Sylvia's Journal

More side-by-sides today: people putting their guns down to pray, the gun remaining within reach of the prayer mat. Policemen in the dark city as we drive back home from dinner with blinking red lights on their white leather bandoliers, as if they are Christmas trees, they look very festive but they are not there for decoration.

The whirlwind of the changes that come from Washington, all requiring new powerpoint bullets, new language, new strategies and pronouncements, sinkl back into the slow Afghan and US government bureaucracies that move at a glacial pace. Never fast enough for Washington, but then what happens, after we respond promptly? I don’t think I have ever seen so many people jump so high when asked, produce written pieces (bullets) and throw things over the wall.

The paperwork needed to be completed for us to ramp up our activities is caught up in perpetual loops it seems, as we need signatures from each of the four US ambassadors we have here and pass through the channels that get to and from them, endless.

Peter did his debriefing with the deputy minister and those who fund us, explaining that it is ludicrous to expect people, who earn less than what is required to pay the rent in a small and substandard apartment, to manage projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars. This seems a sure way to ensure corruption and graft. For a surgeon to make a decent living, this requires a private practice on the side, or rather after having briefly shown up at work to refer patients. They are not supposed to, but could you blame them?

Things don’t add up when you read the plans that are hatched in DC, they never have added up in the past. There is no evidence that they will now; yet, the cynicism coexists with my idealistic fervor that somehow, this time, we are going to make a difference. Maybe this is why I have a hard time expressing an opinion about Afghanistan, no matter how many articles or editorials I read. Everyone seems to be a little bit right and a little bit wrong.

The frustration spills out of the senior government official when he returns from being called out of our meeting. It is dark outside and the government workday ended 2 hours ago but we are in his office for a late meeting that could not be accommodated during regular working hours. He apologizes when he returns and says that he had to attend a group of parliamentarians who came for some sort of photo opportunity with a ‘weak’ colleague, someone whose name he is anxious to give us, but he won’t because he can’t. I wonder if he can’t because of loyalty or because of fear.

All these extremes are side by side here: loyalty and fear, committed and creative professionals on one side and abusers of resources that don’t belong to them on the other.

I accidentally crossed paths with the minister who hurried by with his entourage of heavily armed people – I was told to freeze on the stairs, I did, as this was an order, not a suggestion. Here is a doctor who has made an oath to heal people but is entourage is trained to kill. I wonder what life is like when you are always surrounded by armed guards. It must affect your view of things.

In the small windowless room outside the office of a woman I am working with are three heavily armed guards and on the bookcase a bulletproof vest; the colors are camouflage green and brown and dark somber suits for the civilians. But my counterpart, next door is dressed in a pink dress with little flowers and matching scarf. I notice the contrast, these two opposites, side by side.

On the way home, later, after an Indian dinner with EC consultants we hurry past dark streets populated mostly with armored vehicles and men with guns and suddenly there is this two-storey TV screen that shows a commercial of a housewife in what could have been Greenwich Connecticut, washing expensive dishes in an expensive sink in a large an expensive kitchen with Joy. If not an ad for dishwashing liquids, it must be an advertisement for a bank – this is the place where you get money if you have it or this is what you want money for.

Our consultant Peter has explained to me that there is need corruption (comes from getting a salary that doesn’t cover basic needs), and shows up as the petty bakshish that you have to pay to get your name on a list or allowed to enter someplace for a service that is otherwise free. And then there is the greed corruption that is probably stimulated by the Greenwich kitchen ad because it also promises things that are supposed to come along with money (joy, loving wife, caring husband, obedient and smart kid).

Some Afghans still live in the stone ages, others live in Connecticut and some live in la-la land, all of them side-by-side.

The ministry of health didn’t pay its internet bill and as a result no one has been able to connect with the internet for days now. I got to send out an email through our ISP on behalf of the office of someone high up in the government. It felt a little naughty and scary but I did hit the send button anyways.

We are all busy reading the 1001 analyses and op-eds that have flooded the web in the wake of the Obama speech. Axel had time in between his Dari lesson to find them, pdf them and send them onwards. Reading all of this could easily become a full time job. We are pleased to see that many people picked up on the absence of the civilian aid business in the speech but we are learning that we are not forgotten, just not center stage.

The nexus between civilians and military is an interesting one that probably would require the recruitment of anthropologists rather than development workers or military folks. I think that these two US tribes are further apart from each other than the Pashtuns and the Tajiks. Throw those ethnic groups into the mix and it gets even more complicated, the languages alone (military speak, aid speak, Pashto speak, Dari speak, etc.)

When I applied for my job it didn’t say anything about ‘able to work in an environment that is in constant flux.’ Now I understand why: we are in a constant holding pattern: holding for the elections, holding for the certifying of the election results, holding for the recount, holding for the runoffs, holding for the inauguration, holding for the announcement of the new cabinet….this is where we are now. The announcement of the new cabinet was supposed to have happened today but the grapevine says Tuesday. The grapevine also says that most of the ministers will be replaced (sacked?) and many will be investigated. We are wondering whether we should brace for something.

Still, we try to go on with our business as if our work is regular work with timesheets, workplans and quarterly reports. In the meantime Axel continues to learn Dari and is now able to write me short Dari email about being sick of eating lamb fat (that’s what you get for complaining about too much chicken): Nan besyar charb bud. There was (bud) too much fat (charb) and now he doesn’t feel all that well.

Although part of my weekend, I was summoned to the Ministry of Health to attend the weekly staff meeting of one of the director generals. Two people representing projects from the European Commission also attended but they work at the ministry anyways and don’t have to come from afar.

We were given a brief presentation about the government’s efforts to support the provinces and why it doesn’t work. There are valiant efforts to make it work but they bump up against something that is ill-defined: departments that do not respond but we don’t know why. Is it intentional? Resource-related? No consequences? Still, the analysis of a year worth of meeting minutes that raised issues that are still unresolved, was interesting.

Although none of us represented donors, we were all asked to take back requests about funding a provincial conference to celebrate the things that did get resolved and the good men and women (very few) that are actually serious about improving the health of their provincial populations. A little over a year ago I attended a similar conference that was hijacked by a UN agency that will remain nameless.

In between meetings I did the rounds of our staff seconded to the ministry to make sure they were warm; I had after all approved the purchase of gas heaters. One was not used because it didn’t work. This should not be surprising (I have never seen so many new items malfunction or not function), but the inaction from one of our staff who is supposed to be a management coach was disappointing. I couldn’t help myself and gave a short lecture about taking action when a result is not the one that was intended.

The 2nd meeting was canceled when I showed up, also not uncommon. There is a lot of nervous movement in the ministry because the cabinet announcements will be made tomorrow. The big question is, will the Minister of Health remain, and if so, will his top team? I just learned that most of the ministers will be replaced and many investigated, so the nervousness is understandable. So things are a little on hold for now until we know our (new or old) counterparts.

I walked over to the physical therapy place at the 400-bed hospital across the street and found the staff eating their lunch. I was promptly invited to a tasty lunch of rice and spinach, accompanied by green tea. Few of the staff spoke English, except the project manager for the demining project who lived in England for some time. We talked about the courage it takes to become a de-miner (the opposite of a suicide bomber) and the terrible tragedies created by mines. It is what keeps everyone in the orthopedic and PT practice busy.

I ended up spending a few hours at the hospital, sitting by the woodstove and speaking in broken Dari and English with the other PTs and the one patient. At some point there was excitement in the air because the first snow was falling. The Dari word for snow is ‘barf’ and this was then the ‘awal barf.’ They tried to explain to me the local ritual surrounding first snow but I didn’t understand enough words to make sense out of it. It included a plastic bag, an envelope, pretending that the melting snow in the plastic bag in the envelope was a letter from France or Britain and then running away laughing. Everyone had a good laugh about either the joke or me not understanding, and I laughed along with everyone else.

I was given a new exercise that requires a small children’s ball which necessitated a significant detour through a choked Shari-nao. I chose the 2 dollar ball over the 30 cent ball because it was not as dirty, the cheap one had been hanging in a net through several seasons.

The Habibia school did not let us walk on their tracks for our weekly Friday airing. But we didn’t mind since we have discovered a much nicer walk in the ‘high-up gardens’ ( Bagh-e-Bala), the park surrounding a small pleasure palace that overlooks Kabul’s Parwan quarter.

This time we could actually get into the palace and even onto the roof. It is a lovely small palace inhabited by 3 wizened old looking men, who were huddling around a small stove on which they make tea and, presumably cook their meals. There is no furniture and no heat. The only thing in the large echoing hall that reminds the visitor that this was once a place of luxury is the enormous crystal chandelier that hangs lonely from the decorated ceiling.

Outside the gardens are neglected, as is the building itself, last restored in the 60s according to Nancy Dupree guided tour of Kabul number III. A large swimming pool sits in front of the palace, with a high diving board and two enormous floodlights that must once have lit the large terrace.

After our walk we visited Turquoise Mountain in its restored fort, a little ways down from the palace. A young sales associate gave us a tour of the workshops where exquisite wood carving is done in the traditional Nuristani style, the calligraphy studios, the jewelry place and the store itself with its high-end products, most of which have one more 0 on their price tags than I am used to. It’s a little incongruous to see such items here in Kabul and apparently they do their best business in Dubai, New York and other places with money; the local market couldn’t sustain a place like this.

We ended up, once again, for a late lunch at the Herat restaurant where we found our colleagues who were returning from their weekly Chicken Street outing, carting more bags of stuff to Guesthouse zero and beyond. The waiters at the Herat restaurant are starting to recognize me, as do the little petty traders at Chicken Street who call me Sofia and offer to me my bodyguard for a dollar (life’s cheap here).

We bought Axel some knitted socks to keep his feet warm now that it is getting noticeably colder. I tried on some fur hats that you can safely wear here but probably not in the US or Europe but I decided it wasn’t cold enough for that. The inventory of many shops has shifted to winter stuff but with few foreigners around, I am wondering who is buying all this stuff.

For dinner we went to Guesthouse 26 where Iain and Paul reside when they are not in Granada and France respectively. We were treated to a Stella Artois and goat cheese on naan for cocktails and a Cote du Rhone to accompany our dinner, such a treat. We resolved the problem of Afghanistan and, with a big nod to Pavlov and a little nod to Skinner, we concluded that it is all about operant conditioning. And for this we do need the extra boots on the ground, against the loud protestations of my inner anti-military voice.

Axel surprised me by getting up before me and setting the birthday table with croissants from the French bakery and a fake flower arrangement selected with great care in our local shopping street with the help of a driver. Getting real flowers would have required a trip across town that would have taken half a day.

Hajji Rahim, the driver who took me to the office stopped along the way to pick one of the last roses alive on our route and offered it to me as a birthday present. That made for lots of flowers, one real and many fake on this 58th birthday.

The rest of the day was entirely in the service of the US counter-insurgency strategy (COIN), producing documents that indicate how what we do relates to Obama’s speech (I could find one line, on page 5) and indicating our approach to regionalization and Afghanization, two important new words in our vocabulary although the actions behind them are not new to us at all. The internet went down at critical moments of the collaborative writing exercises and we rushed hither and thither with pen-drive to make up for the disconnectivity.

In the meantime Axel went on an outing into the old city to look for a remote and an all purpose DVD player so that we can watch Seinfeld when we are really tired and incapable of doing anything else.

For dinner we went to Razia who had cooked one of the most elaborate Thanksgiving dinners I have had in a long time, including two elephant chickens, stuffing and all the usual and unusual Thanksgiving trimmings. For desert there was everything, from a birthday Schwarzwalder Torte, including candles, for me, 2 apple pies, pomegranates, a fruit mousse and ice cream.

Joining in the fun was an eclectic company of people, a Syrian from Duxbury, a NARC, a young and an old engineer, a young woman from the US army, our film maker friend , a young Kenyan health policy specialist who works for Agha Khan and anIndian American peacenik who runs two NGOs in addition to having a job and, just like me, is getting calls for peace and against extra troops from her Quaker friends in the US.

This week is the week of Sinterklaas in Holland and, as I had hoped in Afghanistan as well. As it turned out, Sinterklaas did not show up at the heavily guarded Dutch embassy, not even in a tank, because there were no kids. Axel was particularly disappointed.

We did meet all sorts of interesting people, not just Dutch, and an entire military delegation from Holland, obediently sipping their water while we had our Heinekens. I also met an old friend from my study years in Leiden who now happens to be the ambassador.

We couldn’t be dropped off at the embassy entrance because it is in the no-no zone where the Indian embassy got blasted twice. The second time blew all the doors and windows out at the Dutch embassy but everything was nicely repaired, a fire blazing in the fireplace, Sinterklaas candy spread out on dishes everywhere and an unlimited supply of Heineken en good South African wine.

I eavesdropped on the conversation between the ambassador and various generals and colonels and marveled at how different the Dutch look at the situation here: the development and diplomacy pillars are large – I am still combing through Obama’s speech to find the US development pillar. If it is there at all, it’s tiny.

I had a long conversation with my colleague Ali about the American approach and he sighed deeply – for those 30.000 times 1 million dollar a soldier a year, couldn’t the Americans just help set up some local businesses, agri- or other, to help people back on their feet, hire some people to keep the place save and employ locals? Yes, why not?

The Obama speech is like the proverbial flapping of wings of a butterfly on one side of the world, creating a storm of requests from our donor here in Kabul for this or that statement about our work, the impact of our work and the Afghanisation of our work, presumably so that questions asked in DC can be answered compellingly and with speed. We are scrambling.

Still, in between all of this I managed to witness the birth of the idea of a Masters of Public Health Program within the Kabul Medical University – a huge step forward, very exciting. I accompanied Ali who is on the task force that will design the program, but skipped out early to join our After-Eid Bingo party that I had organized with some of my Afghan colleagues.

The party was a bit chaotic, but then, what else could it be when you try to feed 200 people out of plastic bags with small Styrofoam containers with chicken, kebabs, rice, fruit, yoghurt and coca cola. Guesthouse staff showed up, drivers, day laborers, gobbling up more meals than I thought possible, and then trying to keep them afterwards for a game of bilingual Bingo with real prizes. It was good old fashioned fun, something I think we could use some more of given the general sense of doom people feel after the Obama speech, no matter how inspiring – who really believes that more guns and boots can lift spirits.

To Afghanize or not was the verb-of-the-day, and will probably continue to be the verb-of-the-week and even verb-of-the-month after Obama reveals his Afghanistan strategy while we are asleep. Our funder asked us to indicate how we will transfer everything we do to Afghan entities, public or private, describe it in one or two pages, and have it submitted by yesterday.

It is one thing to build capacity, our mandate, so that civil servants can run the public health system on their own; it is an entirely different thing for them to receive and manage US government funds with all the myriad of strings attached.

All our local staff and consultants have to undergo a ‘terrorist check’ to certify that they are not terrorists before they can be paid with US government dollars. I am trying to imagine how this will be handled after we are gone and a local entity is in charge.

The push to Afghanize sounds nice on paper and fits nicely with the 8-years-from-now exit strategy that Obama will promise; but it doesn’t match the equally strong push to bring transparency to this country by imposing countless controls that are hard enough for us to put into effect.

This complex and sudden demand from our donor kept us at work long after our Afghan colleagues went home. For over an hour we discussed options and scenarios over cellphone speaker phones with Alain in the DRC, our Chief of Party who is sick in Peshawar and colleagues at HQ in the US. It is good that we couldn’t see each other and no one saw how much I yawned. It was another 12-hour day.

Earlier in the day I received a call from a gentleman who spoke loud in halting English and mentioned the word Holland a few times. I couldn’t for the life of me understand who he was and what he wanted from me until he showed up a few hours later at my office and I discovered he was the brother-in-law of my brother’s assistant at the University of Tilburg’s school of law.

He invited Axel and me to come over for lunch and meet his wife, Zeebah, next Friday. He lives in one of the apartment complexes across town put down by the Russians and called Mikroyan (short for MicroRayon). Seeing the buildings you would not have to be told that the Russians built the place; it requires no imagination.

We visited of one of my colleagues in asimilar block a few weeks ago. I imagine that it is similar: poorly heated, bullet holes on the outside, small apartments with dumpy stairwells.

Axel was involved in another kind of capacity building of the cook. It looks like pizza is still a bit out of reach (blank stare) but the Irish stew Axel pulled from the internet came out quite nice. It was our first lamb for dinner in our new home after indicating that we had had enough after one month of chicken.

I had left an illustrated list for the housekeeper and cook with, among others, a picture of a chicken with an X drawn through it. It worked. Axel signed his email telling me about his capacity building in the kitchen with the Dari words for ‘teacher (muallem), student (shogerd) and cook (ashpaz).’ I was very proud of him.

The Eid holiday is over now; the five day break was wonderful although today was mostly a work day, preparing for things that require quiet thinking, something not so easy in the office.

Axel had his fourth Dari lesson and came back home rather exhausted. His increased language ability got tested right away in the car with the driver and one of the guards. They dropped me off at the PT office and, while I was treated, went on a shopping expedition and then returning in time to pick me up again. When I entered the car the windows were all steamed up from the intense Dari lesson that had gone on inside as they waited for me.

I was the only patient in the PT office. People wait for treatment until after the holidays. Why for some, like me, it was still a holiday and for others it was not is a mystery. As a result of the low expected turnout of patient the place was barely heated and everyone walked around wearing heavy coats, except me. I wear a tank top to facilitate the work on my shoulder and avoid having to undress any further. I sat by the small woodstove trying to keep at least the front of me warm.

I received an enthusiastic email from my Manchester-by-the-sea physical therapists with a list of items that they can donate to the team here. I watched Fahima’s face break out in a big grin when she saw the list of goodies that may come in as a Christmas present. These are small wishes but big gifts.

I brought Axel’s nerve stimulation apparatus with me to see if it is similar to what they use that trick my shoulder muscle back into action. It was, and so now I can use it without having to go as often to the PT office. Fahima put two X-es on my shoulder where the i-stim pads should go. Axel took a picture to consult later after the marks are washed off.

We have used up the 5 days of food prepared ahead of time by our cook and I got to cook some of the piled up vegetables myself in the shiny new five story Chinese steamer pan that could serve an extended family over there and here. I am not entirely sure how vegetables are washed, since we are not supposed to drink the water. I hope that the hot steam killed whatever creature may have been lurking in the cauliflower.

After a slow morning of lounging around the house we decided to take Nancy Dupree’s tour nr III as presented on the website of the old Kabul International School which turns out to be a treasure trove of information about Kabul, the old Kabul that is. Many sights listed in the five tours are either not accessible to us, destroyed or barricaded, and the entire tour is premised on traffic moving easily, no longer true, although much better than usually on this 3rd day of Eid.

Rabiallah was our driver and Abibullah our guard. The driver spoke English quite well, having worked for the UN mission in Afghanistan, the one that is now under siege; he even worked with the election committee for the previous elections. A good thing he no longer does as this is rather a dangerous form of employment these days.

The guard spoke no English. Thus, armed with two dictionaries we boarded our vehicle and set out for Bagh-i-Bala, a lovely small palace, white washed with a turquoise cupola, perched just below the Intercontinental hotel with views of the city. Steve had told us that in the 70s this was a popular restaurant destination. He did not join us, preferring to keep the lovely memories from then and instead anxious to get to Chicken Street after a forced absence of several days. The shop owners no doubt called him to say that they were open again.

Despite some attempts by the UN and USAID to fix up the grounds of Bagh-e-Bala it looks a bit neglected. You cannot take the car in and so we went on foot with Abibullah by our side, he practicing his English and we our Dari. It is a nice walk and clearly still a destination for some Kabulis, especially young boys and teenagers. A group of small boys followed us, giggling and wanting to practice their English on us, and we happily obliged. Older young men were sitting on carpeted platforms smoking the shisha, drinking tea and eating some form of dal, inviting us to join us.

It was all very peaceful and lovely with plastic chairs tucked away between the now tired looking roses in small seating areas for eating and drinking tea. Small stall sprinkled across the grounds sold cigarettes, rented out shishas and provided tea and snacks. Unfortunately the small palace itself was out of bounds, its gates padlocked. We were told for the holiday only. Such a shame, it would be the only time that many people could visit it.

After our walk we went to the Herat restaurant in Shar-e-Naw, famous for its shish kebab, cooked on long narrow braziers on the street right outside the entrance to the restaurant. We had kebabs, local yoghurt and limp fries followed by green tea sweetened by the toffees that were served along with the tea.

In the middle of our meal several SUVs stopped outside the restaurant and unloaded their passengers: about 35 warriors, some with Kalashnikovs, following their commander for an Eid meal in the same restaurant. I asked the driver whether we should be concerned about the enemies of these people but he told us not to worry and so we continued our meal while watching the exotic collection of men, quietly eating their holiday meal. The men were also stealthily watching us; we were each curiosities to each other.

On our way home we stocked up on fake beer and Italian coffee at one of the international supermarkets, to arrive at a house filled with diesel fumes. I remained nauseous for some time while we opened all the windows to let the cold air in and the fumes out. I am beginning to wonder whether we should switch to wood burning stoves.