Sylvia's Journal

Last night 10 suicide bombers, inthehari, were arrested somewhere in Kabul and had their mission aborted. Today another two were similarly arrested. It made me both happy and worried. Happy to know that somehow the intelligence processes worked; worried because the thought of these 12 roaming around made me wonder how many more were not caught?

As a result of this I decided not to join old and new friends in a Lebanese restaurant across town in an area that tends to be, despite guards, sandbags and blastwalls, more often targeted than the southwestern part of Kabul where I work and live. The drivers agreed with my decision to stay at home.

Today was Pashto class – a one hour struggle with new grammatical structures such as the ‘the oblique tense’ that I haven’t quite mastered. I have no expectation that I will ever get to the level I have reached in Dari now but the reaction of my Pashtoon speaking colleagues encourage me.

One of Axel’s SOLA students, who has recently returned from the US, called me to reconnect and ask for advice. He took up tennis in Maine at the high school where he studied for half a year and is busy now building a tennis court at one of Kabul’s girls high school – he needs connections and networks so that, if and when he leaves to go back to the US for college, the court he is building will be used.

Unlike his brother, F. came back to the US and hopes to be able to get a visa to return to college in New Mexico in August. Whether he will is now in question and the reason why many of the young men and women skip to Canada rather than going back. It is a self-sealing process with visas being denied to more and more youngsters because their peers did not come back.

Shaking the fundaments of my assertions yesterday, a suicide bomber with a car full of explosives drove into a hospital in Khost Province and killed scores of women and children, some visiting patients and others patients themselves. At the time the hospital was exceptionally crowded because of an offer of free services. ‘How,” we wondered during our Sunday morning management team meeting, “can anyone do this? For what purpose?”

Purpose here can be anything, good and bad. In the twisted world of interests and agendas in this part of the world, purpose can be derived from the settling of accounts, payback or revenge, between families or to helping or hindering forces involved in larger and more sinister geopolitical shenanigans to secure or maintain access to resources and power over others. We speculated, an utterly useless exercise, about motives and threw our hands up.

And then we went back to planning and budgeting for our project’s last year – a major undertaking, both the planning and budgeting and, once that is done, the project itself.

Axel told us the sad news that yet another of the kids he tutored with so much love and care jumped ship to try for a better life in Canada. The young man’s reasoning is logical – getting a visa (especially for a young male, but now also for females) for the US is getting increasingly difficult. Why risk going back to Afghanistan and not be able to get back? The draw of Canada, even if it comes with an exaggerated promise of a new life, is clearly very strong. The kids in the US hear about the ones who made it – not the ones who didn’t make it.

For an ambitious, honest and intelligent young Afghan the country’s political wheeling and dealing must be very discouraging. The lower house is losing about a fourth of its members accused of election fraud. This has a direct effect on the as yet unconfirmed caretaker ministers who will have to start all over getting their votes.

Someone wondered aloud today, “why do we insist on democracy? We are not ready for this. We need a different kind of system.” I am beginning to think that this may well be true.

More dust today – everyone agrees it is worse than ever before. We can’t see the nearby mountains that circle Kabul. The sky is white and I can taste the dust in my mouth. It makes it a little less painful to not have Axel by my side. He would have been miserable and probably gasping for air.

Today I was in the Afghanistan that I came to love 33 years ago. The Afghanistan that is for many foreigners obscured from view because of the blast walls and barbed wire, the red/white striped booms that bar entrance to or exit from roads that used to be public roads and other no-no zones full of guns and stern looking uniformed men. I am referring to the traditional, normal Afghanistan that made me want to live and work here back in 1978. The Afghanistan that explains why people never leave Afghanistan for ever – those who knew that Afghanistan always come back.

Everyone who works for the US embassy or USAID was grounded for reasons I don’t understand. The consular office sent out a notice that between 6 PM on June 23 until 6 AM on June 26 embassy personnel was prohibited from travel within Kabul City. I feel sorry for them. How can you possibly love this place if you cannot enter into daily life? If you don’t get out all you experience of Afghanistan is the corruption, the greed, the politicking – the things that make me depressed. I was reminded today that my mood swings about Afghanistan are very much influenced by the degree to which I get to see that Afghanistan from way back.

Today I did, and, not surprisingly, I feel wonderful. First I went to Murad Khane to Fazel’s jewelry workshop to see if I could find some presents to bring to the monsoon wedding now that I have decided that the lapis stoneware is a little heavy. Although neither Fazel not the things I was looking for were there it was a wonderful escapade.

With guard Habibullah by my side we worked our way up through the textile and fruit bazaar spread out along the nearly empty and trash-filled Kabul River. Unlike the river the bazaar is a delight to the eye – so colorful and such interesting things for sale. I could have walked around there for hours, in spite of the dust and heat. I was filled with flashbacks to our month long trip through Afghanistan in the fall of 1978.

To get to the entrance of the restored caravanserai where the workshop is located we passed by a market where old car, truck and tractor tires were repaired with pieces from other tires or recycled in an enormous variety of household goods. Right next to it was the blacksmith bazaar where construction and agricultural implements were hammered into shape they way they have been for generations. I was the only foreigner around and people greeted me friendly and then left me alone. No hassling, no staring.

In the afternoon I had my Dari class and completed the grammar course that I started back in March with four other ladies and ended alone. Before we will tackle my third-grade school book my teacher helped me translate a poem by Hafez that a colleague had given me. Although the literal text was very much about drinking wine my teacher assured me it was a very deep mystic Sufi poem and it wasn’t about what I thought it was about (forgetting love troubles in wine, drinking until you felt you were in paradise).

To complete the hour we talked about current events. One such current event, the legalization of same sex marriages in New York triggered an exasperated comment from my teacher that is akin to ‘where is the world coming to?’ followed by a very deep sigh and then, “we are fighting Allah.”

My teacher believes that in the olden days people were nicer and that we as a species are getting increasingly depraved (New York’s new law is ample proof to him). I showed him the book about the Sunni-Shia split, a page turner written by eminent Arabic scholar and storyteller Lesly Hazelton, and told him that in the 630s the behavior of people in and around Mecca and Medina was not all that different from what we see now in Kabul. I will ask Axel to buy the book for him and then we will have another conversation that should be either very interesting or very annoying.

In the evening I went to a concert in the French Lycee. On center stage sat, cross-legged, Ustad Haji Abdul Qadr, a 70 year old player of a stringed instrument that has a haunting, mournful sound, played like a tiny cello (but that’s where the comparison ends). Around him, seated in a semi-circle, on beautiful carpet-covered pillows, against a backdrop of traditional embroidered textiles, were eight other musicians: one flutist, three (different) drummers, and four people playing or picking stringed instruments, each instrument a piece of art all by itself in shape, decoration and sound (and for some of the men this was true too).

At the end of the concert the Alliance Francaise offered us a fresh apple-mango fruit salad to celebrate the summer. A soul-lifting evening and a desert, all that for 10 bucks.

This is the Afghanistan that I hoped to move back to, now two years ago – and this is the Afghanistan that will keep pulling me back.

The 45 minutes of yoga every other day are noticeable, said my masseuse. The big knots are gone – all she needs to do is now is the weekly maintenance of loosening up tight muscles. I had a four handed massage that could have gone on forever.

From there I headed to M’s house all the way across town for a lunch she proudly presented as ‘not very Afghan.’ Indeed, I could have imagined myself somewhere around the Mediterranean – eating pizza and small fish fry her husband brought back from Nangahar. Only the sea and the white wine were missing.

I introduced Lego in this household and marveled at how the older boy put together a complex space craft in very little time. Dad is off to London next week and I suggested he check out the Lego section of toy stores, assuming he is supposed to bring something back for his two boys.

M. and her husband are the first Afghans with whom I am doing the MBTI. Just getting the 126 questions answered was not easy. Some of the questions are quite difficult to understand and hard for me to explain. Still, it has been an interesting exercise that is triggering some surprising conversations, especially about the preference of telling a polite lie versus an impolite truth. It is hard to ignore the cultural element in this.

I am looking forward to the feedback conversation I will have with the two of them sometime soon. Doing the MBTI with couples is a lot of fun. It’s not part of my job but opening unchartered territory for intentional exploration is something I so miss doing here.

It is weekend and I have some fun things to look forward to, including my SOLA class that starts exactly when my weekend begins on Thursday afternoon.

It was my last class before the summer vacation starts. Summer vacations as we know them in the US and Holland don’t exist here. There are two big holidays here: Naw Roz (the new year that begins on March 21st) and the time of Eid at the end of Ramadan. The long school break is at the beginning of our calendar year when it is mostly cold and snowy in Afghanistan.

The SOLA girls who are currently in 12th grade are busy preparing for their exams that start in about 10 days. After that they get a month off and then we will be deep into Ramadan. Two girls from Kunduz are in a neck-on-neck race to be number one in their class, a goal that is hugely important in this very competitive culture. Although they arrived as newcomers in their Kabul school they have already bypassed everyone else in their class. The rivalry is fierce as each is determined to be better than the other.

They don’t even have time to see the teenage movies that I brought back for them from Jo in Canada. I took the DVDs back to our house so I will have a chance to watch them myself first and then develop some teaching notes for a guided discussion. I have a feeling that just letting them watch the movies without helping them digest it afterwards may not work all that well and may harden certain ideas they have about America.

We finished the young readers version of Three Cups of Tea thanks to F reading in between classes. We had a deal that whoever read furthest, that’s where we would start reading aloud in the next class. It required of the fast reader to give a synopsis of what happened since our last class. F took this very serious. We didn’t miss one single detail of what had happened in the intervening chapters.

At the end of the book I asked if anyone had googled Mortenson so read up on the controversy. Only one had done that. When I asked her what her conclusion were about this man she said, ‘he is a good man.’ I must admit, even if not 100% truthful, it is a very compelling story and it was wonderful to read it with the girls.

Back home I watched Hillary speaking to the Foreign Relations Committee, giving statistics about Afghanistan and the results of the civilian surge. These statistics are extracted from countless databases that we civilians are asked to update frequently and from the quarterly, semi-annual and annual reports that all of us implementing partners are required to submit. She painted a rosy picture that left out all the messy details of daily life. The result was both easy to digest and utterly disconnected from the situation on the ground.

As I write this I watch more reporting by the military top brass and diplomats to present, in a positive light, all three stones (civilian, military and diplomatic efforts) over which we are stirring our Afghan brew.

Today was mostly a down day that started with more computer problems leading me back to my old computer with the fused keys. Somehow they had unfused. And so I requested to get it back, disappointing my IT colleague who was happily installing his programs and data on the nice small machine.

On days like this I find myself particularly sensitive to everything that is bad, crooked, dishonest, tiresome, unfair, not just here in Afghanistan but anywhere else in the world.

I get tired of the toxic air that has left black deposits on every horizontal surface in my office – a simple act of sorting through paper leaves my hands gray. It is no wonder that my throat produces a thick layer of glue-like mucus that I cannot dislodge because it is there for a reason. Everything is wrong, even the heat that I try to combat with a ventilator that swirls everything that is loose.

I am tired of hearing about people not playing by the rules – a daily occurrence I should have gotten used to be now. Although none of this is new, I am tired of seeing Afghans happily helping themselves to the tax monies of people from other countries while refusing to pay taxes themselves. I am tired of too many things that are not right.

I get depressed of the continued hopelessness of what the US military is trying to do, of Karzai’s double game, and Pakistan’s double game. Last night I read more unsavory reports about the misdeeds of Kabul Bank that is now busy advertising itself as the New Kabul Bank on local TV hoping everyone will forget quickly about its tainted predecessor. Some days I get so very tired and despondent about all of this.

On a day like this my judgmental self gets the better of me and I lift myself above the fray or, equally destructive, I feel sorry for myself. I resent having to be good, productive, efficient, culturally competent, sensitive, understanding, politically correct. I resent having to be at work for 11 hours. It is too much. I miss having my best friend at home to vent. This is, I suppose, why they let us out every now and then. The truth is, on days like this I terribly miss being home.

The one great thing today that lifted my spirits was the food left by the cook for my dinner: a great Afghan salad (made with yogurt), a spicy cold gazpacho and the most wonderful fruits, cleaned, peeled and cut into a salad, plus a little bit of the bottle of Chianti that I savor in very small glasses, taking days to finish the bottle. Reading messages and seeing pictures from back home put the finishing touches to my mood adjustment.

On my way to and from work I pass by the local police station. It is far enough from my house to not have to worry in case it is targeted (it was only once, two years ago) and close enough to be a pain in the neck because of all the bumps in the road the authorities created to slow traffic down and the sometimes large congregation of police cars and men hanging around waiting for something to happen.

On the long row of blast walls demarcating one side of the compound someone, each day, posts at least 15 recruitment posters featuring a handsome soldier dutifully saluting a large Afghan flag fluttering in a breeze. And every day someone else tears them all off the wall. It is a silent war between two factions.

Today, with a lot of fanfare, the agreement was signed between the US and Afghan governments about channeling US development funds directly through the Afghan government rather than through organizations like us. The ceremony included the US ambassador and ministers of those ministries that will be on the receiving end. The ministry of health is among them.

The ceremony will stress the principles and the philosophy of this move that few could argue with. It’s the high view, far above the melee in which we are engaged. The whole transition is immeasurably complicated to pull off. We are the foot soldiers trying to turn the good idea into something feasible, and, most importantly, something that will produce results – this is the mantra. Aside from our US taxpayer dollars much else is at stake, not the least the employ and future job satisfaction of many of our Afghan colleagues. They, more than we expats, are entering into a phase of great uncertainty and risk.

It is as if I am living inside a textbook of organizational change. Everything applies. Bill Bridges work on transitions is particularly relevant – we have let go of one trapeze and the other one is just swinging our way – our hands are outstretched, but will it get to us in time? The abundant complaints about poor communication are just surface symptoms that hide something else – something more political, more sinister, about turf and power. But the language we use is about communication, clarity, understanding, ownership. If only it was about these things, then we could fix it.

I continue to be very disciplined about my daily exercise regime. Every other morning I do my 45 minute yoga routine and on the other days I walk about 6 kilometers (in about 30 minutes) on the elliptical machine while Dante is descending, about 2 circles every walk, deeper and deeper into hell. It makes me count my blessings.

The cook is learning to cook for one and getting a bit inventive, going beyond the green and fruit salad I had asked him to prepare (this is not considered ‘cooking’). Yesterday, when I arrived home late after teaching at SOLA, I found a dish with a handful of peas, carrots and three small pieces of breaded fried fish, a rather unusual dish for Kabul; today he made me two small triangles of Bolani, a sort of savory fried dough with tasty but not quite recognizable stuff inside.

I am getting in the bad habit of eating in the kitchen, standing at the counter. The alternative is a TV dinner but the BBC is getting a bit stale – constant repetition of yesterday’s stories. I suppose I could watch the local stations – it would be good for my Dari, but it is not relaxing and relaxation is what I need after an 11-hour day at work.

It is customary to serve the unsweetened green tea with plates full of candy (called chocolates here though they are rarely chocolates) or sugar-coated almonds. So you don’t drink tea with sugar but through sugar.

Ever since one of my colleagues reported on a documentary about the deplorable hygienic conditions in which these sugary sweets are made in Afghanistan (even the ones that say made in Iran, Turkey or the ones with Cyrillic wrappers) I have restrained myself when these candies are put anywhere near me.

This morning I forgot all about it and a sugar craving got the better of me. By the end of a four hour meeting this same colleague counted no less than eight empty wrappers where I had sat.

After four hours of workplanning with ourselves, we had another meeting at the ministry to deal with the planning on the other side, what we call the ‘on-budget’ planning as opposed to our own (‘off-budget’) planning. It is all part of the transition from American to Afghans in charge – or rather I should say American organizations in charge to Afghan institutions in charge – since nearly all the staff of our American organization is Afghan.

We are moving in unchartered waters and the call for clarity is unlikely to be heeded – no one has been here before and clarity is elusive. But we try nevertheless to get from our funders and clients some degree of clarity of what they want. The next phase is to see what is actually possible – wants and abilities are not necessarily in alignment.

With three colleagues we completed the day coaching the executive team of the Afghan midwives, one of seven that had participated in a leadership development program we started in December and that has been hard to continue. It was all done in rapid Dari which was a little over my head. But once again there were candies, butter toffee, coffee toffee and chocolate toffee. And once again I couldn’t help myself.

We had set up a cascading coaching scheme that had me coaching one of my staff while he was coaching the two female facilitators who were coaching the executive team who were to coach their absent team members. My coachee described me as a ‘coach tond’ which literally translates as ‘spicy coach’ and more loosely as ‘strict/harsh (not soft)’ coach. I like the idea of being a spicy coach.

While we were meeting the daily afternoon dust storm had picked up and the dusty breeze slammed doors left and right. There is something very annoying about this when you watch the open door and know it is about to slam shut and then the wind from the other side pushes it open again, to slam shut again and again. The experience surfaced faint childhood memories of our home (this was long before the arrival of airconditioning) where summer heat was combatted by opening windows and letting the breeze in and out of the house, slamming doors shut and then blowing them open again. The memory was sweeter than the experience of today.

Weekends aren’t that much fun without Axel. We talked last night and he asked whether I would have a G&T, and a chilly omelet, part of our past weekend routines – but these things don’t taste the same alone.

I worked a bit on my Dari homework and took care of a bunch of private email chores that I had collected over the week. My new computer is defective. As soon as a power cord is attached the power turns off. And so I spent a lot of time between three computers and three batteries, using one up while recharging another; a royal pain in the neck.

At the end of the morning I went to see Katie in her new old Afghan house across town. The house came with several turtles and a bunch of very messy pidgeons who live in a fancy multi-room, gabled but poop-filled bird house that stands high on a pole in their yard. The small house looks like a cube, tiled on the outside with the kind of tiles we would put in a bathroom or kitchen. But inside it is cozy. The walls are thick and the breeze through the open windows cools the house off nicely.

This breeze is going to be important because painters were busy with the same high gloss/high fume paint that gave us headaches and nausea in our house – the thing that may finally have short circuited Axel’s lungs.

The house is tucked away behind an enormous poppy house, owned by Turks who have used every inch of the land to build as large a mansion as could possibly fit between the neighbors’ walls. Once again it is the juxtaposition of the very beautiful and the very ugly that is so typical for this country.

I left just about the time that four suicide bombers approached a police station a few miles away and then blew themselves up. I found this out only later when I got to the language school where everyone was busy texting to friends and loved ones.

And so this was another day in Kabul, another weekend passed mostly alone. I hope I will get the hang of it soon.