Sylvia's Journal

Today our new man had his first day of work. He brought his young wife along for the staff introduction. I assigned one of my young female staff to take her out on a clothes shopping trip into town so she could get arm- and leg-covering clothes.

The two young women had something in common: the experience of going along with a husband to a foreign and alien country. It is an experience that I had too, 35 years ago. I know it is not a small thing. I gather they had a good time. I hope that she discovered right away that most Afghans are wonderful people, not the gun carrying, women-hating violent men that represent Afghanistan in the international media.

I had lunch with two of my new female colleagues. One is Sita’s age. She has just gotten engaged. Her parents are enlightened and let her study. They decided to postpone her marriage until after she finished her studies and gotten some work experience. But she just turned 29 which is rather old in this country for an unmarried woman.

Her parents offered her a choice in her life’s partner but she declined. “How can I determine who would be a good life partner when I have so little interactions with men?” she said, wisely. The only men she interacts with are fellow students and male colleagues, but these interactions are limited and superficial. And so she entrusted the choice of her husband to her parents, “they know who/what is best for me.”

At the engagement party she met her future husband. But it took more than 2 weeks to find out his name. No one bothered to tell her, not even her parents. “Why didn’t you ask him?” I asked, incredulously. But then I learned that that is not appropriate and so she didn’t.

I asked her whether her future husband was as enlightened as her father; she didn’t think so. Would he let her continue to work outside the home? She wasn’t sure. Did that worry her? She shrugged her shoulders.

I told her about my daughter who has been living for about a decade with her husband-to-be. To my Afghan colleagues that is totally unimaginable; she was as incredulous about that as I was about her not discovering her fiance’s name until two weeks after the engagement. On one thing we agreed, change will come very, very slowly.

Today our senior management team became a little more complete with three of the four positions in place. Steve’s phone number was given to our new (German) Finance and Operations Director who has arrived with his Kenyan wife. It felt a little disloyal to delete Steve from my phone list.

If Holland makes it through the semi-finals we will have a divided office with some people rooting for Holland, on my side, and other rooting for Germany, on Peter’s side. Right now there are a lot of Holland fans. Unfortunately, the games are much too late for me to watch.

We had our weekly meeting with our donor, requiring a drive across time that now is taking quite a bit longer because Kabul municipality is frantically upgrading roads before the Kabul Conference in less than three weeks. This means everything is dug up and under construction. Today’s newspaper explained that the process of repair and reconstruction is delayed because of ‘forceful men, irrigation and canalization system (read ‘open sewers under construction’), trafficking, property possessing, power pillars, junctions and telecommunications main wholes (sic).’ Road construction management is not easy here.

Actually, nothing is really easy here. The incident report for July that tracks attacks on health facilities and people who provide health services amounted to about 190, several of which were deadly, all of which interfered with the delivery of health services to the people of Afghanistan.

That’s what we’re all up against. We try not to get too discouraged because, as one of Axel’s students wrote, “Hope is like open wings for flying in the height to reach the prosperities, because hope can cause get all the humans in the highest positions. Hope gives us confidence to have effort in our life and not to end our improvements until we have our life with pride and proud (Sabera, 2010).”

Meghann came over for dinner. Meghann is working with midwives this month before heading back to the US to become a midwife herself. But she should have been working for DAI, living in the DAI compound in Kunduz if things had worked out with her contract, some months ago. But things hadn’t and so she was not in Kunduz the other night when the compound was attacked.

Such is life. Some people call it Providence, others call it luck. I am not sure what to call it but I was very happy that she was with us tonight and not traumatized on a flight home.

The boss was back today. I had not seen him in nearly a month. We spent hours going over everything that was on our plates, left from before, new stuff, very urgent, mildly urgent and not so urgent right now. One of my staff who spent the last month in the US was also back and so I don’t feel so lonely anymore.

He told me about the short experiential workshop he went to in New York. Experiential learning is not for the faint of heart and even less so for people from this culture where learning is something teachers make you do, and something that requires much lecturing. He had learned about technical versus adaptive challenges and the notion of ‘work avoidance’ (when the hard work of bringing together people or groups who can shed light on the adaptive challenge requires you to change the way you have been (adapt) and behave in new ways with others).

With another colleague, sitting around the table we thought about what the US is trying to do here; tackling Afghanistan as if it is a technical challenge, which means that somewhere there is the solution, that we know how to do this, when, in fact, we are all clueless. But how could you admit that to the world and to those who lost kin and limbs here?

Today’s Fourth of July didn’t feel much like an Independence celebration, except that it was a day off which was nice.

I spent the morning reading up on various blogs about Afghanistan, going from one hypertext to another, in order to make sense of what’s happening here. It left me utterly depressed because I think we are doing this ‘saving Afghanistan from itself’ all wrong.

The absence of women in public life, at any level, and the parochial views that the male-headed families, clans, villages, districts and even provinces pursue are in my view root causes that no army in the world can address (or root out, as in ‘dig out and destroy’ – think weeds!)

It seems to me that only education and bringing women into public life and decision making roles can turn this country around – together these two strategies are more powerful than the most sophisticated armies and weapons in the face of violence, corruption, and other manifestations of unbridled and uneducated testosterone.

Each woman in a decision making position and each boy and girl who go to school long enough to learn to think for themselves bring us one thousandth of one thousandth of a millimeter closer to peace. It’s that slow. It’s at least a 1000-Year-Project. I am just one small actor in an enormous relay race that started seriously in the 1800s and will continue long after I am gone. What keeps me here is the many Afghan and non Afghan women (and men) who are participating in this race in which our main responsibility is to prepare the next relay to carry the torch forward.

I felt a little better after seeing a YouTube video of the Free Hugs project that friends sent me. It took about 3 hours to download the three and a half minute video about a few brave souls offering free hugs in Sondrio (Italy) and another one in Australia. I wondered how that would go over to offer free hugs in downtown Kabul, or Riyadh or Cairo. If it can be done in Japan, not a very hug-friendly place, why not here? God knows people here need hugs real badly.

Last night we went to a party organized by Democrats Abroad in the centre of town. We met a whole new cast or characters, not just Americans of the Obama type but also sympathetic South Africans, Spaniards, Brits, Afghan-Americans, Chinese, Koreans, etc. It was a contrast to the usual American-who-live-in-a-bubble types I meet professionally. The people we met last night actually run the hash in Kabul, faithfully, every Friday and live a near normal life.

Our hosts were a Chinese-British couple who showed up half-way through the festivities, returning from the hash. By then the barbecue was going at full speed. Hamburgers, beer, wine, salads, there was enough for us and for the thousands of flies that had descended on the food. I decided to go for foods that had been shielded, as here you don’t know where these flies have been.

We met Ben again who we had last met at Babur’s gardens. Ben is a horticulturist who is here on a long assignment that ends in December. He is from Indiana which endeared him right away to Axel, for whom Indiana was, during his graduate student years, his second home.

About 10 AM this morning I had recovered from the stressful week, ending my processing of the week with the ultimate frustration dream in which I was trying to catch a plane but no type of transport was able to get me to the airport on time.

When I woke up I had enough energy to do my 5 km walk on the elliptical but I was too late for my usual Saturday morning physical therapy session.

Today the embassy had organized a celebration which, according to our TV reports, coincided with the new commander taking command. MSH staff was invited to participate in the celebrations but my name was not included on the list of invitees. It looked like someone simply copied the list from last year when I was not yet here and MSH still employed two Steves. On paper we still looked like an organization that has no women in the senior leadership ranks. Too bad.

We spent a quiet (and very hot) day at home which stood in some contrast to our colleagues from DAI in Kunduz who suffered an attack on their compound. Some staff got killed, including expats, according to the incident report we received from ANSO. Axel wondered, should be have a packed suitcase ready in case we have to suddenly evacuate? There are days sometimes where we wonder, how long will we be able to stay here?

We had our usual Dari class in the afternoon. Axel once more found himself wondering whether he will ever be able to speak this language. His good teacher talked him back into not giving up. At home we practiced Dari with our guard and then played a game of backgammon and then searched for the channel on which to watch the Germany-Argentina game.

This what Thursday was like: After an early morning meeting with the acting minister to which I was summoned the night before by one of her staff, I returned to the office at about 9:00 AM. I was in for a surprise. All day I experienced, albeit only a fraction, of what it is to be a Finance and Operations director.

Like a lave stream pieces of paper that required signatures oozed around me, wherever I went. Everywhere there were people with pieces of paper in their hands that needed signatures (all of them now). I signed things that I didn’t even knew existed. This experience has given me a new appreciation of what it takes to run a multi-million dollar project (and I only dealt with the small stuff).

The risk of course with me, a neophyte, to sign (which means authorize payments) is that people can slip in things that were denied by our previous Finance and Operations Director. I was warned about that and tried to sign everything after some due diligence. But one can only do so much due diligence when the pile of paper starts to get close to 10 centimetres, and the incoming stream is relentless. My extra bad luck is that it is the end of the month (or rather the beginning of the new one). Imagine doing this day after day.

Luckily my Afghan finance and administration colleagues were patient with me and everyone took great pains to explain to me what I was signing. I have a long way to go to understand accounting terms.

I tried to get to a debriefing from one of our consultants who is returning home and who had a mid morning meeting at the ministry, but on my way to him not only did I meet more people with papers to be signed but also, something I should have remembered but forgot, three new staff members in my team who reported for duty, their first day (a moment of panic until they were safely placed in the hands of knowledgeable people).

Steve has clearly arrived in Pakistan and found a computer as there was another stream of emails about things he hadn’t gotten to, some rather daunting and complex contracting issues.

There was an informational interview about a job we are trying to fill (I had forgotten I had made the appointment, thinking Thursday afternoons are usually quiet) and there she was suddenly in the middle of my attempt to write a fair and even handed first draft of our investigation report in the hope of speeding up the process so that the people involved in this messy case can get on with their lives.

And then there was the email from the incoming Finance and Operations Director about his reporting to work on July 6 (yeah!!!) and that he needed a letter for his wife about his employment in Kabul so she can get a visa. That too needed to be done urgently as we are closed (now) for a three-day weekend.

Amidst all this frenzy, we had to report to one of the ministries that controls (yup) NGOs like us with the material they had requested. We had not been able to provide all the documents and send a staff member with an envelope with about 60% of the requested information to show that at least we had not entirely ignored their deadline of today.

And then it was suddenly 5 PM and I collapsed, quite literally.

Across from our office voters are being registered for the September parliamentary elections. I was driving with five of my Afghan colleagues into town. I asked them whether they were registered. They all nodded, but immediately added that they were not going to vote again. With the typical western indignation I gave the typical western response: if you don’t vote you can’t complain.

But I quickly found out that that was a very silly remark that showed I had no idea about voting here. My colleagues patiently explained that they had voted for a particular guy in the previous elections and that their votes were pursued with a friendliness and sincerity that lasted until the elections were over. Once elected their (successful) candidates surrounded themselves with bodyguards and became, what my colleagues called, ‘commanders,’ building five story houses and ignoring their constituents, or at least those who weren’t paying for access.

The democratic process, as we know it, however flawed it may be in my two home countries, bears very little resemblance to what masquerades here as parliamentary elections (or presidential for that matter). Are these simply an infant democracy’s teething problems? Or what?

Part of our usual road to the ministry appears to be blocked these days. We are using another road, narrower than the usual one. The larger than normal traffic load for this road created an interesting phenomenon that I watched with wonderment from the car I was riding in.

The traffic flow obeyed its own mysterious laws of movement. At first a few cars started to bypass, on the left side, the cars stuck in front of them; then more followed. For awhile it was mayhem as cars drove by us, in both directions, on our left and our right. And then, as suddenly as it had started, all the traffic had changed lanes permanently and we drove on as if we were in a country that follows left traffic rules. Everyone had moved to the left and traffic flowed, slowly, but there was progress again.

There had been no cop, no traffic lights, white lines on the road or traffic signals. And when the road joined another major thoroughfare the traffic mixed together and became right traffic again.

I wondered about the systems dynamics at work. The first few cars led the way. One could call them leaders even though what they did was not really legal, but this is Afghanistan and people look for openings wherever they are (like a little bit too much space between oncoming cars). As others see they that these leaders are successful and move faster, more follow in the new path that has now become legitimate for reasons of volume. This is accidental leadership, not the kind we are teaching, but clearly very effective in attracting followers; those who are not leaders like to follow those who succeed and make progress. It is that simple. Wow, I thought, how can I make this happen for things that are legitimate?

Steve and I said our goodbyes. I was a little teary-eyed. I will miss him terribly. We complement each other nicely, in ways that couples do. He is irreplaceable but I will do my best to channel him, or, what’s better, call him back when we need his deep expertise, something that is rare and precious.

For the first time in my 9 months stay here I attended a meeting that is held weekly and brings together representatives from the ministry, from the NGOs, donor and UN agencies to share findings, vet processes, consult each other about things that affect health services to the Afghan population. Steve went faithfully to these meetings and now I realize that I missed an opportunity to learn from him by accompanying him. Why I never went I don’t know, I guess I hadn’t understood hints that were made to me, or maybe people thought it wasn’t necessary for both technical directors to attend. It is the first regret now that Steve has left.

While waiting for a meeting to start I sat outside a meeting room and noticed a tiny mouse, no bigger than one inch, limping from a filing cabinet to a small crack between the floor and the wall. With all the cooking going on in countless small places, in between offices, or even in offices themselves, in bathrooms, where hired women cook meals for government employees in pressure cookers on small camping stoves, it is a wonder I don’t see huge rats wander around the halls, living off the leftover bread pieces and grains of rice.

My animal medicine book tells me that the mouse stands for ‘specialization of knowledge,’ for scrutiny and filing things away in your mind for a closer look later. Among the many messages that mouse carries is this one: see what is right before your eyes and then take action accordingly. This was particularly good advice for a meeting I had right after seeing the darling little mouse (I hate rodents, rats, mice, hamsters, guinea pigs, squirrels, but this one was too cute as well as terrified). I can’t write anything about the meeting because it was a confidential investigation, but the mouse medicine was exactly what the doctor prescribed.

PS. My first day as ‘in charge’ went without any glitches, at least none that I know of right now.

It has happened: I am acting chief of party. Steve managed to get his final visa in his passport so he can fly to Pakistan tomorrow (he broke all records getting visas for Afghanistan, China and Pakistan in less than 2 weeks – it was a nail biting rollercoaster ride).

With the boss still in Pakistan, till Sunday, I am, in rank, the most senior member of our 225 member team here in Afghanistan. It is a scary thought but everyone is very supportive. I will cover two working days and then it is weekend and I will be off the hook.

I am trying to channel the two Steves which produces a strange triple split personality: my own self, then the bad-cop-rule-bound-strict-no-nonsense operations & finance Steve and the gentle-good-cop-go-with-the-flow-public-health-physician-Steve.

To be more or less ready for this temporary shift to highest ranking employee has taken me about 9 months, a symbolic time period in which I learned a tremendous amount of stuff about things I knew nothing about: compliance with regulations from two governments rather than only one (in Boston I never had to worry about the US regulations as we had an army of people doing that for me); about contracting and monitoring, about recruitment, about patience, about stagnation and white water rafting (that’s what working here feels like).

I now look back on the 20 plus years that I was functioning more as a consultant and see how it is different from my current job in one elementary way: as a fly-in consultant I never had to live with my own advice. I taught, read and wrote books about how to manage and lead but now I actually have to do it; not just for a short assignment, but day after day after day.

During these last nine months I have often thought about a quote from Joseph Mathews, founder of the Ecumenical Institute (later the Institute for Cultural Affairs) that Brian Stanfield quotes in his book ‘The Courage to lead’: “[… ] the source of charisma[tic leadership] is the capacity to stand day after day after day in the waterless desert. While this one falls over and that one fades away in the strain, you just stand day after day after day with the shells falling all around you while this one starts bitching and bitching and bitching, but you give up the luxury of bitching and grind away at the task. It is just that simple. […].”

My colleagues, those leaving and those staying behind with me, have been doing this for much longer and I watch them for cues on how to do this. That is what has made these months exhilarating, humbling, stressful, joyful, intense, and frustrating, sometimes all in one day, sometimes one after the other over a stretch of time.

I rearranged my two office bookshelves today. After my office was painted, a couple of months ago, the housekeeping staff had jumbled all the books together in piles. I took everything off the shelves. Within minutes my hands were black from the soot, reminder of the winter diesel stove, and gritty dust, part of Afghanistan’s landscape.

As I put each book back on the shelf I asked myself whether it contained anything that was immediately helpful and practical to me in my new role as senior manager and now, for a few days, acting chief of party. It was not obvious and I realized the great divide between theory and practice. I also realized I terribly miss teaching, something that I hope to return to, eventually, and something that I think I will be better at because of what I am doing now.

I live in two worlds. In one world I have to be ‘on,’ produce results, be efficient (use my time well), be productive, delegate, think strategically. In the other I have to be social, modest, patient, accept and respect the ‘process’ of life as it is lived here in Afghanistan. They are complete opposites of each other.

I started my day being in one world: making sure agendas were drafted, appointments arranged, people lined up for this or that, schedules set, be on time for meetings, and think about what needs to happen before Steve leaves on Wednedsay. I was focused on planning, anticipating, results thinking and the like. It is work with a high mental energy quotient.

And then a delegation of the ministry of economic affairs showed up and I found myself in the other world. My role was one of ‘being there,’ of being patient with whatever process was underway (all the conversation in Dari) whether I understood it or not, circuitous by nature.

I watched a team of four people from the ministry who had come to investigate us, but not in the western sense, at least not yet. Yes, they did want all sorts of information, especially financial, that we consider private, none of their business, but we will deal with these requests later, indirectly.

After an hour of mostly Dari talk which produced a list of questions and very little talk from Steve and me, we piled into a car to visit the warehouse where all our drugs are stored, part of their inspection. But student demonstrators had blocked traffic and we returned to the compound, to the small conference room where we started. And then we just sat there, waiting for a lunch that was ordered from a restaurant on the other side of the demonstrators, and thus delayed.

I took advantage of the situation by pulling out my Dari schoolbooks. Everyone became an enthusiastic teacher, correcting my pronunciation and trying to explain, in broken English, what I was reading. With their help I completed the lesson I was supposed to have later in the day – we finished the story about the sad woman who was going to throw herself in a well. It ended OK, as I had expected, with the son become a successful cook, marrying a nice woman and having two lovely children (a boy and a girl).He had only one wish left: to become literate (this is after all a literacy primer).

After lunch I excused myself and made my way to the ministry over roads abandoned by the demonstrating students. At the ministry I joined a committee, taking over from Steve who had taken over from the other Steve, that is tasked with the investigation of what one could call ‘undue influence by a financial consultant in charge of clearing payments to a third party.’ The third party had lodged 6 complaints about this undue influence and the consultant, who is on our payroll, was sent on paid leave awaiting the verdict.

I joined the investigation just at the point when the defendant was there to defend himself. It was like being on a jury and I conjured up images of Henry Fonda of Twelve Angry Men. What would he have asked questions about?

It is a little painful to see how many man hours (and now also woman hours) are being spent on this case of undue influence (no money or goods changed hands) when there is so much large scale and blatant corruption going on in this country.

My Dari class was a cinch after my impromptu morning class with the team from the ministry of economic affairs. I have completed two of the three literacy primers and my reading is now maybe at 2nd grade level – still a little halting but I am beginning to recognize the gestalt of frequently used words.