Sylvia's Journal

Wali is going to re-apply for his US visa, he (we, Afghanistan) has to, too many eggs in that basket – we can’t let it fall to the ground. We are keeping our fingers crossed and keep sending out prayers and appeal to the good vibes in the universe. We do the same with F. who is now in Delhi waiting for her UK visa. We need everyone’s prayers – the kids are Afghanistan’s hope for redemption.

On a more mundane level, I dropped my phone on the tiled floor of the bathroom which was covered with a layer of water. After that the phone’s microphone didn’t work anymore. People who called me sounded like they were at the bottom of the ocean. It took me a while to figure out I was the problem, or rather my phone. Funny how my first impulse was to think it was not my phone that was defective but the phone of the other.

I decided to go to the fancy electronics shop in the center of the city, at the Safi Landmark hotel, a place that has been targeted by insurgents more than once. I received a warning that the local police and army are still looking for insurgent elements planning to do something bad just off the center, near the old Dutch embassy and the hotel where many of my friends stay. So far they have come up empty but the area is blocked and heavily guarded. What/who could be the target we wonder?

Security gave me permission to go buy my new phone as the store would be at least 10 blocks away from where things are a little tight at the moment but when I was ready to go the driver and guard told me we would go shopping in the area I live rather than having to deal with heavy traffic and the astronomical prices that downtown commands. Security didn’t faze them, life does go on after all.

They took me to a small cell phone shop not far from my home. I had not done my homework about all the different models available and had myself advised by my driver who kept pointing at this and then that fancy phone that could hardly be called a phone, rather a handheld computer, for several hundred dollars. Here people pay lots of money for a nice phone, it is a status symbol. I really only wanted my old Samsung Trace phone but the model is no longer available.

I finally settled on a touch screen Samsung with room for two simcards, solving finally the problem of needing two phones for my two simcards, one pre-paid and the other post paid. After verifying that the phone came from Korea rather than China I bought it and have been playing with my new gadget that is much more than a phone and, frankly, much more than I need.

The latest bit of news I got today colored the entire day – I am heartbroken. Wali, one of Axel’s very earnest young students got his US visa request denied, in two minutes flat. He was going to go with one other SOLA student, who did get his visa, to a private school on the East Coast on a full scholarship.

This is the second kid, the other one of my students, also with a full scholarship lined up. She had a similar experience with the same officer. I have seen both returning with heads drooped and hopes dashed after a very short and extremely unpleasant interview at the US consulate. As if they were criminals. Imagine!

I would have vouched for both with my life – they would both come back and help to rebuild this country, starting schools, teaching others what they learned. I guess that consular officers operate from a very different script, probably have to, when they interview people. They probably assume that people are lying, not revealing their true intent. Yet both of these kids could have lied, about all sorts of things (in this country you can lie about anything and have it backed up by official papers that can be obtained in the bazaar for a price). Both chose not to lie and got whacked over the head. Would they lie next time?

Things appear to be working out OK for the girl as a British school stepped into the void produced by the US visa denial and she is now on her way to Delhi to get a visa for the UK. If she gets it she will be back on track. I keep my fingers crossed. But we have nothing lined up for Wali and the school year is just about to start in the western world.

My impatience, already a characteristic that I have had to keep in check here, is wearing thin as the days creep by. Half of my head is with my work, things to complete, solve, settle and hand over; the other part of my head is pre-occupied with the logistics of my departure and questions about what next.

I have received official clearance to head home from our donor. My ticket out of Kabul is being purchased, my day room in Dubai reserved and, daily, bags with stuff leave the house to be distributed elsewhere.

I sit in our early morning senior management meetings with a different perspective. We discuss the daily running of the project and ponder tactical and strategic considerations. The long term issues are taking on importance in a more abstract way; only the very short term, a matter of two weeks to be precise, still remains very real.

The traffic is so bad these days that our shuttle drivers take a very long way around. I like this route because it takes me, quite slowly, along roads that are buzzing with the most basic of economic activities – in ways that have probably not much changed over the last few hundred years. The source of energy is still primarily human or animal – donkeys, carts, wheelbarrows, horses dragging in front or behind them sacks piled up high with this or that desired commodity, most of it in bulk.

Most of the houses and warehouses along this road are still in ruins from the fighting, now more than a decade ago, and are, with few exceptions, of the mud-brick type. Occasionally one can see the remnants of and exquisitely carved but dilapidated wooden facade of an old caravanserai, a relic of this place’s ancient trading past.

I arrived late at an empty conference room that should have been filled with 5 teams busy with their management and leadership learning assignments. Instead it is filled with brand new chairs that have replaced the fancy looking but rather dangerous Chinese chairs that have seen many senior ministry officials fall unceremoniously onto the floor. The new chairs can’t go up and down (an improvement) but they do allow leaning backward. I hope the legs will hold. They are all covered in plastic and, I am quite sure, will remain this way until the plastic hangs in dirty shreds off the chairs, one year from now. I have a tremendous urge to rip the plastic off but I restrain myself.

The progress that had been booked about coming on time appeared to have vanished over the weekend and the facilitators all reverted back to old behaviors that have them wait for late comers and punish those who came on time. Nowhere in the world have I, over 25 years, been able to get people to change this behavior, even of my closest co-workers who should know better by now. Actually they know, but some forces other than knowledge push them to act contrary to this.

In an interesting reversal of the usual pre-occupations of Americans with time and Afghans with paying respect, the dispatcher called me and was noticeably irritated that we let the shuttle, out in front of the ministry, wait as it was already 5 minutes past its departure time. It was hot, colleagues were inside, impatient and there are always illiterate police around with big sticks who make trouble for cars that are not moving.

I told him we were making our way across the ministry’s courtyard as fast as we could without being impolite which meant we had to spend at least a few seconds greeting every one we met and knew. Traversing the courtyard with most of my senior colleagues cannot be hastened without offending – it has to be done slowly.

I had brought back from my last visit to the US a large bag of Ghirardelli dark chocolate chips. It sat in the refrigerator until Saturday when I finally decided I better use it before I leave. I made the dough and put it in the refrigerator, rolled up in wax paper, so it would harden before baking. The thing looked like a baguette, it was that long. By the time I came back from my language classes it had hardened nicely (which makes it so bad for your arteries). I cut it into more manageable chunks. Of course I tried some and decided not to bother baking the cookies. Cookie dough is fatal; I like it better than the baked thing.

This morning, as I was having a conversation with a colleague I found myself searching my brain for an adjective, saying that something was “too….[something].” But I couldn’t find the right adjective. I think in this place there aren’t enough English adjectives to describe things, people, or events. I have no doubt that there are enough adjectives in the local languages. There are so many ways to say the same thing if you were to translate them into English, but we’d miss the nuances. As an example, there are at least 9 words in my small dictionary to describe the color brown, a very present color in this country. There is snuff colored brown, almond brown, coffee brown, cumin brown, sugar brown, walnut brown, pistachio brown, dust/dirt brown (khaki) and wheat brown.

I went to the ministry for our weekly meeting with the future boss of the leadership program. We are now meeting very orderly with an agenda, and action items recorded. The agenda and action items related to space, tomorrow’s last leg of the leadership workshop, an update on recruitment and e-learning.

As I enter the ministry I always have to be searched in the women’s section that is separated from the entrance and the male guards by a curtain. Today a new clean curtain had been put up. I wondered how it got there. Had some woman complained, or a man? The woman who is supposed to search me was back after her (successful and umpteenth) pregnancy, with the latest addition coming to work with her, all swaddled in a little carrying basket in the tiny guardhouse. Mom’s name is ‘Light’ or ‘Clarity.’ She knows me now and doesn’t think I am bringing explosives into the ministry compound. The checking is done with a very light touch.

To kill the time between her searches she is embroidering a man’s shirt that has the finest stitches. I don’t know how people can do this. She did admit her eyes hurt. I offered her one of my spare reading glasses. A big grin indicated that the stitching would be easier with those and I told her should keep them. I took a picture of her handiwork.

I went to SOLA in the afternoon and we held a real meeting, including the creation of an agenda, the assignment of a minute taker and a final round of AOB to discuss the orphanage English teaching project. The girls are running into all sorts of surprises: first the fundraising has netted double what they needed. It is nice to have extra money but it also creates the responsibility of being a good steward of the money. I gave them as homework to do a real budget, in an Excel sheet. One of the girls knows how to do that and so she will take the lead.

And then there are the classes that are too big, the beginners books too basic for the older kids, too academic for the 4 year olds, the missing blackboard, the mismatched expectations between the orphanage director (‘just keep the kids occupied, all of them’) and the young volunteer teachers who want manageable classes, commitment, homework done and attention during class. And then there are the mentally disabled kids, two of them, that disrupt H’s class which is already difficult with 20 boys.

Among the action items is one big one – a serious conversation with the director. Next class may well be about negotiation.

It is kite season again and the sky above Kabul is filling up with kites. The victims of kite fights, or simply of poorly knotted strings, are already visible on the roof of our guard’s quarters and in the trees around our house. I have to find time to go to a kite shop to collect a few colorful specimens to take home.

Today was another clean up day. I sorted through piles and piles of Axel’s papers and created new piles, one of the language school, one for SOLA and one for the waste basket. In the evening, on Skype, Axel gave is final blessing to the choices I had made for him.

I had lunch with Katie, which has just started to be a nice weekly ritual but she is leaving next week for a break in the US and I will have left before she returns. We may be able to find a nice lunch place in Massachusetts before she heads back to Kabul.

I finished listening to 880 pages, about 40 hours of David Copperfield being read to me by a superb actor who brought a whole array of characters to life with his voice. I have gotten quite fond of all of them and am sorry the book is finished. It has become one of my all time favorite books.

Fazil my jewelry friend came over to take a last order from the Turquoise Mountain craftsmen. I sent him home with two of Sita’s instruments to be fixed for playing – if that is possible. He knows where to take them – if those people cannot do it, they will have to remain decorative instruments.

I was up early and immediately recognized the loud boom, followed by another one not that much later as suicide attacks. One gets to learn these sounds. I went on Twitter to find out what other twitterers in Kabul had found out and within seconds the tweets started to come in. It was fascinating – the speculations, the observations, near misses. All the reporters in Kabul were tweeting like crazy (some of them still are). Within half an hour we had received an SMS from our security what was happening where and that all transport was grounded.

Our security chief had the bad luck of living near the site of the bombs. His windows were shattered but no one was hurt. All of us on or off twitter guessed whether it was this target or that target until the most obvious of all, something British, emerged – it was after all the 92nd anniversary day of the liberation from the British. No entirely, the bombs seemed to say.

Because the entire city went into siege mode, my early morning massage plans collapsed until Lisa offered to come to our side of town. And so I ended spending an entire morning and the beginning of the afternoon hanging out with Razia jan at her house where Lisa and her crew got busy relaxing and prettifying our bodies.

Razia jan and I had planned to go to Chicken Street together afterwards to pick up Paula’s patchwork quilts that Ibrahim had ready in his Chicken Street store. We were on our way when the security chief rescinded his ‘all clear.’ The fighting had not stopped and everyone was on high alert. We turned around, dropped Raise jan off at her home and me at mine. Despite the massage I remained tense and ended up taking a long nap. It helped a little but the tension remains – it is not possible to shrug these attacks off despite the fact that life does go on for people who live in other neighborhoods and we all pretend that we’re OK.

At dinner time I returned to Razia for an exquisite dinner, just the two of us. All dinners are exquisite at her house but this one broke all records. We watched the grim news about bombs exploding in Kabul and across the border in the Khyber territory and tried not to get too outraged or depressed.

I posted a notice on facebook that indicated the current reading on my going-home-counter. It now reads 18 days, 19 hours, 31 minutes and 15 seconds. Many people ‘liked’ it. Axel skyped me to say that he is counting right along with me.

Because I am one of the first to arrive in my part of the compound where a large and loaded fig tree grows I get to have first dibs at the one(s) that ripened overnight. I scan the tree before I leave the office at the end of the day to see where the next ripe one will be. They go from green to purple during the night. Others are eyeing the tree too but it is Ramadan and they cannot pop a ripe fig in their mouth they way I can which gives me a huge advantage. Figs don’t keep that well.

The leadership workshop, part one of four, ended today. About 2 hours of material is still left, to be completed next week. I told the teams that I hoped to see their energy and commitment multiplied by the time I come back. Everyone nodded obediently. I so badly want these folks to make the changes they want and they can make. Will they be able to continue to operate as a team when they go back across the road to their usual place of work? That remains the big question. It is good that they are so close – my team can come and visit often to encourage them.

M and I left before the end of the workshop to return to the office for a coaching session with the midwives team. I always enjoy working with these (mostly) young women and see them thinking about how to get more focused, more organized. I am withdrawing from the training and coaching now though not disengaging – it is now in the hands of two of my young female colleagues.

In the evening Chris had organized a birthday party for one of the expats on our team, all the others were invited. We are seven now; aside from me 5 permanent, or as permanent as one can be here, and one who commutes to Kabul every other month from Idaho. We feasted on dishes made by our best cook and a banana-walnut cream cake. It had two enormous birds sitting on the top made of frosting that was either pure butter or pure lard with sugar and food coloring (FD&C Red nr 40 and yellow nr 6 I think) because, as the evening wore on, the birds started to droop and turn into blobs – no one wanted to eat the frosted after we considered that its main ingredient might be lard.

I gave AB the fake flowers Axel gave me for my first birthday in Kabul and various leftover bath salts because AB uses manly cologne so I think he would like such things; besides he lives in a house with two oval bath tubs, one pink and one ivory colored, that would do justice to these products. My bathtub is simply not so comfortable for long soaks. For good measure I threw in Ayurvedic sleeping pills (I Sleep Soundly) because I think he keeps odd hours especially after he returns from leave.

And now a long weekend has started, one of two in as many weeks. This one is to celebrate independence from the Brits, a while ago. They could have many independence days in this country, in addition to many more ‘Dependence Days.’

It was a slow and tedious day – the kind of day when you look constantly at your watch and find little movement “What, only 5 minutes have passed since I last looked at the clock?” This is hospital time – as I remember from four years ago – crawling through the night watching every minute taking its sweet time to complete the circle, then dozing off and, when awake again, noticing that only 2 minutes have passed and wondering whether it will ever get morning.

In Dutch we have a saying that the last pieces of lead are the heaviest (the laatste loodjes wegen het zwaarst). These last weeks are hard because in my mind I am already home. The discrepancy between where I want to be and where I am makes me irritable, testy and impatient. I was so with my boss in our senior staff meeting this morning. I apologized afterwards to him and felt embarrassed – I had for a moment lost my mind.

In the leadership workshop we have one facilitator who is losing his voice and another who stayed home with a migraine headache. I didn’t feel so great myself – very sleepy and with a headache. Maybe this is normal for people who are fasting. I broke off small pieces from a Cliff bar, rolling them between my fingers into small pea-size chunks that I can pop into my mouth unobtrusively, much like I used to do with small pieces of licorice in class when the teacher wasn’t watching. But I can’t do that with water and the thirst is the worst.

Day three of the four-day event has passed. We really should be taking more time with these half days but every attempt I have made suggesting that we finish next week are met with a stream of arguments that we can finish the workshop tomorrow. We appear to be zigzagging a bit through the curriculum and I am suspecting it has something to do with wanting to finish tomorrow.

The ride back to the office these day is a killer, between the heat, the traffic jams, the fumes, and irritable and impatient people wanting to get to their homes for a nap. We were stuck for a longtime in gridlock at a cross roads where everyone goes in every direction. The powerless policeman in the middle tried his best to be effective and preserve his dignity but he could do nothing to stop the train of large armored SUVs with tinted windows and no number plates of plowing ahead through the gridlock. Honking loudly, and with grim looking big men with as large a gun as one could put inside a car, they managed to open the road by sheer force.

They came from the direction of the presidential palace and a number of government offices that let out right after noon – a little before the official end of the day for government workers during Ramadan. If you have a mighty car and armed men you don’t have to follow the rules. I was waiting for an accident to happen (it didn’t) as pedestrians ducked and dove through the traffic as if there was no tomorrow – there might not have been one. It is the burqa’ed women, the crippled and old men and the small children I worry about. It was pure luck that no one got hurt this time.

Last night Axel and Tessa called me on Skype to talk about stuff. Could Tessa and Steve have our couch to furnish their new home? As of September 1 they will become islanders. Thye rented a small house with a yard in Lanesville (Gloucester). This means that Axel and I can move back into our house, me from Kabul and Axel from across the driveway, after having professionally removed the dog hair.

Then Tessa peeled off and I took Axel on a tour of his room in our guesthouse in Kabul to sort his clothes, medicine, books and stuff into various piles. As a result his suitcase if now packed, one of several I plan to take home with things we need before our shipment arrives, incha’llah, early January.

A restless night followed, fueled by a combination of David Copperfield and slimy Uriah Heap, to-do lists, work related stuff and, always, in the back of my mind, the chance of some conflagration or another someplace on my path.

The latter may have been the direct result of a sharp sound outside our gate that I thought to be a gun shot. I had listened closely for sounds that would tell me whether I was right or not, having Michael’s story about the invasion of his house to get at suicide bombers next door, still fresh in my mind. The sound of this being serious would be guards chattering on their walkie-talkies, more shots, an SMS on my phone – but there was none of that and all remained quiet. It must have been a car that backfired – but the experienced lodged in my mind for the night.

Overnight, after months of waiting, our project’s no cost extension was signed just at the same time that our headquarters told us to go full steam ahead with the close out. There were many big sighs of relief. Now comes the next hurdle: to get another extension signed in September so the project can continue to support the absorption of our activities and many of our staff into the ministry until next August and assure most of our nervous employees that everything will work out in the end.

Today was the second day of our leadership development program with the teams from HR. I watched with great contentment as I saw the sessions conducted in a very professional and energetic way. The facilitation team is working well together and everyone is learning from everyone else. The person who will house our program in his Directorate is energetic, committed and creative and I have a good feeling about this transition of my team into the ministry. And so, after agonizing for two years, it looks like we are making some good progress towards making management and leadership training an integral part of the ministry’s human resources strategy.

C. called this evening with the good news that a British school may take one of our SOLA students who didn’t get her US visa – we are keeping our fingers crossed for her and two others who still need a overcome a few more obstacles before they can board their plane to pursue their education for the good of Afghanistan.