Sylvia's Journal

Tessa told her that she is re-establishing human domination in her household, over the dogs that is. We are dog sitting tonight and Tessa gave us a little mini training on how to deal with the dogs in a way that makes it clear who is the boss. Things had slacked off a bit and the dogs were thinking that they were in control. They are finding out they are not.

And we, poor grandparents, are worried about doing the wrong thing – being too emotional, confusing the beasts about their place in the universe. I wonder whether the same thing happens with grandchildren.

I completed four days of training in a software package that lets you model various public health intervention scenarios. It is a complicated thing, this modeling, and it requires good data. For our practicum I chose to work on Afghanistan but the files were full of 99.9 or 0.00 values, code for missing data. I sat down with a colleague to try to fill in those cells about coverage of child and maternal health interventions t and realized how little we really know about what actually happens in Afghanistan, in its far flung corners especially.

I am starting a new physical therapy regimen, picking up where I left off with the same therapists and working on the same issues – the crash is not entirely behind us and maybe never will. We have yellow rubber bands all over the house, clamped between doors and their frames. Axel is also working out.

It has happened two times in my life and yesterday was the third: walking to where you thought you parked your car and then not finding it. The previous two times was in Lebanon, a long time ago, and in both cases the car was stolen. But yesterday was in Cambridge and I had parked on a street cleaning day and the car was towed away. The fine and towing cost were over a hundred dollars, plus the nuisance. This was a rather downlifting experience – but richly compensated by more uplifting developments that preceded and followed it.

We spent the beginning of the weekend thinking long and hard about the coming year and came to the conclusion that we will hang around with me travelling a lot and Axel preparing himself to get the right credentials and experience for whatever will show up on the horizon next fall – likely another overseas assignment as a year of much travel will probably create some wear and tear and a desire to settle in one place for a while without losing income.

With the agony of what’s next put on the back burner we enjoyed a wonderful weekend. On Saturday we gained an entire new family that is marrying into Sita’s inlaws family. It was one of these unexpected joys of meeting people that one wished one had known all one’s life. We came together to celebrate the engagement of Jim’s brother, a graduation, a birthday and the marvel of a two month old baby. Only Sita was missing, on one of her jaunts in Europe.

Sunday we visited our grand dogs. We went for a very long walk in Gloucester’s Dogtown after a lunch served by Tessa in her doll house. I am practicing long walks in preparation for our trip to Holland, and (re)breaking in my hiking boots. It’s blister time.

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I brought Tessa some of the sheets of Japanese paper from the Tokyo Papierium (Ito-ya) – something her artist eye can appreciate. It is not clear what to do with them other than taking them out of their envelope and admiring them from time to time.

Yesterday I visited the rotator cuff doc to find out what’s up with all the trouble I am having with my right shoulder. His verdict was pretty obvious – too much heavy lifting. After two years of no lifting (women in Afghanistan don’t lift), the work around the house since I returned has irritated my shoulder. One of the four tendons that hold things in place hasn’t been functional since 2007. My right shoulder is effectively running on three cylinders – something that will not ever get better. So now I have a doctor’s note against any further heavy lifting. Axel, with his own rotator cuff issues, is having physical therapy like crazy so there is at least one of us who can lift stuff up. We are a sorry pair.

The final uplift of the last few days – entirely erasing the unpleasantness of having one’s car towed – was dinner at Pia’s where we celebrated everything that is to be celebrated in great company, great food and wine. Axel drove me home, this being my second trip in and out of Cambridge that day.

I have started to slack off on my daily writing habit. I am adjusting (still) to the unsettled feeling of not knowing what is next. As there is no fall back full time position to catch me between assignments – only small HQ pieces of work, the substance (and I admit the joy) of the job will require plane rides to faraway places.

In Afghanistan there was another kind of ‘not knowing what is next,’ related more to the political situation and wondering where the next attack would be. But I had full time work and my travel schedule was very predictable with trips roughly 10 to 12 weeks apart.

Now that word has gone out that I am available, the tricky task of scheduling has commenced big time. One month ago when people asked me whether I was available my answer was always yes. I would gladly hop on a plane and get to my next assignment.

There are now several next assignments and requests in the hopper that have to be molded around my vacation to Holland, the holidays and my next assignment to Japan. Maybe ‘shoe-horned’ in is a better expression. Could I come to Kenya, to South Africa, before December 15 or early January? That sort of shoehorning.

Afghanistan is missing from the queue and I fear that by the time a request for the first visit (1 of 4 budgeted trips before august 2012) comes to help set up the new team for management and leadership (something I would like to do very much) I am booked for the year. I already see that four trips won’t fit if I don’t want to live in airports.

I am rediscovering how this travel will mess up my social life, not to speak of my marital life as Axel, watching this shoe-horn kind of scheduling from the sidelines. Another overseas position is becoming more and more attractive to him (and somewhat less to me but that might change soon), even if it were to be Nigeria where an opportunity is now presenting itself.

My day started early (3 AM) and badly (I dropped my new smart phone in the toilet). It didn’t get a whole lot better after that as no new work materialized while I was in the office. So I went home early.

Back home I found Axel entirely preoccupied again with the management of our estate. I can’t get over how busy it is to be home. I lent a helping hand with the winter windows on the porch. A few years ago I could carry and place the heavy windows on my own but two years of a sedentary life have taken their toll. We both struggled to get the windows up. We are like our parents now, needing young strong bodies to help with the winterizing chores.

It is only now that I realize how much exercise one does by simply working around the house: lifting heavy stuff, pushing a wheel barrow, pulling weeds, dragging garden debris across the yard, going up and down stairs – all this is just a variation of lifting weights and using the exercise machines in a fitness club. Why would one need to pay for membership when all this exercise can be done for free around the house.

I thought that my exercise routines in Kabul, 30 minutes on the elliptical machine and 45 minutes of yoga would keep me fit but my muscles and joints now tell me otherwise. It will require a lot more yard and house work, exactly the stuff I am complaining about. I should be grateful.

All through Sunday morning we were trying to hold projects at bay and enjoy ourselves. This is turning out to be very hard to do when we are at home. And so we went to visit our friend Chuck in Newburyport who had his knee replaced.

On the way up there Axel asked me to read some of my old poems – they surprised me and brought back memories of the places where I wrote them – many at airports or in planes. I haven’t written any poems for a long time.

Seeing Chuck in his hospital bed with ice and pillows and strong pain pills brought back many memories, some not very good. After other friends had come over to look after him we went to see a series of skits performed by the City Comedy Club at the Firehouse. It was an afternoon of good laughs with no room to think about projects. Coming out of the theatre we both thought probably the same thoughts, we ought to do more of this!

We declined to join our company to watch ‘The Game.’ When people use capital letters when they refer to a game you are supposed to know which sport, which game and which teams. I don’t know any of this so declining the invitation kept me from making any faux pas in the midst of sport fans. Axel wasn’t too interested either. It is hard and awkward to re-acquaint with people you haven’t seen for a while who may ask you questions about Afghanistan in between cheering for good passes or jeering at mistakes of the players on a large TV screen.

But we mainly excused ourselves because we had planned a cooking adventure with the loot from our last visit to the local farm stand. It is empty now – a sad sight. We left the stand with armfuls of root vegetables, winters squash, apples and mushrooms. Some of this we transformed into a delicious roasted chicken and mushroom risotto with a good dose of parmesan cheese. We ate it in front of the TV watching Jeeves rather than sports, until our eyes closed all by themselves.

Sita and Jim are two of several million people without electricity. It will take days to get it back. Their electric box was jerked off the house by a large tree limb that succumbed under the pressure of a foot of heavy wet snow. They are only able to communicate with us after they re-charge their cellphone batteries by driving around. Jim had to go hunt for a powered internet café to put in a regular workday. We are grateful that it is only electricity that is missing.

We flew, or rather I flew, with Bill handling the communications and alerting me to unintentional losses or gains in altitude, around the Quabbin Reservoir. Bill had taken us out to the west, to Northampton but we never quite made it there because circling the reservoir was more fun.

We were about half a day ahead of the first winter blizzard. We flew in the direction that the weather was going to come from so we’d see it in case it would move faster than expected. By the time we landed at Beverly the winds had picked up and fall had ended.

When we returned from a dinner party in Jamaica Plain the blizzard had arrived in full force. The drive home was long and arduous. In the west where Sita lives a foot of snow had already arrived. If you don’t have to go anywhere winter blizzards are wonderful.

With full day meetings to facilitate and annual report revisions at night I am one busy bee who is taking only short breaks for food. The launch of the project is going well. Even if at times it is a bit uncomfortable because of the ambiguity that goes with any start up but with this project even more than I am used to. The guidance to not work at country level but at regional level makes it even more difficult to conceptualize what results can be expected.

The purpose of this five year effort is to guide major actors in health in Africa towards promising but unused or underutilized approaches to reduce preventable mortality and morbidity – from everything, everywhere in Africa and to have that done by Africans themselves.

The necessity of focus creates both comfort and discomfort and the newness of the team adds to the soup. I am seeing all the usual turbulences that go with such a challenge. I don’t think I have ever seen this (mandated and quick turnaround) planning process generating the fun, creativity and cohesion that people want it to be or think it should be. I think it could be but not under the time constraints we are working under.

People use the words excitement and innovation all the time but I sense they are often pushed aside by more immediate considerations about how one is seen and whether one’s selection for the job was warranted – at start ups I am sure these thoughts flash through people’s minds all the time: “will I be liked, seen as competent and effective?” This is Will Schutz stuff by the way, not my invention, but powerfully explanatory.

I have not once turned on the TV or gone to the pool or exercise center. I am told they are nice. Only twice did I manage to follow a 30 minute AM yoga teacher on a DVD I brought. That routine from Kabul is very hard to recreate here. My days aren’t as predictable and circumscribed as they were there.

The big celebration event of MSH being 40 years – of which I witnessed 25 – took place on Wednesday night and I am very sorry I missed it. Axel went and represented me and got to see all my favorite MSHers, old, new, retired and gone elsewhere.

Last night I missed another event, Sita’s 31st birthday which was celebrated with friends, dad, pizza and bowling. I got to hear the happy voices in the background and was, once more, sad I missed that too.

This is indeed a taste of what’s to come – missing a lot of events with people I like to be with. The urge/search for another overseas position has not gone away, in fact it is getting stronger as work is piling up on the horizon – work that makes for a heavy ecological footprint.

I am back in my element – doing what I like to do most: helping people have productive conversations together. I am helping a new project get off on a good start. It is fascinating; I am learning a lot and am awed by the deep experience that is in the team brought together for this project. It is also great to see the team from our donor, the folks who selected us, asking the project team to have fun – imagine that, the thought even! How far away Kabul seems once again.

I am seeing lots of colleagues who I haven’t seen for two years or more, some dear friends. We are sitting in a glass-walled room right across from the glass-walled entrance so I see everyone come in in the morning and I wave discretely to my friends or dash out for a quick hug.

Now most people know about my plight and everyone indicates there will be work. This makes me complacent and tempted to stop looking for a new job. It’s seductive to stay; it is easy and comfortable. But there are no firm offers yet, just ideas and assurances that something will come. I wonder when and keep looking.

Back in the home office my new office is taken away again – I am moved to a room without windows but I am told I can’t be picky. It would make me want to come to the office less. I need to see the sky. But I understand that the less you come in the less attractive your office – the nice spaces with windows, I am told, are for 5-day workers – the fact that I am a 25 year worker doesn’t seem to carry much weight. We are a very flat organization in that respect.

My friends from Holland are being entertained at home by Axel who wants to take them places but they just want to be at our house and relax. I would too after having rowed 3 miles in the Head of the Charles. Resting at Lobster Cove seems just the right things to do. I am sad I am missing out on the fun but grateful that I have work this week. C’est la vie!

Everything and everybody was converging in on us over the last few days: visitors from far away (Afghanistan and Holland), the Head of the Charles with a Dutch team to cheer on, preparations for the trip to DC and Japan which now all have to happen in between all the other stuff. I could so have used all these activities two weeks ago when I was twiddling my thumbs. Multi-tasking, although apparently not the good thing it used to be now comes in handy.

In the morning we picked up my colleague from Afghanistan and walked most of the race course of the Head of the Charles, from MSH where we parked out car, all the way to the finish, chatting about Afghanistan, America and everything in between. We didn’t meet up, as we had planned, with our Dutch friends as the wives were following their men in their Masters 50+ eight on bikes – there was no way we could keep up with their pace (boat or bike).

We did learn later that they came in 31st in their class and were not happy with their performance. When we saw them going underneath the Western Ave bridge they looked pretty good – but that was only 1 mile into the race.

Having lost contacts with our friends because of exhausted cell phone batteries we returned home and were just on our way when Tessa called that she was on her way into town to deposit a slightly invalid Steve at work. While he tried to work (and on Tessa’s insistence negotiated with his boss to return home) we took Tessa out for lunch. We had to step over a dead rat into the restaurant – it would give one pause but we were too hungry. The meal was fine.

On our way home I bought a new cell phone that is wifi enabled and thus works at home where T-Mobile’s signals don’t reach us. Now I don’t have to keep the landline tied up during long distance work related calls. A phone with internet is of course also a new toy which makes me want to sit in waiting rooms for long times so I can figure out how to use it.

When we finally came home the day was nearly over and the light was already fading when Ted from SOLA showed up. There was just enough light to show him around our estate and have him marvel at the cove and the ocean. Driven inside by the cold Axel lit a fire, and cooked our meal over it, consisting of foodstuffs that he cannot have in Kabul. We caught up on news of SOLA students here and there and finally said our goodbyes. Ted is soon returning to Kabul.

When it rains it pours. Not only on the Charles River were eights and fours and singles were clocking time against stiff winds and whitecap waves durng their final rehearsals for the Head of the Charles.

At work the pouring is also happening. Suddenly I found myself engulfed in work requests, all coming to me at the same time and all interesting and more in line with my skill set than the work I did in Kabul.

The timing is a bit off as my friends from Holland are coming to stay with us after having rowed in the Head of the Charles. When they settle in here at Lobster Cove, I will have to fly to Washington.

I spent hours reading up on health system reforms in Albania so that a colleague and I can propose creative ways to tackle persistent leadership challenges. Everyone who has been a consultant on that project has written a voluminous report. I spent a good part of the day plowing through them all so that I can ask intelligent questions not answered in them.

Another colleague who has had many bumpy landings after returning from a field project told me that each time she is in despair about finding work and starting to look around something comes through, making her postpone her search. Something to look forward to? Avoid? Accept?

Axel is of course worried that he won’t see much of me now that travel is picking up – all of next week I will be in Washington and then soon after that in Japan. Axel wants to go overseas again so we can be together most of the time – as we were in Kabul. If only we can find a nice place without dust, violence, guns, barbed wire and with an interesting job.

One of my Afghan colleagues has arrived from Kabul for a two week visit after he finally got his visa that we had requested for a conference in May. We counseled him not to wear is mullah clothes upon entering the US. He did enter in jeans and jacket and was very warmly received, welcomed into the country by a very friendly US Border Control employee. A good first impression, something that makes us all happy.

When he showed up at MSH in his western garb we hardly recognized him. At lunch time I introduced him to the abundance of Whole Foods and the complexity of their recycling bins.

After work we took him out to one of Boston’s three Afghan restaurant, the one that is not putting more money in Mahmoud Karzai’s coffers. I attempted some Dari and Pashto on the owner but I have to delve deep into my hard disk to retrieve words that came so easily to me only a few months ago. I am letting my languages slide.