Sylvia's Journal

Today has been a very intense day with long to do lists that could not be postponed, especially since I will be on vacation as soon as I land in Boston. There were more meetings, debriefings, feedback session, frank talk about things that disappointed or surprised me and attempts to reconcile various versions that different people describe to me of the same event or situation. I am still reconnecting the system to itself on my way out; there is much still to be done.

And then it was time to pack. In the process of opening suitcases and bags I discovered a small bottle of cognac that I had pocketed on the way over in one of the planes. It helped with the packing. The rugs for Sita (a Qala-i-Nao kilim and a Baluchi carpet) are packed in MPs duffelbag (allowing her to travel back with carry on only) which will be inconvenient until they are checked in in Dubai. I am glad I am traveling with Steve as getting on the plane in Kabul is a pain in the neck with too many controls and checkpoints and dragging heavy luggage around. He will have his share of heavy luggage but at least we can commiserate together.

I am so dead tired that I have no energy to write other than that this has been a great trip; I have met wonderful people; working here is hard but rewarding and despite the ugliness of war, the place is beautiful and I am drawn here in ways I am not to other places. Maybe that is because Axel and I became a couple here.

The sky today was deep blue; the roses are out and the grapes are recognizable as baby grapes, The mountains on one side of the city are still covered in snow reminding of winter while on the other side of the city the harsh mountains are softened by a light green veneer that says it is spring.

I am not sure when I will be back as this depends on other trips that are on the horizon. But it will be sooner than 6 months from now – such a long hiatus did not work, that is obvious. There are dynamics at work that require more frequent trips. I actually welcome that – it will allow for more and better connections.

I am seeing from the other side what it takes to get the necessary papers for study abroad, even if it is only a four-week course. My colleague has been working for weeks now on getting the necessary papers to obtain other necessary papers to obtain the coveted visa stamp in his passport. It’s a daunting task that we would mostly acocmplish by telephone and fax. But here it requires going places and sitting in waiting rooms for hours. The to-do list is long and would faze even the most committed student. It all seemed so simple from the receiving end. I have a new appreciation for the hoops that foreign students who come to Boston University have had to jump through.

And so I was on my own while he was in hot pursuit of more signatures. I took the shuttle to the ministry where I now know the female checkpoint guard who wanted my red dress. I can find my way around without Dr. Ali and actually move much faster through the courty than when he is by my side. I find the office where the internal DG staff meeting is held which is about to start, right on time. I am to be a fly on the wall – which I can even say in Dari: magas ba dewal hastam.

Two people from the European Union are seated at the meeting table, the chief sits behind his desk and the rest, his direct reports or their deputies, sit behind the large table or on chairs that are pushed against the wall. It is crowded and sort of intimate. I find a chair in the furthest corner and try to be inconspicuous. I had not intended to be on the agenda but when the meeting is nearly over I am given the floor, introduced as ‘her excellency.’

I know one of the European consultants from my previous trip but not the other. So I speak carefully to avoid stepping on toes or give the slightest hint that I am encroaching on another donor’s territory. I am after all from the American camp.

I introduce myself as a psychologist and explain that my work is about group dynamics, rather than planning. This is a safe; I have not met anyone who explicitly deals with this part of organizational life and there aren’t many ‘rawanshenasa’ around, as my profession is called in Dari.

After the meeting and before I start my rounds of goodbyes I check out the newly renovated unit where two of our expat staff and a large group of Afghan consultants we have hired are embedded to support the ministry’s procurement and contracting work that involves significant amounts of dollars. I come to see how they do the ’embedding’ part. The place is clean, freshly painted and an oasis in the otherwise dingy and dark looking main building of the ministry.

I want to learn from them how we can make the move for the team I work with successful. Unfortunately, for the next batch there aren’t any obviously places to sit, or, even better, empty offices; there is no internet and the toilets are dirty. How this is all going to be worked out is unclear.

I visit the offices of the various officials I have worked with over the last 2 weeks and bid them farewell. It’s a little difficult because the work I did is far from complete – processes that take time, transformations (if they are possible at all) that cannot be orchestrated in half day conversations conducted twice a year.

When we get home we pour ourselves gin tonics with the complements of Steve and sit in the afternoon sun on the steps of Guesthouse 0 and catch up on each others’ workdays with a little bit of gossip thrown in for good measure. Dinner is of the ‘nuke yourself’ variety, with everyone serving him or herself from various newly made and old dishes and then putting them in the microwave one by one – and so we are a little out of sync when we eat but desert gets us aligned again with its many choices (fruit, cake, ice cream) – we leave a little bit of ice cream for a midnight snack for Steve.

MP left before I woke up and the house is a little empty without her. I had breakfast with Janneke who decided to move into guesthouse across the yard in the large and airy room that MP just vacated. Although it is our weekend, everyone is planning to spend most of the day working. Only Steve and I have planned an interruption: he for a haircut and I for a lunch with two young Afghan women I met in Dhaka in December.

Sabera has invited me for lunch to her house. She is employed as a midwife by a sister organization of MSH and also in charge of communication of the Afghan Midwifery Association. There are about 2000 or so midwives in this country where men cannot assist in births and so the numbers need to increase a lot.

Sabera says she doesn’t like to do clinical work because basic supplies are lacking and babies and mothers die because of that – so it can be a very sad profession. Instead she works on policy and programmatic aspects of midwifery education in Afghanistan. Sabera’s fellow midwife Victoria, who was also in Dhaka and who I thought resembled Nuha (Nuha disagreed) is a practicing midwife at one of the hospitals in Kabul – she’s joining us for lunch as well.

Although Sabera’s house is not that far from ours, the MSH driver could not find it. There are no street names (and even if there were, they tend not to be used). As a result it took awhile to get there, with the driver calling Sabera on my cell phone every few hundred yards for progressive instructions.

I loved being lost in the popular neighborhood with its one-storied houses and tiny shops. I would have liked to get out and walk around and poke my nose around the high mud-brick walls to see the gardens hidden behind them but all that is forbidden by our security men, so I feast my eyes and hope we stay lost a bit longer.

Sabera’s house is enormous. Scaffolding surrounds the front of the house where workmen are redoing the brickwork on the façade. Apparently this is the third time in three years this is done and each time, in spite of having bought the most expensive materials, the bricks disintegrate or fall down. It had not occurred to me that you could be killed in Kabul because of bricks falling from a house rather than a gunshot or a bomb. Everyone thinks this is very funny.

We talk about (what else) what it is like to be a young woman in Afghanistan (frustrating) and what they are doing to change this. Sabera’s older sister, also in public health, joins us. She is doing research about traditional practices in rural areas that harm women and children. She has some gruesome tales about wife abuse – all in the name of honor – that can only be classified as torture in my book, even more legal than water boarding.

The law that the President has signed into law is a big step back for Afghan women. Although there is some confusion about the exact wording of the law, it is believed to contain articles that force a woman to obtain her husbands’ permission to leave the house, prohibit work, education or visits to the doctor without him, and essentially legalize rape within marriage. Despite much protest from around the world it seems like it’s a done deal. My hostesses are outraged about it; but when even the female parliamentarians feel powerless to stop this, what can you do?

To cheer them out of their depression at this prospect I talk about the fading Y chromosome and that its days are counted. It makes us all feel good for a moment even though 100.000 years has a lot of days in it and a lot of mischief can be done to women during that time.

Lunch is served on the ground on top of a plastic tablecloth that is spread out over thick carpets. We sit on carpeted cushions that line the walls and enjoy dishes of saffron rice, Kabuli pilau, salad, vegetables and a delicious Iranian dish with tender meat and cooked greens and beans. And while we eat everyone is helping me expand my Dari vocabulary.

The trip back to the guesthouse is short and straight. Time to go back to work and cross more tasks off my list until Maureen from Canada shows up. We were here together last November and we have some catching up to do. She is joining me in guesthouse 0. For dinner we are four again as MP’s place is now taken by Maureen.

As soon as we hit Chicken Street we scattered into various directions, creating a dilemma for the guard sent along with us. In the end he stays with wherever the most of us are. I wonder what he thinks about the seemingly unlimited supply of dollar bills that we, collectively, pull out of our pockets as if they were an ATM.

Steve went off to one place to pay off debts incurred by travelers who never expected to spend so much. He is like our local banker; he would be the most well stocked ATM of us all. After that he goes off on his own and finds more treasures. We never have to wonder where he is because the little street urchins all know him and we can use them as messengers if our phones were ever to fail. Big Steve they call him.

The rest of us went to visit the jewelry store of Mokhtar. There is a downstairs full of rings, earrings and necklaces that go from the gaudy new (as well as some beautiful new) to the most spectacular old jewelry bought up from rural populations from all over Central Asia. It is astonishing how much this region has produced. Upstairs he keeps the really old stuff. As you climb the rickety stairs you pass under an art gallery with awkward art from local artists. It includes a study of a scantily glad woman, right next to fierce looking turbaned men. They are looking in the other direction.

I had memorized where to find the rings that Tessa was interested in by their position in the various boxes that I had sent her pictures of. But the owner had moved and changed the boxes so it took a while to find them. A few were gone, bought by others I suppose, but I found some replacements that I thought she would like.

I was right. “OH MY GOD!!!! THANK YOU!!!!” said the email I got in reply to the photo of the nine rings on my hand, sent to her as soon as I got back home. The bunch included a poison ring (we think), something she wanted but did not mention; how did I know?

When everyone was done and dropped enough dollars in the various little shops to sustain many families for the week, we drove to the Thai restaurant with the orange-pawed fighting dog and the aviary for a Thai lunch. After lunch MP and I were dropped off at the Thai massage place it took us so long to find last week. The rest did some grocery shopping and thenreturned home. We now have ice cream in the freezer – but you have be to be fast or else it is gone.

We were massaged, each on one side of the curtain that partitions the basement, by young, tiny and very strong Thai women. It was like a yoga session. The stretches felt good, albeit a bit painful now and then; it did undo some of the damage of hours and hours of sitting hunched over a computer much every night.

While we were inside a downpour over Kabul turned the streets into muddy rivers floating with garbage and debris. We navigated through the dirty city, past the Kabul zoo where we know the lonely pig is in quarantine somewhere. We would have loved to bring it some edible garbage but the zoo is considered a safety risk so we drove past it.

Although it was my day off, I used the rest of the day to take care of tasks that have come in through email and accumulated into mountains. Most of these tasks have nothing to do with my work here. When I travel like this I end up having two jobs, a day job for my client here and another job after hours for all the people back in the headquarter office (and around the world). I am supposed to be actively coaching teams in Cambodia, Haiti, Pakistan and (lightly) facilitate a virtual worldwide conversation about multi-sector collaboration in addition to completing a third iteration of a book chapter and start writing my current trip report.

I had only part of this done when the car arrived to take us to our farewell dinner for MP who is leaving early tomorrow at some ungodly hour. We picked an Afghan restaurant this time and ordered its ‘Sufi Special’ – a series of courses of small dishes, accompanied by a bottle of red wine, a big treat. We toasted to friendships, good stories, good food and safe returns home.

Afterwards we visited a friend and ex colleague who is living in the house of an ambassador. She is a globetrotting Iranian/American, doctor, writer , musician (and probably much more) who is about to publish her second book. I was sorry to mete her so late in my trip and would love to get to know her better.

At the rather late hours of 11 PM we drove home through a deserted (asleep) Kabul with only men with guns on the street – the people who are there to protect us – that’s the idea. MP sat in the back telling sick jokes from high school, none of which can be repeated here; we laughed until the tears rolled down our cheeks. I wonder what the Afghan driver and guard thought of us; it was probably just as well that they could not understand our rapid fire English.