I guess what I am really saying is that I am kind of tired and also a little anxious about getting all the assignments to be designed in such a way that they produce the intended results. I sometime struggle with the notion of ‘not being attached to outcomes,’ which is hard when everybody is urged to use results language. But predicting results is rather tricky in this context and add to the anxieties, not just of me, but of everyone.

Last night I joined the family of M at the Intercontinental for dinner. We met early because of her two young boys who eat early and go to bed early. Afghans generally eat late and the place didn’t fill up until we left, around 8. At that time weddings were going on left and right and the place was full of families. There were a few hotel guests. A group of men entered, grim looking men with their pakul caps and long chemises and baggy pants. We tried to guess who they were and why they were there from. Afghans can tell where other Afghans are from but to me they looked like warlords.I was glad that the Intercon has a strict policy of ‘no weapons.’

The wedding in the hall next to the restaurant was a modern one, which means men and women together in one room. I would call it ultra-modern since the bride wore a bright red dress – hemline above the knee, short sleeves and a daring décolleté. It’s good no Taliban were in the room as they would have ordered her out of the building or maybe stoned her to death. I truly wish the couple well and good luck as they might need it. I also applaud them for doing what they want to do.

Dinner was wonderful. The boys can now speak English quite well because they go to the international school. I brought them books which may be a bit of a stretch but, once started I hope they get hooked. It is hard not to get hooked on Margaret L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time.

Today my housemate and I worked hard during the morning and then went to have a Bento box at Bentayo in Shar-e-Nao with friends and MSH consultants who had not seen much of Kabul. It was a gorgeous crisp winter day with the sun trying to break through the smog. We visited a place to buy gifts and then returned to our respective guesthouses and back to work – Boston and Arlington are just waking up, which reminds me that I am tired and would like to go to bed, even before dinner as I am still full of my Japanese meal.

Today I started with a visit to a person in the ministry who I worked with quite a bit and who has been promoted to high office. We talked about what it is like to be in high office and the high personal cost of serving with integrity. That sounds like a contradiction but the seductions of high office require great moral strength. When I asked ‘what keeps you here?’ one part of the answer was to protect the seat from people who would have less integrity; there are many, unfortunately. The other was the memory of tremendous accomplishments (capacity development and confidence) in the past which show that change for the better is possible. The personal cost of trying to make a difference includes sleepless nights and much stress. I am in awe.

I took the trip to the ministry alone. Getting in and out of the car, into the ministry compound and then across it was a challenge and a half. By the time I arrived at my appointment, having taken about 20 minutes to hobble from the car to my destination, I was exhausted. The green tea served immediately was welcome; as was the comfortable chair I was offered.

To kill the time waiting for the car to take me back I visited some other counterparts. It felt as if I hadn’t been away. All the while my Dari came flooding back in. Armed with my dictionary, remembering words I had not uttered in two and a half years, I became more confident, trying to speak Dari as much as I can; and I am very much encouraged and my errors tolerated.

After my visits there was more time to kill and I took a seat in the courtyard under the lukewarm winter son. It was as if I was holding court: recognizing then this person then that; each one with a big surprised grin when he spotted me, each encounter followed by an invitation to have tea and bread. People didn’t know I had come back. The only problem is the names; I am frantically searching my brain. This is also true for the drivers and guards. I will have to unearth the cheat sheet with all their pictures.

Later in the morning I returned to the directorate where I am to do the strategic planning. In my two and a half years I had never been there. It looks a bit like the stepchild of the directorates – a building that had not seen any maintenance in decades it seemed. When lunch was served I anxiously wondered about visiting the washroom, my hands dirty from holding on to railings. The new clean toilets were far away and only the old ones within reach. These also didn’t seem to have had any maintenance for quite some time. Suffice to say the visit was challenging, especially when we discovered there was no water (quickly found somewhere else), nor soap. I like to think my hands were reasonably clean when our lunch was served.

I presented the design of the upcoming strategic planning process. It’s new and unusual for most people, and a first experience with strategic planning at all. The word is used so freely that it hardly has any meaning, except of being intimidating, in the category of big words. It is clear that we will have to work in two languages and I am grateful for all the hours I have studied Dari as I can detect when the conversation goes off course.

Back home I collapsed and took a little cat nap – my foot aching from all the exercise. I then relaxed till dinner time listening to Scott Peck’ s In Heaven as on Earth, an intriguing fantasy about the afterlife, while knitting Faro’s Peruvian hat. My guesthouse mate heated up our dinner and brought it to my room, so I didn’t have to do any more hobbling for the day. I am very grateful for her good care.

My first day in the office was emotionally and physically exhausting. It was wonderful to see my colleagues and office staff after nearly two and a half year. We rattled off our greetings in Dari, which soon came back to me. I shook hands with the men and I embraced the women, my sisters who had hung in there. Unfortunately some who I had hoped to see had left.

I hobbled on my crutches from one side of the large compound to the other; never have I walked such distances since my operation. Sometimes I had to navigate around or through patches of ice, and multiple times up and down stairs. By the time I came home I collapsed on the bed, realizing only then how tired I was. Of course there was also the adjustment to the new time zone and the fact I hadn’t slept that well, waking up in the middle of the night.

Sunday is the first day of the week and the offices have been without heat for 2 days, so the place is stone and bone-chilling cold. The little kerosene heaters have a hard time to offset that kind of cold which seeps through all the single pane windows and even through the walls. I hadn’t dressed quite for that and by the time the day was over my feet were like ice cubes.

My reunion with my mentee M was long awaited and wonderful. She showed me proudly her new driver’s license. During times of ice and snow she drives a car to work with her driver sitting in the back with her boys. As long as there is a man in the car (her driver or husband) the other (male) drivers in traffic leave her alone but the moment she is alone they try to bump into her, lower their windows to yell obscenities at her, and cut her off. It is infuriating that grown up men can be so childish. But she’s used to it and shrugs it off; I suppose it is the only way to survive here.

My Dari is coming back quicker than i had expected. I had my security briefing in Dari with only an occasional translation. I carry a small dictionary to refresh my memory. My 2 years of lessons pay off as I can conjugate verbs and know sentence construction.

In the evening we went to see my friend Razia Jan (from Razia’s Ray of Hope and Deh Sabz’ school for girls), with, to my great surprise, another dear friend who was lodging there until she gets her fiancee visa for the US to join her future husband.

As usual Razia jan had cooked a spectacular and abundant meal (royal rice and plenty of side dishes) and entertained us with great stories about her attempts to provide opportunities for people who had everything going against them (except for Razia’s helping hands) only to find the attempts to help rebuffed or her generosity abused.

Razia jan is preparing for a fundraising fashion show, like one we attended years ago. We had a preview of the dresses and coats that will be displayed, hundreds of them. Judy took advantage of the selection and got herself a nice patu wintercoat.

I was exhausted enough that I slept through the night and woke up to a day of leisure as it is the prophet Mohammed’s birthday today.

I had so concentrated on getting to Afghanistan that the reality of living in Afghanistan for 4 weeks without my knee scooter and without Axel had escaped me. That really sunk in when I arrived at the guesthouse. With crutches you cannot carry anything, not even a water bottle from the kitchen to my bedroom. Luckily my colleague Judy, who had arrived a week earlier, was very solicitous. All I had to do was send her a text message and within seconds she was in my room, bringing and taking stuff as needed.

My bedroom and bathroom door were equipped with a tightly set automatic door closure gizmo at the top. This meant I had to push with all my weight to open the door and then manoeuver quickly through it with my crutches, to repeat the same to enter the bathroom. It was a rude awakening from having a commode next to my bed, dutifully emptied each morning by Axel.

But Judy came to the rescue with a knife and unscrewed the gizmo so doors would stay open or opened with a light push. The next challenge was the large bathroom with its slippery tiles, making moving across the wet floor with my crutches rather tricky. A plastic garden chair had been brought in but after the shower navigating the place was daunting. I put a towel on the floor that, even though soaking wet, would give me some grip. Taking a shower had become a complicated undertaking. There were a few moments of panic, how was I going to manage?

But after a good night sleep (on a rather uncomfortable mattress) and several successful trips to the (now dry) bathroom had given me more confidence that I could manage my domestic life. With my boot on I began to practice putting 50% weight on my left leg and discovered that I could walk with a cane in my left hand; no pain.

I had asked Judy to check out the mattresses in the other, still empty, guestrooms and do an exchange but decided I should test them myself. And so I discovered that I could easily ascend the stairs. One floor up, next to Judy, was a nicer, brighter and less garish bedroom with an en-suite bathroom so I decided to move up. The housekeeper and Judy repacked my stuff and moved me in no time, once again unscrewing the door closers.

My previous room has green lights recessed in a series of curved layers (like an upside down terrace) in the ceiling. My new room has green recessed light along the edges of the ceiling and four blue lit panels in the middle. The builder/architect/owner clearly likes colored lights. In the dining room we have a chandelier with lights around the base that constantly change color: from red to blue to purple to green and back.

For lunch we decided to venture out into Kabul to see how easy I could move around. I left the crutches at home and took the cane that Tessa had given me for Christmas. Although I walk slowly and deliberately, I was able to span the short distances from house into car and from car into restaurant without any trouble or pain. Having my right hand free to find support from walls and banisters or carry something, was liberating. I am making progress just in time!

We ate at a lovely French restaurant in Taimani that was new to me. The indoor restaurant encircles a large and lovely garden, now in deep winter sleep but the rose bushes are pruned and ready for spring. We have more plans for outings this week, to dine with friends, and reconnect with Kabul. The cook will have light duty for the coming week.