Sylvia's Journal

The Indian prime minister interfered with my weekly Friday morning massage. Our office car park is on one side of the main road that leads to the parliament and our house is on the other. No one could cross the road for hours. Eventually, after a helicopter ferried the Indian and his entourage low overhead back to wherever he came from, the road was opened again and I could proceed to my much delayed massage. It was however too late to have our planned brunch at the Serena hotel – Axel had to pack and that takes time.

When he left I blew him a kiss from the terrace – that is as much open affection I could show. As the car was already moving the flying kiss entered the driver’s window by mistake – this everyone liked.

Our house suddenly felt very big and very empty. Luckily we had organized a repeat party from last week as the restrictions on US government personnel had lifted. I asked the artists to come again and show their wares and tacos were once again on the menu. I ordered a Nuristani wooden lattice, cut out of one piece of cedar wood – intricate and fragrant.

Although some of the company was the same the hoola-hoop crowd was missing and there was no interest in blowing giant bubbles or hoola hoop practice – we simply sat around the table and discussed everything that is happening in Afghanistan while sipping Chianti, a rare treat.

Although it is nearly bedtime, I can’t quite end the day without writing. I started up my computer and stared at the MS desktop background (‘bliss’) and suddenly had this intense urge to get into a small Piper plane, with my buddy Bill, and fly over Vermont. It’s probably because ‘Bliss’ is Vermont. Memories came flooding in about flying over the green mountains. I realized how much I have missed flying. One day…(sigh).

This morning we discussed our project’s extension budget at our funder’s home. I used to think I didn’t understand a thing about budgets, reinforced by my colleagues’ low opinion about my financial skills and insights. I wish they could have seen and heard me talk about millions of dollars of pharmaceuticals and other direct costs as if I was the finance director – well, sort of. Of course I am not, and W. who flew in from HQ, was a great help in explaining things that none of the rest of us could. We are all public health folks, doctors, educators, psychologists…not your typical financial types. We need one more meeting about the budget –I think, I hope, and then we can get on with the work.

W. is a finance professional from Texas. She has worked several years in Afghanistan and Iraq with big contractors, the kind that ‘burn’ a million dollars a day (that takes us about one month, with pharmaceuticals included). She is full of stories that made her leave Afghanistan. They illustrate the dark side of US development work here. I think we, in health, have been spared the really bad stuff that make you want to scream ‘no more dollars, no more lives!” The stories are amazing, juicy, entertaining. They made W. cynical and leave. I have to ration them or else I would want to pack up too.

In the evening we joined P and M in one of the restaurants where expats hang out who cannot have a meal without a beer or a glass of wine. There aren’t many of those left in town. The food is overpriced but the company was excellent. Both M and P are leaving, tomorrow and the day after and so this was our goodbye. We agreed to meet again in Lobster Cove for a mussels and lobster meal. I can just picture us, right by the lilacs and irisses.

I spent all day at the Intercontinental hotel, a place I visit only rarely. It is the place where Axel got very sick from eating too much lamb fat. The hotel is a holdover from the 60s and, because of that, rather charming. Today I noticed that it is being renovated. This may be good for travelers – I have never stayed there and don’t know the quality of rooms – but probably a shame as something else that pointed to Kabul’s better days, will be sacrificed to progress and modernity.

I attended a workshop about SWAp which is donor speak for Sector Wide Approach, an ideology about aid effectiveness and donor coordination that has been tried out in several countries and is being proposed for Afghanistan. It’s entire philosophy and its processes/structures rest on the assumption that everyone wants better donor coordination and that alignment is possible. At an abstract level this may be correct, but in practice the multiple constituencies that sit behind donors and Afghans don’t have as much in common as we like to believe.

Experiences elsewhere have been mixed, some good, some disappointing. We heard about successes and shortcomings of SWAps in Malawi and Bangladesh. The people that administer US government funds here in Kabul are a little cautious with this approach because of the ‘fund pooling’ and the difficulty of explaining to the American taxpayer what exactly their dollars have produced in terms of better health services for Afghans, especially women and children. Given the incessant stream of news about corruption here, this is a very reasonable concern.

I learned a new word from my Afghan colleague, ‘fungible,’ which he explained as donor funds earmarked for something being used for something else. He learned the word at the Tropical Institute in Amsterdam while studying for his MPH. I was impressed.

The Intercon sits on top of a hill overlooking two sides of Kabul. While we were waiting for our car to take us back to the office at the end of the day we could see the ‘khakbad’ (Kabul’s infamous dust storms) whirling on our right, picking dust up here and depositing it there. I thought of Axel’s poor lungs and hoped he was inside someplace.

Back home I could see that the hula hoop had been moved. I suspect there has been some more practice during the day although no one said so. Someone is going to show off at the next opportunity I suspect.

I sometimes wonder about our guards who have these long hours sitting in their small, hot and primitive guardhouse in back of our house. They have none of the comforts we have come to expect: airco, electric heat, refrigerator, stove with oven, cupboards, two bathrooms, a bath, carpets (now tiles), windows that let breezes flow through the house. They do have a bed off the ground now after their tushaks got repeatedly wet from water in the walls and in the concrete slab that is the floor of their tiny living room. They also have a small TV which is on most of the night when programs are available.

At the end of Friday night’s party where Meghann showcased her very expert use of hoola-hoops (at one point two at the same time, of different sizes) under the watchful and amazed eyes of our guards. They have been intrigued by this toy. This afternoon I noticed they were trying it on for size. Our housekeeper Ali has mastered the skill but the two night guards can’t keep the hoola hoop off the ground for more than a few seconds at a time. It is a source of great hilarity between them.

We convinced the drivers who dropped Axel off to give the thing a spin but none were able to. The men wouldn’t let Axel off the hook either and he is just as bad. They all stood around taking turns doing something that here is not very manly, and had a good laugh in the process. I think we will find improvements over time as they now have something fun to do other than guard us when we are not there. And besides, Afghans (men and women) appear to be highly competitive.

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Today I was walking across our office compound and heard women laughing. It is then that I realized that, at least at work, I rarely hear women’s laughter – there are not enough of us and there isn’t all that much to be gay about. Back at MSH headquarters in Boston women’s laughter was (and hopefully still is) so much part of the work environment – it is sad that here it is so absent.

I spent all day in the office doing management and administrative chores that have, once again, nothing to do with why I came out here. It is tedious and not very satisfying as it contributes little if anything to improving the health of women and children. It does satisfy the people who want compliance with this and that contractual or organizational requirement: workplans, performance reviews, more workplans, more performance reviews.

We invite colleagues, peers and clients of the person being evaluated to send us their comments. Only very few people sent these in before the requested date and only when the performance review is that of a star it seems. The non-stars get very few and some prefer not even to bother. Someone explained why “we don’t want anything on paper, in an email, formal, that may come back to haunt us.” Of course, I thought, it is safer to either provide a Yes or Very often to all questions or not send anything in at all; so much for our very rudimentary and incomplete 360 reviews. May be I am taking these things much too serious – it must be my tendency to think about development rather than judgment.

Axel’s doctor was not happy with his regression as measured by a little blow tube that indicates lung capacity. It has gone down rather than up. He came home with more pills and we are giving it a few more days before deciding whether he should leave Afghanistan ahead of me. It is possible that the dust stirred up by the tiling and painting may actually have made things worse. So we keep hoping for the best.

In the meantime he keeps coaching SOLA kids as they struggle to fill in complex and lengthy application forms for American schools. W. stayed for 5 hours with us, yesterday afternoon, through dinner and into the evening, diligently working on his application to a school in the US that had explicitly asked for Afghan boys, not girls. The essay had to be cut down from 800 to 500 words and then there are all these difficult questions that no one has ever asked them, such as ‘why do you choose this school over all the others.’ Afghan kids don’t usually make choices about schools. If they were honest they’d say, ‘because Mr. Ted told me to apply at your school.’

Or, ‘how can you contribute to the school community?’ Afghan kids have no idea about this thing called ‘school community.’ Or even better, ‘tell us what you do in your summer vacation?’ Here summer vacations are in winter (from December till March). There are no tennis camps. Afghan kids have to earn money or get sent to ‘centers,’ places to accelerate learning. That is how Z skipped a few grades.

And then there was the question some creative application form designer had cooked up: ‘what piece of music would serve as the soundtrack to a movie about your life?’ It requires tremendous mental gymnastics for Afghan teenagers to understand this idea; even the concept of a soundtrack needed explanation. I was surprised that the kids didn’t select the Titanic song which remains wildly popular (there even used to be a special haircut here called ‘The Titanic’). But Z picked an Afghan singer and included the Dari text in her answer.

W. had to describe his role in his family dynamics (huh?), an optional question but he answered it anyways: ‘my parents want me to get a quality education so I can later help the family.’ Family therapists would call him a ‘family savior’ or something like that – a lot of responsibility resting on his skinny teenage shoulders.

We have decided that W. has what it takes to succeed and will go far. We happily opened our house to him and fed him a meal appropriate for a growing teenage boy. We did kick him out when it was my bedtime. He had to walk the 30 minutes or so it takes him to get back to his house, fending with roaming dogs along the way. Since we have no transport of our own we couldn’t give him a ride. We were relieved when we received his sms that he had arrived home safely in spite of the dogs.

Axel and I did our yoga practice together this morning. We are eyeing one of the 30 yoga mats that Meghann brought for her session at the AMA congress. They are now stored, it seems, in the basement of the AMA building. I wonder what will become of them.

It is fly season – theya re everywhere. But here, unlike back in the US, we are more worried where these flies have been before they land on our food or bodies. I swatted several flies during my yoga practice which made the poses more challenging.

We slept on the tushaks again because the VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) from the painting job are still in our bedroom and Axel is particular susceptible with his compromised immune system. On Sunday he will see Dr. Tim again and then we’ll decide whether he should go ahead of me to the US. Many will hate to see him go early: the students at SOLA because they badly need his tutoring and guidance – several kids are in the middle of application processes – a very daunting task for them; and me because I am dealing with a complex HR dilemma and can use some psychological support.

Because of Axel’s low energy and coughing we cancelled our visit to the wool ‘factory’ – a very dusty place – to see the carpet that has been created out of the heaps of dirty wool, then spun, then dyed and then knotted. The manager told us the carpet is done and we are interested in it, mostly because we have seen it being created from scratch.

The rest of the day we each tended to our tasks that are both related to capacity building: Axel sat down with Wali to complete his school application – an intensely complex task for young Afghans – and I worked on the annual performance reviews of my four staff members, something I take rather seriously and spent much time on – two done, two to go.

I had very happy dreams last night. They include a flight over the islands in the north of Holland on a beautiful clear sky day. Just before I woke up I was busy baking a yummy New York cheesecake. I think the happy dreams came from the paint fumes that were still strong this morning. I could get addicted to this.

The rest of the day continued to be happy. First there was the chili omelet, now one of Axel’s Friday morning specialties; then a haircut, a massage with four hands, two from Lisa who is back from the Philippines and did the reflexology part of the treatment. Then breakfast quesadilla lunch with Axel, Katie and Pia in the new Wakhan Café.

There was more happiness in the late afternoon when Fazel and his fiancée came to show their wares in a sort of Tupperware part but then for traditional Afghan arts and crafts. We touched everything they had put on display: ceramics, jewelry, wood (a walnut cookie jar in the shape of a Mughal palace) and much calligraphy. We had invited colleagues and friends – everyone went home with something beautiful.

After the artists had left we gorged ourselves on tacos, a variety of desserts and then hoola-hooped the calories off again with Meghann’s two enormous hoops.
It sure was a happy day.

We are all sad about the misfortune of our grandcat Cortez who got hit by a car and is in the emergency room up in Western Massachusetts. Sita compared his post accident experience to ours to which Axel replied, “love and care of those who love him will heal him – it worked with us.”

Tonight is Axel’s turn to be exhausted but he is not sure he should turn in in our sparkly new bedroom – it still smells of paint. We put the air purifier on at full power and waiting for the little blue window to say ‘very good air quality.’ It did that two nights ago in the Solter Suite but we know now it was lying.

In our staff meeting this morning we spent a lot of time talking about people’s concerns about moving into the ministry. “We work in this organization (meaning MSH) for a reason,” several people said. In the ministry one can be lucky and have a good boss with integrity and commitment or you can get the opposite. But the good boss can be replaced by a bad one quite suddenly and you won’t have any recourse and nothing to protect you. People are cynical, sometimes very cynical, about the motives of civil servants, even those who are well paid, and rightly concerned about the arbitrary power of those above them.

The challenge of working with civil servants who are poorly paid (most of them) and ‘building their capacity’ is that they don’t necessarily want their capacity built. Workshops and training courses are a nice way to supplement one’s meager income. Boycotts, while holding out for higher per diems and other goodies that come with training, has become a favorite pastime. For us, who are well paid, committed, motivated, well supported and protected from arbitrariness by organizational procedures, checks and balances, this sort of attitude drives us nuts while we also realize it is totally understandable. That’s why we have ‘minimum wage’ in our part of the world.

The idea that work should be self-actualizing fulfilling and intrinsically rewarding is not a universal concept and probably doesn’t apply to the underpaid civil servants. Work is toil – even Calvin said so.

A dear old friend and ex colleague has returned to Kabul as the chief of a project. When we first met 20 years ago she was an administrative assistant. I am thrilled to see her in this new position and actually got to see her at work right my office, negotiating with someone on her project about something he wanted and she couldn’t give. She was brilliant, he unhappy.

At SOLA only three girls showed up in my class – all three are Axel’s projects. I know the kind of lessons he teaches them and so I can see how they apply what they learn from him as we continue our very slow progress in Three Cups of Tea for young adults. One of the girls has trouble with long and short vowels. When she pronounced the word sheet with a short ‘i’ we did some practicing saying ‘sheet,’ ‘shit,’ and ‘shed.’ I explained the differences.

One of the girls had heard about the Mortenson controversy which led to a conversation about being ‘a critical consumer of information.’ But before I could engage with them about this concept they needed to understand the words ‘critical’ and ‘consumer.’ Armed with the dictionaries Axel bought for them I set them off on a race to get to these words. It is for them as difficult as it is for me to find a Dari word; you have to know your alphabet – which letter comes after which one.

Finally when they got all the words they put them together (Eater of judgmental information. Huh?). We contrasted the way Afghan kids learn to uncritically consume information from adults in authority position and the cost of that. Do they believe their teacher, the press? They looked a bit shocked when I told them that their future classmates in the US might actually argue with their professor or teacher about statements, opinions, view points.

We had fun with the words ‘barked’ and ‘snapped’ used in the context of impolite conversation. After my explanation of these words I had them try the bark and snap dialogue between Greg and his first donor on each other. It led to shrieks of laughter but little success. As always the class lifted my spirits – a good start of the weekend.

We love each other very much but sleeping in a twin bed, even if a wide twin bed, is something we concluded we are too old for. We accused each other this morning of hogging the sheets and not leaving enough room for the other. Suffice to say we didn’t have a good night of sleep. Tonight I am going to sleep Afghan style by plopping down on one of our tushaks in the living room.

We also think that our temporary sleeping quarters had more house dust than our bedroom – our lungs were in bad shape this morning. The coughing and throat clearing did little to improve our breathing; another reason to move downstairs.

Our old bedroom has been tiled and repainted but the fumes are still too strong to move in. The whole thing cost a couple of hundred dollars, most of which went to tiles and grout. The painting was only 40 dollars. Here materials are expensive and labor is cheap.

I spent too many hours at work today. The first meeting started at 7:30AM and the last ended at 7:30 PM. I said goodbye to one colleague who is taking our Manchester local elections ballot home – just in time for the May 17 elections – we do stay connected to our home town even though we needed some external help in choosing candidates.

And now my eyelids are dropping just as Axel is putting a real stir fry on the table that was the best food we have had in a long time.