Sylvia's Journal

After our meeting with our donor I had my performance review with my boss, sitting in the back of a pick up truck. By the time we arrived at the office I had my rating (meet expectations) which will be communicated with HQ to determine my salary increment. It is not easy to get the higher ratings of ‘exceed expectations,’ let alone the highest one of ‘outstanding.’

I would of course have liked to get an ‘exceeded expectations,’ but I am not sure anyone knows what can be expected of me, here, in the nebulous arena of capacity building in management and leadership. My conversation with my boss, as well as my own preparation for this, had highlighted again how difficult it is to be in the business of ‘building capacity’ at the most senior levels of a government bureaucracy in a place where there’s a bit of a leadership crisis, not just in the ministry but everywhere in this country, from top to bottom.

The dilemma in my job is that it is easy to improve leadership and management in a place that is well led and well managed; such places don’t need us of course. But here, where management skills, even at the highest levels, are inshort supply and where there is essentially a leadership vacuum, combined with much activity at various levels that cannot withstand scrutiny, there is only so much we can do.

We can, and we do suggest or, if we have a boss’ blessing, put into place processes, procedures, create plan templates, facilitate planning meetings and all that, but we cannot make the boss hold his (rarely her) staff accountable for results, get rid of dead wood or manage politically well connected non performers.

As outsiders who are not holding many strings, we can tell our superiors about corruption stories (oh there are so many, and such clever ones: donated hospital blankets sold in the bazaar while the old hospital blankets are cut in two so that the numbers add up; or old rancid oil used for cooking the hospital food while the fresh oil is sold in the bazaar) – but we can’t do much about it.

Some people at the highest levels are sincerely trying to stamp such practices out while others have a stake in not succeeding. The only way to not get too depressed about is to soldier on and hope that the honest higher ups will eventually prevail and lightning will hit the dishonest ones.

Another dilemma I was confronted with today is about speaking out as a kharidja, a foreigner, whose voice and opinion is more respected (say some people). I am encouraged to be more forceful and forthcoming with my opinion while at the other hand building the capacity of my staff to be listened to and respected. In my view the former undermines the latter and so I tend to be more of a coach than the provider of expert opinion.

And of course everything everyone tells me is only an opinion that may, or may not be shared by nil or thousands.

The main road through Karte Parwan, past the Intercon Hotel and Bagh-e-Bala is being improved, expanded and paved (‘cooked’). There are two wide lanes, paved and ready for use, but at rush hour only one was open. The lane should be able to hold three cars abreast (there are no white lines) but somehow nine lanes had pressed into the space for three; six lanes going our way and three in the opposite direction.

The whole place was one large parking lot and our driver, Hadji Safar, decided to take a short cut off on the left, but we got even more hopelessly stuck. He managed to turn the car around between two jewies (open sewers) without getting his wheels over the edge and ease back into the space we had formerly occupied. It was a good occasion to quote the saying, ‘faster is slower.’ It took us 2 hours to get form the ministry of health back to our house, a distance of only a few kilometres, 25 minutes on a good day.

I was lucky that i was not traveling along. My co-passenger was one of my staff. We killed the time by deconstructing a complex mess-up in the office that we can ascribe lightly to cultural differences, or deeply to things more sinister (or just the other way around). In the end we agreed that an Afghan proverb described the situation best: if my heart is not narrow, no place can be narrow (aga delem tang nabasha, jay tang neest).

All along during the drive, cheek by jowl with other motorists, I made a point of smiling to people who looked tense. I was able, each time, to get a smile back. I consider this good preventive medicine in a place where road rage can easily get out of hand given the amount of guns that are floating around here; no doubt some of them in the cars we encounter or travel alongside with.

At the ministry we had attended a meeting that was designed to get organizations like us to pay for staff and other things (nobody even nibbled on the request for the new headquarters). It was one of these meetings with multiple layers of meaning. After the meeting, during our long ride home, I understood what was really going on and realized that our response had been the wrong one – a moral high road maybe, but missing the boat in other ways.

The endless requests for things, people, stuff, money is at times exasperating, yet entirely understandable. For one, the strategy ultimately works as there is always someone who is willing to sign the check. In this case that should have been us. Not offering to hire staff would essentially undo a few years of capacity building, as the capacity that we did built is about to slip from our hands – contracts are up and there are better offers out there. There are no easy solutions and we are too far ahead in this game of hiring the people the government needs but cannot afford, to turn our backs.

Thwuck, thwuck, thwuck went the helicopters, rattling our thin glass windows in their poorly constructed frames. They veered south, no more than 500 feet over our heads. A first one batch of 5 and then another batch. In between there was the rumble of low flying planes, labouring towards something that required this much airpower. Off to the unruly, unruled and unrulable south?

The people flying these things, Americans I supposes, are also working in Afghanistan, just like me. For them working in Afghanistan is an entirely different ball game. I sit here with the door to the garden open, listening to the twitter of birds and the voices of children, playing real ball games.

I am reading Dexter Filkins’ The Forever War and in doing so catch a glimpse of the stuff that happens far from our beds, the ugly stuff about this (and Iraq’s) forever war. It’s the picture that most people have of Afghanistan. It is very different from ours.

This morning I handed out the pictures Axel took during our outing this weekend, to the drivers and guards who came with us. The neat thing about Axel’s graphic design skills is that he has everything set up to print out pictures. When we go on a walk to a place we have been before, he prints the pictures and we hand them out, nearly like a Polaroid, except much nicer quality. It is what I have always wanted to do but am never set up to do. People love to have their picture taken here, even women (we do ask first of course).

At work we are cycling into our annual performance review and work planning period. Back in Boston I hated this time because the process was designed by accountants. But here I am part of senior leadership and thus have some say over the process. We use it as a time of reflection and capacity building in house, a use of time I find useful and productive.

While I was at work Axel went with driver Fazle on his day off to deliver the cleats and shin guards and jerseys to the womens’ soccer team, practicing in the far northwest corner of Kabul. This to make sure that the girls had first dibs on the goodies. I asked Axel to take pictures to bring back as proof. He did.