Sylvia's Journal

We are organizing a dinner party on Thursday. It got a little out of hand. We started with 3 people and now there are 15 plus or take a few invited. Instead of cooking ourselves we gave the cook some extra money and asked him to prepare an Afghan food fest. We also asked him to stay so the kitchen will be clean when the last guest leaves the house. I like that idea.

I am told that local cooks like to be present when the guests rave about their food. It is a matter of professional pride and advertising for when the current employer leaves (foreigners nearly always leave) and a new employer is needed. He would want people to say, remember that great meal he cooked at Axel’s and Sylvia’s back in February?

Today Alison arrived from our Washington office with a Christmas package from Tessa, a pile of books for my girls’ book club (Three cups of tea) and an embroidery ring to stretch my Quaker sampler fabric so I can see the threads more clearly and save my eyes from going bad.

In the Christmas package, aside from various drugs to preserve our health, was a book for Axel about famous’ people’s lists. Axel is a list person and so is Tessa so it was a fitting present. For me there were lovely green sea-glass earrings which immediately made me homesick – glass from down by the beach that is so very far away from here. A final suprise was the, to us unknown, Australian TV series (mockumentary) about a high school – 16 episodes no less. We will invite our Australian colleagues for a viewing and, I presume, a good laugh.

For dinner we met Razia jan at the local Korean restaurant. She is off to the US soon for a whole slew of fundraisers for her girls school just outside Kabul. The money raised will buy more school books and allow the school to extend its reach into grade seven.

Things nearby are looking better again even though elsewhere in Afghanistan really bad things are happening and many people are killed or maimed by desperate Taliban & cronies – it is as if the summer killing season has an early start.

Sometimes my teaching about management and leadership takes on forms that are not in my workplan or in a formal training. Today the emphasis was on inspiring and being inspired, on aligning and mobilizing rather than implementing. The emphasis has been so much on results and implementing that the actual leadership work fell by the wayside, draining me, or, rather, not supplying me with the necessary energy to break through the multiple obstacles that surround us here.

Like for instance when the agreement reached yesterday about breaking through logjams and getting the licenses we need to import the controlled substances was nixed by a lower level person who keeps on singing the same obstructionist tune. How that is possible is something I cannot understand (but imagine).

M and S had lunch together and we talked about makes it hard for them to keep their heads up. I explained what assertiveness by drawing an imaginary picture of ‘standing one’s ground,’ drawing the line that indicates this is mine (my right, my responsibility, my concern, my voice).

In the afternoon we joined with others, some men of influence and authority, to be inspired, once again, by the urban renewal project of the Turquoise Mountain Foundation in Murad Khani. This time the clinic was finished. Last time, in the fall, it was still a construction site, and the craftsmen had not yet moved into the complex, the woodcarvers, the jewelers, the ceramic tile makers, the calligraphers. Now we caught the students hard at work, supervised by their masters, as in an old fashioned guild. I think we all left the site thinking that there is hope for Afghanistan, if only…

Despite the cold and remaining snow there was a faint smell of spring today, a thawing and greening that surprised me just when I thought we had gone back to winter. There is still snow on the ground and the white mountains surrounding us are beautiful but the gardeners uncovered tiny little rose bushes (rose babies he called them).

The 4 inch rose stalk sticks that they had put in the heavy clay ground next to our office last fall, in a sheltered sunny spot, then covered with plastic, have sprouted leaves. They have clearly done this before, opening the jerry-rigged greenhouse exactly at the right time and raising the plastic cover by a few inches to give the baby leaves more room.

I had lunch with M’s kids in the day care center, along with the other kids sitting around a plastic table cloth eating their lunch of rice and potatoes with a few small chunks of fatty meat. The youngest child is Suleiman, now 5 months old who was waiting patiently for his meal that required the presence of his mom, who promptly joined us for his and her lunch.

M’s oldest son read me from his notebook, packed in a plastic Sponge Bob case that Qatar airlines had given him. He had drawn a few pictures in his notebook: one of the river Nile (a bright blue blotch that I thought was the view from the airplane), a fish (they ate) and a crocodile (they saw) plus the MC initials that stood for McDonald, possibly the biggest treat of his stay in Egypt (‘Kabul should have one,’ he noted).

He wrote about their trip to Abu Simbel (boring and tiresome), a fight with his brother (quickly made up), his mother’s headache and a trip to the souvenir bazaar. He also wrote about the four-star tourist hotel with its tasty breakfasts. He did not write that the hotel quickly emptied as the revolution took on steam further north.

After lunch we pulled rank. In order to solve a 9 months old attempt to obtain a license from the government to import pharmaceuticals on the controlled substances list (for mental health and trauma care) I went with my drug unit program manager to the ministry. Exasperated because of endless petty requests and having to do letters over and over, and continuing to be strung along, we jumped to the near top of the hierarchy and brought our funder along. Most of the meeting was conducted in Dari but I got the gist as body language revealed quickly that our decision had paid off. A rush of phone calls should get this resolved quickly although when I asked, in my best Dari whether the issue had been resolved it was met with an ‘incha’llah.’

Back in the office I welcomed Bill back to Afghanistan, one of our frequent consultants who has become a good friend, and then attended an excellent presentation about drug management by staff from that unit. We ran out of time but the discussion was fascinating and I learned more about this topic I knew nothing about two years ago.

Our snowman, on whom I have projected all the bad happenings of the last few weeks, is melting and nothing more than a 1 meter tall blob, revealing around him grass that is turning a little greener each day.

But the blob holds still some very bad things. We think R. may be on her way to safety, out of this country, as I write this; but the shelters are still under attack. Please click on this link to sign a petition to the government and forward it to others. We need to mobilize an angry outcry to stop the Afghan government in its tracks, to make it realize that its plans are bad for women. We do have some leverage after all with all our tax monies streaming into this country.

We should be turning to spring, in fact one of my colleagues, returning from Konar province, said everything is starting to get green and the sun is warm. But here in Kabul we appear to be turning to winter. The snow that fell last week is still on the streets and the temperatures are dipping down. We have gotten into the habit of putting our night clothes on top of the electric mattress heaters so that when it is time to turn in, both our sheets and our jammies are warm. We just have to remember to turn the switch on at 6 PM.

This morning we had a two hour conversation about the emergency triage and treatment of kids that are brought into the Indira Ghandi hospital. It was a fascinating exercise that revealed all the moving pieces that need to be managed, controlled, and improved before it can become a learning center for other hospitals.

There is the physical layout and the patient flow, the staffing, the procedure rooms, the records and registration process, the drug and consumables supply, the training materials and much more. People may talk lightly about creating a learning center but this morning revealed how complex the enterprise is. Nothing can be forgotten because everything is connected to everything although not everything is urgent right now.

Two small groups sat around a large piece of white paper with markers to draw their vision. I tried to have them anchor their discussions about what to do now in a picture of what is to be in the future. We didn’t entirely complete the task as most of the discussions focused on the physical layout and patient flow, who does what where and some on the training, but it was a good start.

It also served as a diagnostic for Andreas’ who is here, only this week, to help push the process along. I am glad he was there as there is very little I know about emergency pediatric care and I have therefore no credibility when there is a choice of options. All I can do is asking dumb questions.

Afterward we had lunch in the hospital director’s office followed by a tour that followed the patient flow. I only got to see the start of it as Saturday is my Dari class and I try not to cancel it except under duress.

I finished reading a text, in Dari, about Ibn Battuta, a contemporary of Marco Polo who, I learned, travelled 120000 kilometers, from China to Spain to Timbouktou and finally settled in Fez. During my last few years at MSH headquarters I flew that number of kilometers in a year.

Emboldened by yesterday’s barbecue experience Axel is grilling a steak, his first time I believe. We are having it together with home fries and a thick potato/leek soup that has some likeness to traditional Dutch pea soup, without the bacon and trotters of course.

“How do guys stand around a barbecue here in Afghanistan?” asked Axel, meaning, what do they hold in their hands if not beer. Our barbecue this evening would qualify as a semi or quasi barbecue if measured against American standards. Axel held a near beer in his hand. It will have to make do.

Barbecuing in the snow felt a bit like back home, except he did it with our two guards and used, as a starter chimney, an empty can of Quaker oats, to get the rough and chunky charcoal going.

Axel worked all day on school applications, helping N. find answers to his thousand questions. “I am the busiest unemployed person,” he quipped.

In the morning I took two newly found friends to Lisa for massages followed by a Starbucks coffee, which came with the massage. It is an all purpose spa. My new friends liked the place and hopefully this will help Lisa expand her clientele. It is pure self interest as I don’t want her to go out of business.

I introduced M to Chicken Street and discovered that she and I have a weakness for fabrics, interesting coats, prints, embroidery. I left them both with Ibrahim off Chicken Street wading through a foot deep of fabrics.

In the evening we had Andreas over. He came all the way from Australia to help get a pediatric hospital intervention, called Emergency Triage and Treatment (ETAT), going in Kabul’s premier children’s hospital. Tomorrow we are going to find out whether everyone involved in this initiative is actually on the same page. I will have them draw a picture. It is important enough that I am willing to sacrifice my day off to see for myself.

Every piece of paper and plastic file folder in my office is covered with fine black soot. Shuffling papers from one pile to another left me with black hands. At home it is not all that different even though everything looks clean on the surface but the soot is beneath and behind, and in my lungs of course.

Many people had taken the day off, bridging two days off before and two days off following. And so I had time to clean my desk and shuffle papers.

I had several visitors, a consultant from Germany by way of Australia who is here to help with establishing procedures that will rush severely ill children straight to the emergency room. This may sound obvious, but it is not here. The triage system is rudimentary and kids die as a result.

Then there was F, just back from Bangladesh where he got his public health degree. Now he is looking for a job to pay back the debts he engaged for his degree. And finally there was the CEO from an American hospital group that has built, equipped and staffed a district hospital not far from our house.

These contacts lifted my spirits and got me out of my self-pitying mode, showing a little bit of sun behind the grey clouds that have encircled me the last few weeks.
I did miss my Thursday after school class but there too things are lightening up. A new building has been found and the girls are moving in. I fear it is a bit far from our house and so this may make it a little more difficult to teach there after work.

In the evening we met the ambassador from a northern country who happens to be the friend of a fellow Quaker. He told us his story of how he, a small town farm boy, ended up in a top American boys academy, graduated and then made his way into Harvard. Here was, sitting right across the table, someone whose life had been changed by attending an American high school. He offered to talk with N who came to our house the other day and who Axel is helping to get into another, similar, academy.
People may think that getting individual kids out of their milieu of poverty and into learning that opens them to the bigger world is a drop on a hot plate and too slow as a process. But this ambassador is now helping street kids in Afghanistan learn to play the violin and give concerts. One life changed forty years ago is now changing hundreds more. It is a matter of multiplication.

One of Axel’s students, N, came to our house this morning. Axel had offered to help him with his application for an Academy (high school) in Massachusetts. It was an interesting education and cultural experience. For each question asked Axel asked N, “what are they asking? Why do they want to know that?”

We spent a lot of time on the question about what the prospective student had learned about diversity. As it turned out the whole concept was alien. Here in Afghanistan diversity is not the good thing it is supposed to be in the US. Diversity.. In N’s eyes, diversity has led to wars, discrimination, and violence. It is safer to be among your own people than risk all sorts of abuse when not. N is Hazara. They have learned from experience that being with ‘the other’ is risky and causes much unhappiness.

After some explanations of what was meant by the word diversity he eagerly explained to us that he was going to go to diversity, indicating that we had failed to get the concept across. Maybe for him it was something like a university, a place full of differences one goes to.

N. had to answer all sorts of questions that made no sense to him, like, “what is your father’s occupation?” Answer: shoes repairman. Axel had to explain that even though he repairs more than one shoe the occupation uses the singular. “What is the address of his business?” Answer: in the bazar of Lashkargar, near the so and so building, towards the end of the street. “Do your parents agree with your application” Answer, a puzzled look (N’s parents can’t read or write their own language, let alone English), they won’t even understand the question. “Do you have siblings who have gone to our Academy?” (huh?), “What are your academic interests” (huh?), etc. etc.

In the afternoon, after N had left with lots of homework including a 300 word handwritten essay about something important that had changed his life (like biking into an exploding shell that killed his brother and left him with damaged eye, pulled to safety by a reporter who got him to the US and then back to Kabul, a city he had never gone to. And now here he is, applying to a fancy high school in Massachusetts).

We made a brief sortie out of our house to get the ingredients for a Thai curry that we served to our friends from Turquoise Mountain, a nice break in the monotony of sitting at home, reading, knitting, embroidering and computering.

Everything was about comfort today. I stayed the entire day in my jammies, reading, knitting, embroidering and planning my birthday later this year. Sometime in the morning Axel helped me disentangle a ball of cashmere yarn which was symbolic for and got my mind off the entanglements in our life.

I cooked comfort food for lunch, chicken soup and baked corn muffins, which we shared with our guards.

While knitting a hat and booties for yet another baby scheduled to arrive in May I listened to few hours of Lewis Sinclair’s Main Street. Main Street life in that small prairie town in the early 1900s wasn’t all that different from what I observe here, the petty squabbles, the gossip, the moralizing, the tattling and spying on neighbors and the fearful renunciation of ‘otherness.’

Being a parallel reader, I am also reading William Dalrymple’s Last Mughal, describing Delhi a few decades before Main Street. I find the same social phenomena with a little more power and money thrown in. If anyone thinks the madrasas, the fundamentalism, the warlords, the corruption, the proselytizing is anything new, reading history will quickly correct that misconception. I don’t know whether it should make me feel better or worse.

In the afternoon we got a call from Z who returned from Kunduz to find the school closed and the dorm girls dispersed. She was told to return home but the Salang Pass is closed and Kunduz is out of reach for now. We offered our house but she is staying with one of the other girls who lives in town.

Ted has taken the threats to his school seriously. He moved himself and the girls out and is rethinking the school’s future. For now the school/house is empty and classes cancelled. Axel and I are thinking how we can continue the classes in another form. The six books for our next reading (Three Cups of Tea) are already on their way to Kabul. Maybe we could do a Skype reading class. This is a place where one has to be resourceful, an art Afghans have had to master a long time ago.

I had a skype call with a friend of a friend, a pediatrician of Pakistani ancestry who has the energy to do good work in Kabul. She is as enthusiastic as I was two years ago. It is good that there are people in the wings to continue the relay race and take the baton from disheartened folks like us.

Our after dinner attraction was a Morse mystery which made it, all in all, not such a bad day.

In the morning we were unpleasantly surprised with the latest news about the women shelters and attempts by reactionary forces in this society to reign them in and impose government controls because, as they claim, these are ‘houses of ill repute.’ Ministry of Justice officials have investigated the accusations and publicly stated they have no grounds. But the accusers don’t give up. They have become very active, virtually stalking women and groups who try to counter them. It is a worrisome trend, especially as we know of at least one young and talented woman who may stay alive because of the existence of such safe houses.

In the afternoon we heard of a ‘complex attack’ (jargon for multiple actors with multiple means of destruction) in the center of Kabul at the Safi Landmark hotel (a second time this place has been targeted). One of our staff was close but the driver made a quick U-turn and drove him to safety. That too is worrisome.

In between I had a lighter moment. I sat for half an hour with our housekeeper who arrived with our monthly guesthouse supply order that I have to sign. We talked in broken Dari and English to figure out why he needs 18 boxes (packs) of washing powder (brandname: Pak which means clean in Dari) – this in itself was a confusing linguistic situation – packs of Pak. It quickly turned into a third grade math problem: if he does and average of 8 to 10 loads a week (that much?) and one pack of Pak washes about 5 to 6 loads then why the 18 boxes for a month’s supply? I had to call in a translator to sort it out. The order was reduced to 8 boxes.

I am disappointed about M’s reception back in the office. None of her male colleagues asked her about her work there, and only a couple of women came to greet her but neither asked about her work either. It is as if she went on a holiday, as a tourist. I am very discouraged by this.

More bad news from the afternoon school program that, together with a women’s writers project has received threats. We have cancelled our Thursday class and the girls are being dispersed.

More discouragement from not being able to do what I came out to do, revelations of petty squabbles and jealousies that undermine our work together and pull us apart, not just me.

Two of my expat colleagues left on R&R, taking advantage of two holidays (the prophet’s birthday, Mawlud, and the retreat of the Russians). Our R&R, postponed because of a HQ visit, is still 5 or even 6 weeks away yet we never needed it more. For now we will have to make do with the next two days off and use them to raise our very low spirits.

All in all today was a very bad day. I think it is good time to watch Mr. Bean tonight.

Our Afghan snowman lost his likeness to George Washington, as well as his eyes (radishes) and nose (half a carrot). I was disappointed that the kids of the childcare center didn’t come out to make their own snowman on the vast expanse of virgin pack snow in from of my office. I had some plan to help them make one at lunch time but instead I had a long and frank talk with one of my staff who surfaced after a two week absence.

M. is back in the office and handed in the first draft of her report; we will work together on a second draft and prepare a presentation for our staff. I was sorry to see her return to her old administrative job as I had hoped to have a promotion in place but it is tied to several other moves that cannot yet happen. And so I counsel patience, to myself, to her and two other people whose job changes are all interconnected.

The US government, as part of a promise at the July Kabul Conference, has to materialize the 50% ‘on-budget’ support to the Afghan government. This means that half of all the monies obligated to rebuild/develop Afghanistan have to flow through the ministry of finance into the various line ministries that receive the assistance. Health is one of those. It is an enormous undertaking of a complexity that is hard to grasp, especially if you have to orchestrate all this from behind the barricades of the US compound.

Things that took 8 years to bring about now (a relatively small percentage of the aid being channeled through the government) have to be done in 2 years. Of course we have learned a lot from the 8 year experience but reducing it to a quarter is a bit of a stretch.

The ripples of the policy change are felt far and wide, including in our project as it affects our immediate (post September 2011) future, the handover of consultants, advisors and program initiatives to a government that is not quite ready to take over.

Ripples also abounded on Darulaman, the main drag that separates us from our guesthouses. The foot of snow that fell on the unpaved and undrained parts of the street turned it into a lake, rippling also wide and far and keeping cars from using their usual bypass of the traffic jams on the harder and drained segments of the road.

And in the middle of the muck, on a plastic bag, huddled a shape in a burqa with her hand outstretched for alms while cars splashed by her as if she was an object rather than a fellow human being. We didn’t stop and I pondered once more the ethical dilemma, does one encourage this practice by giving money, making it worse or does one ignore the plight of this woman, leaving it to someone else to sort out (where does she go at night?)? Sometime I feel so very inadequate here.