Sylvia's Journal

I woke up with a poem in my head – a poem for International Women’s Day – and rushed down to type it before the lines would disintegrate upon leaving my semi-sleep state. I had gone to bed wondering what I would say at our celebration – there is that expectation – and my brain had clearly been working on the task while I slept. Amazing!

I have decided to turn it into a Dari poem. Afghanistan is a land of poets. I started the translation myself and, with the help of press-apply Dari characters on my keyboard, typed in the words I knew, right to left. When my knowledge of Dari was exhausted I wrote to the language school for an extra one hour lesson tomorrow to turn my dictionary words into real poetry. It is a bit of a stretch but that seems appropriate for International Women’s Day.

The gray blast walls on the way to the massage place have been painted a soft ocher color on one side of the narrow passageway that leads past all sorts of military places. I am curious who decided that it was a good use of (military) money to spend it on painting several thousand square feet of concrete. But only one side of the road has been painted which makes me think another part of the military must not think ocher all that important.

There was lots of maneuvering of large trucks between these gray (one side) and ocher (other side) walls; several looked like water or sewage trucks – Kabul is built on ledge and the sewer system is problematic. One of the trucks had the words ‘blue water – black water – grey water’ painted on its sides. I wondered whether they had painted the blue and gray water text on either side of black water to avoid any association with the company that used to have that name; a company that is not very popular here.

In the afternoon F. came over to our house to propose some designs around the sapphire stones that Lisa gave me for Valentine’s Day – rings for the girls and earrings for me. F. is part of a new company that was founded by graduates of the Turquoise Foundation’s revitalization of old Afghan crafts. After a three year study under the watchful eye of master jewelers he completed his schooling and struck out on his own. That is the idea. His shop is in Murad Khani where the jewelry school is now located, next to the ceramics and woodworking schools.

He brought more than his sketchbook – a large bag full of boxes with rings, necklaces, bracelets, pendants, lapis lazuli, polished and rough cut emeralds, rubies, tourmaline, turquoise, old coins turned into jewelry, finely worked Turkmen boxes and more. I talked Axel into a birthday present and stepped out of the room so he could complete the transaction and keep up the appearance of a future surprise.

I invited some friends and colleagues to partake in this jewelry feast, as if it was a Tupperware party – a concept of course unknown to F. I think F had a good day and expanded his network and several of us got some new treasures.

Axel has discovered how to rent movies via the internet. The downloading takes awhile but it is worth it as the movies disappear without us having to get ever larger hard drives. We watched A Room With A View and commented how similar the social mores and gender norms of England of 1900 were to those we see around us in Afghanistan one hundred years later.

It snowed on and off, with some hail and rain in between. All the unpaved streets turned into mud flats and mud spatter covered our shoes/boots and pants/skirts. Although for me this is lousy weather it is good for the farmers and therefore for Afghanistan. And so we take all the mud in stride.

My day was also a bit muddy as I tried to sort of various activities that are very challenging to manage; each with many stakeholders dancing to different tunes. In the middle of this I violated my own norms about consultation and not bypassing people. It was good that I was promptly called on this by one of my colleagues and I promised to mend my ways, wondering how I managed to miss my own cues. There is a constant struggle of staying on the rails, sliding off and trying to get back on. It’s not for lack of trying when we don’t easily (and sometimes not at all) get the results we intend.

Both Axel and I taught our English classes again. Although many of the girls haven’t finished the 1000 splendid suns book, we started reading Three Cups of Tea. This time I was able to get each girl her own book rather than the illegal photocopies with their wavy and hard to reach pages.

Z. showed up at the beginning of the class in tears because her brother won’t let her study. I don’t understand much of all these family dynamics especially since her father is very supportive of her. But the father appears no longer in charge. That’s also when R. got into trouble (when her father died) and her brothers essentially sold her to a cousin for very much money. One of the girls took Z. under her care and promised that she will talk with the brother. She spoke with such confidence that I trust things will work out.

This morning I witnessed one of the ways that this country is shooting itself in the foot. A member of parliament visited the office of a director of a training institution and insisted that her daughter be granted admission, bypassing the usual registration procedures. The request was given some weight by implying that if the wish was not granted there would be negative consequences during next week’s voting procedures in the parliament when the president re-introduces the caretaker ministers. Ours is one of those.

There is much intimidation like this and much fear about consequences. even if they are sometimes nothing more than threats. Last year I learned of one of such threats which turned out to be an empty one once (another) director had called the person bluff. The threat was empty. But knowing whether to call someone bluff or not is risky business because you never know. There is much fear in the country and understandably so.

Warlords and their cronies still have much power and can protect incompetent or dishonest people from having to live by the rules that everyone else has to live by. It causes much grief and headache for many serious and committed people I know who have to manage these situations. It also uses up much of the little energy they have left over from simply living in extended families and under much social pressures to conform, to do the job they were hired to do.

I made two round trips into the center of town for meetings which meant over 3 hours in traffic, nearly half my day not counting the time spent in the meetings themselves.

I used my afternoon outbound car ride into town to study my Dari assignment which is reading a newspaper from December about the elections. I used my colleague as a dictionary. On the way back he used me as a dictionary, testing English expressions on me to see if he used them well: like the difference between blow-by-blow and nitty gritty, what puddles and slush have in common and what it means to ‘be versed’ in something.

We both love languages, learning someone else’s language and trying out whether something is OK to say in the other’s language, like ‘can I say “I got off late?”’ and me: “yes, you can but don’t leave out the word ‘off.’” His mastery of the English language is far superior to my mastery of Dari but the enthusiasm with which we learn a new language is the same. Maybe I was a linguist in my previous life or this is just preparation for my next one.

We ended today with the monthly get together at the Dutch embassy for our monthly allotment of grape and/or hop-based beverages, and lots of haring and cheese this time.

A speech by the ambassador assured us that the Dutch ministry of foreign affairs has activated evacuation planning in light of what is happening in the Arab world. Axel asked whether we were on the Dutch list and I said we were not because we are on the American list. “Why?” he asked, impressed with how the Dutch have already organized their four phase alert plan, with the last phase being the airlifting of Dutch citizens off Afghan soil. The Americans tell us to check out their website – no personal speeches like that. But then again, there are only very few Dutch people here and many, very many Americans.

For a moment it looked like our International Women’s Day celebration was in danger of becoming a non event. The leadership (assigned, not volunteered) was more than a bit shaky and there was little commitment to make it work. And just when I had recruited a new coordinator the train got back on the rails. I was relieved to hear that we will have a celebration after all. Nothing is easy here, even something as simple as a one hour celebration.

My authority has been challenged more than a few times this last month and I wonder whether I am being punished for something I did in a previous life. I have invoked advice from my own boss and other trusted colleagues on how to manage the tricky dynamics of culture and gender that appear to trip me up now more than ever. I am holding on for dear life to my motto ‘keep talking, no matter what,’ and am hopeful that we can get past the current bumps in the road.

In the meantime we are watching the negotiations about how the US government dollars will be spent by the Afghan government once the tricky negotiations of ‘on what’ and ‘how’ are concluded. The result of all this will determine how we can support this brave new world. I hope to be part of this incredibly challenging and ambitious journey that the two governments are embarking on.

My requests for rest & recuperation leave, one to Sikkim at the end of this month and the other to Tessa’s graduation in May, have been accepted. We are very ready for a break and enjoy the freedom and warmth of India. March 25 still seems very far off in the distance right now.

On paper, or even in conversation sitting around a table, things always appear more clear cut or obvious than in real life, once the paper is read and the chairs have been pushed back for action. I find myself annoyed with little progress by this person or that person. But then, when I sit when them and talk the complexity of what we are trying to do here emerges in full bloom.

With the new USAID strategy of letting the Afghan government (as if it was one person) decide how to spend the US government contributions to the development of the country, we may solve the problem of ‘imposed’ initiatives and ideas. But what we end up with may not be the kind of initiatives that are badly needed, or services for the people without voice (usually women and children). We don’t know this yet but it is possible.

I talked with one of my colleagues about the little progress that has happened in some of the departments we are working with and expressed my impatience. He responded something like this, “well, we have moved a few inches. If we hadn’t tried we wouldn’t have moved at all.” I was wondering whether I should count my blessings and be grateful for those few inches or fire someone for having produced too little.

There is a time horizon that we are beholden to that assumes that significant results can be achieved in one year intervals and that each interval’s result adds up to the next and will eventually produce the massive transformations we are after in this country where a significant part of the population is still dwelling in the habits of the Middle Ages.

I couldn’t go to the children’s hospital today because Afghanistan’s president was either coming from or going to the airport. With his enormous cavalcade of dignitaries and men with rifles, such movements always leave the center of the city in a complete state of paralysis. And so I stayed in my office and watched the (wet) snow come down all day long while wondering whether we will get this pediatric triage business going to the point of a routine in a month’s time or not.

Once again my mood fluctuates between joyously recognizing the victory of progress measured in inches and the feeling of despair that sometimes wells up in me when the end result is so very far away in the distance.

Today I did little from my to do list and much impromptu coaching, something I like to do – mentoring younger staff how to be more effective in their jobs.

We worked on the upcoming leadership program for the midwives. Going over the facilitation notes, line by line, I helped M and S get ready for their facilitation task in this second of four workshops that will take place next week. It is the most challenging workshop to lead. They are throwing themselves enthusiastically into the deep end of the facilitator pool while I will be cheering them on from the sidelines, trying to understand as much of the Dari as I can, dictionary in hand. Brainy work for all of us.

Later in the day, with some other staff, we strategized how to contain the ripples of a confrontation inside one of the general directorates that we work with. We are getting mixed up in internal disagreements about procedures that make it hard for us to get our work done.

And then there was a textbook case of an email sequence that had spun out of control leaving people angry and undermining the very thing the people sending the emails had hoped to accomplish. It was full of examples of imprecise language, various interpretations of the same text and examples of the reptilian brain trumping more rational thought that would have considered consequences of actions.

I have seen a few examples over my 17 months here of reptilian brains in action at very close range (and further afield in daily newscasts, both here in Afghanistan and in the Arab rage countries). I explained to B how to recognize the tell tale signs of the reptile, the increased heart rate, the sweaty palms, the urge to fight or flee, so that next time she can recognize them and push decision making back to where it belongs in the frontal lobe. Maybe it’s time for a staff session on emotional intelligence.

I am progressing, four strands at a time, with my Quaker sampler. I dream of cross-stitching at night. It is good relaxation, combined with listening to the machinations of Cleopatra and her besotted Antony in an otherwise far from relaxed place.

While I was eating my French toast this morning two rockets were fired on parts of Kabul that are far from our home. Still, they did put an end to our plan to go for a walk in Bagh-e-Bala. Too bad as it was one of those beautiful crisp winter days with the snow glittering on the, for once visible, mountains around Kabul and a sense of spring coming.

Saturday is one of my two Dari class days. I got the time wrong and ended up studying Dari for three full hours. My teacher had brought a newspaper. I read and translated two articles; one about 16 female police officers graduating in Balkh and the other about a traffic accident in Herat that included a Mazda truck (the word for truck is ‘barbari’) and a Toyata Linux and landed three people from an NGO in the international forces hospital at the airport. The exercise added to my growing vocabulary; new words that will help me understand radio and TV news as well.

My colleague AB showed up with a plastic bag holding a bottle of Russian water. This is quite extraordinary as people here rarely show up with plastic bags that contain adult beverages. As luck had it, we had just finished our Russian water yesterday and were able, once again, to enjoy a very special pre-dinner cocktail.

Axel cooked dinner (well, not really cooking but warming up in the microwave). This elicited many comments from our male Dari teachers. We are finishing the last leftovers of the feast we had on Thursday while watching the next installment of the Arabs being very cross with their leaders.

We have become creatures of habit here. After our usual Friday chili omelet the driver and guard came to pick me up for my Friday massage. ‘Message’ they call it (while many Afghans spell message as ‘massage’). Lisa cut my hair, very short, more or less according to something she had seen in a magazine. The haircut should last me for a good while.

After the haircut came the massage, by Lisa’s trainee, 20 year old A. who is starting to get the hang of it. She is the same girl who peeled some skin of Janneke’s middle toe some months ago that saw us rushing to the clinic with unstoppable bleeding. Janneke got a professional bandage and a tetanus shot. I trust A. with the massage but not with a pedicure.

Andreas came by on the way to the airport to go over the various forms, checklists and reports that should help us make sure the hospital continues with the triage in the outpatient department and start the one in the emergency ward. The challenge is to keep the staff from dropping the effort now that the consultant has left.

We fear that if they stop now and lose the momentum we will never get to the vision they drew a week ago. But maybe that wasn’t their vision, just what they thought was the vision we wanted, politely pleasing of the foreigners.

Although the refrigerator was full of food we cooked a Thai/Indonesian meal, a slightly modified Pad Thai and Tahu Goreng with the tofu we picked up at the Korean restaurant last week and the bean sprouts that have been sprouting for the last 5 days and were about to turn brown.

We called our tax lawyer in DC to get some advice on filing taxes and what to do and where to hang out after we leave Afghanistan. We will owe a considerable amount of money to the IRS if we go straight home and so the idea of hanging out in Holland for awhile may not be a bad idea.

The day started rather discouraging. Towards the end of a debrief by our emergency pediatric triage and treatment consultant, when we thought the work to be done was clear and everyone took responsibility for their role in continuing to improve the triage processes after the consultant has left, the chief surgeon extended his hand to us asking what incentives we would give the doctors for doing this extra [sic] work. While the consultant and I were rather turned off by this request, my Afghan colleagues think little of it and consider it normal in a place that is overrun by projects that need to be sold to the project implementers. “Why not try?” they reason.

It was thus quite fitting that the rest of the day we helped our funders think through a new and urgent policy directive from top US government administrators on how we can shift US assistance from off-budget to on-budget. We had never heard of this new terminology a month ago. On-budget means that the US monies go to the ministry of finance and from there to line ministries, in our case the ministry of public health. Off-budget refers to the current arrangement where contractors, like MSH, get some of this money and produce deliverables according to an approved workplan.

The main assumption behind this shift in the channeling of foreign assistance monies is that on-budget would mean the government is in charge of deciding on what projects or systems strengthening initiatives the money is spent. This should end the current practice of donors pushing projects on uninterested implementers who then put out their hands for incentives.

It may seem a simple shift from off- to on-budget but it is hugely complex with countless moving parts, many assumptions about how decisions are made and processes and procedures being in place to guarantee both performance and transparency. The big idea is accepted but the implementation of it is far from being worked out and will, in the meantime, signify a lot of extra work for a lot of people.

If it works, which may not be clear until many years from now, it will change the discourse on development assistance; if it doesn’t it might be difficult to admit. It is a huge gamble but the current US foreign assistance leadership is emphasizing the word risk. What sort of risk is acceptable and what is not will emerge later when we see how people are punished (or not) for failure.

We celebrated the end of this long and difficult work week with an Afghan feast prepared for us (a lot of extra work) by our cook and housekeeper who stayed overnight with the guards after leaving everything spotless as if nothing happened. We had an assortment of friends, nationalities and professions in our house, a few escapees from the US bubble, colleagues, consultants, new arrivals and old timers. It was a joyful gathering that reminded me of everything that is good here (and worth at least some of the extra work).

Our elliptical exercise machine needs to be serviced. It groans and creaks so much that I have stopped using it. This means that I have had to change my early morning routine of a 30 minute walk during which I listen to books on tape. There is really no other time of the day for me to listen to a book. As a result I have no idea what Antony and Cleopatra are up to. She had just manipulated him in given her some choice pieces of real estate around the Mediterranean.

Instead of my walk I am now doing yoga. Yoga and Cleopatra don’t go well together as she interrupts the relaxed breathing. The yoga is giving my very tight muscles a good workout. Living in our restricted ecosystem some muscles are not being exercised at all.

As I usually do on Wednesdays, I try to go to one of the consultative forums where developments, strategies, policies, research related to the ministry’s mandate are being reviewed, praised or criticized. This morning I learned, only partially understanding the local language presentation, about acute severe maternal morbidity and whether these women, who by a stroke of luck, avoided death in childbirth, are more or less likely to use contraception. As it turned out it was not the nearly dying that led to contraceptive use but whether the child born before the current calamity survived. If it did women were more likely to avoid another pregnancy; if it didn’t they were not. Not all that surprising.

A very interesting review of the current situation of the country’s blood transfusion services showed how much work is to be done especially in the private sector. It is at the moment entirely unregulated, with poor or no records of where the blood comes from and who gets it. A frightening number of establishments use either expired test kits or no tests at all to detect transfusion transmitted infections like HIV, syphilis, and hepatitis. We all looked at each other and hoped we would never need a blood transfusion.

It was another long day with a phone call with Boston. The compromise is for our colleagues in the US to start early and for us to stay late. We are looking forward to day light savings time when we are an hour closer to each other making the compromise less taxing for each side.