Sylvia's Journal

Axel’s trip to Nigeria is now all arranged. We had hoped he could travel via Amsterdam and stock up on cheese and licorice on the way back but instead he will fly via Frankfurt. Sausage is not allowed into the US, unfortunately.

Between re-financing our mortgage, rotator cuff physical therapy and trip preparations we have hardly seen each other all day. This time two suitcases are open on our bedroom floor, a strange sight.

It is more complicated when both of us our out at the same time. This calls for much more planning, especially on Axel’s part who is the usual caretaker.

We had dinner last night at Woody’s, a delicious wild salmon and Californian spinach that was a cross between spinach and arugula. During the cocktail hour I sat hunched over by the woodstove and eating too much cheese.

It had been another one of these very long days and I was suddenly looking forward to be in a plane for 15 hours – imagine that!

The days just before a trip out, especially a month long trip that includes assignments in three different countries, is like white water rafting, the exciting part of it. I do remember the still eddies on the side but they now are nowhere to be found. I make long days, leaving the house at 5:30 and returning more than 12 hours later. This will continue for a while.

We can now both be found at MSH – Axel talking with the Nigeria folks and I with the South Africa folks – we are both excited about our assignments that are complex and challenging – we like it that way.

Last night Sita took us out to an Afghan restaurant in Cambridge. It was one of her many Christmas presents. She was in Cambridge to work with Harvard on a design for some event that needs her expertise – not just her scribing expertise but also her increasingly deep knowledge of how groups can best come to good and joint decisions that are intended to make the world a better place. After all these years it looks like her and my mission in life are closing in on each other.

This was the first time we ate in an Afghan restaurant that was not in Afghanistan. We now know all the dishes and could compare them to those we had often, either in the MSH office kitchen or in our own guesthouse kitchen. We also noticed how the dishes were Americanized and concluded that this was not an improvement. For one the servings were much too large and so we returned with a doggie bag that was sufficient to provide several meals in the coming days.

The other part of Americanization was of course the wall covered with wine racks and the hard liquoir cabinet. One does what one has to do. We ordered a beer, mom and dad only, as Sita is a very disciplined expectant mom who doesn’t drink any alcohol and stays away from runny cheeses. We are very proud of her.

I am sitting in the orange room with its Chinese brocade curtains, next to the lime green room with its thousands of instruments, which is next to the pink-walled dining room which is next to the mustard green hallway and the turquoise kitchen. Oh and we slept in green-blue room next to the pink bathroom. And we admired the pistachio baby room that is starting to get ready to receive the little tyke a few months hence.

We are at Sita and Jim’s house in Easthampton – a riot of colors, instruments and things that once were part of our households (in Senegal, in New York, in New York, in West Newbury, in Manchester and in Kabul) – a museum of eclectic living one could call it.

After taking a walk with one daughter and our two granddogs in Ravenswood park, we headed west to be with the other daughter, now 6 months pregnant. We are beginning to ease into our new role as grandparents – I already love it.

The end of the week was marked by a series of intense conversations, some that left me deflated and discouraged and other that lifted me up and gave me hope. It is amazing how radically one’s outlook can change through words strung together in conversation – head down after one and head up after the other.

These talks are all related, in one way or another, to our pre-retirement future; a still very long way forward that is entirely uncharted. This stands in sharp contrast to our lives pre-Afghanistan, when the path was rather straight.

After a yummy Japanese dinner with more sushi than was good for us, in busy downtown Northampton, we delivered the paper goods Axel acquired in Japan, cluttering our daughtes’ houses up and uncluttering ours. I also delivered the first of many knitted baby clothes.

The first grade luck ticket Axel got in Japan has done its work already. Axel and I will both be leaving for Africa next Saturday, he via Amsterdam to Abuja and I via Atlanta () to Jo’burg. Axel has been hired by my organization to help one project write its final report. At one point I had considered applying for a job there. Now Axel can check the place out for himself. We did take note of all the security notices about Nigeria – nothing new after Afghanistan, but disturbing nevertheless. Al Quaeda, in one form or another, is everywhere. Killing the boss of a network doesn’t kill the network, nor does it gets at any of the conditions that feed it.

Four days after getting back we are battling colds and I find myself feeling rather low after the high of Japan. This has something to do with the complex arrangements of accepting assignments here and there with always the chance that things emerge at dates different than planned, having to say no when a yes was desired and not being able to fully support this or that colleague. I suppose it is the life of a consultant, but luckily still one with health insurance.

Listening to the news and watching the news on TV didn’t help lift my spirits but one thing did – an interview in Commonwealth, a State of Massachusetts’ magazine, with the state’s youngest elected mayor. He is 6 months out of college, 22 years old, openly gay and filled with great ideas and earnest plans for one of the poorest and sickest towns in the state. If he is able to do what he has in mind one should be buying real estate there now.

The kid has taken advantage of program designed for poor teenagers to make them more politically savvy. It seems they worked. He found and attended these programs with a dogged perseverance and intentionality where the rest of his cohort was probably on facebook. At fifteen he already knew that if you put a group of people together that wants to change something, they can – a paraphrase of Margaret Mead’s famous quote. His interview is good leadership reading that I plan to use.

We deposited the Japanese good luck head at Tessa and Steve, went for a long walk with the dogs and were treated to Steve’s winter soup and some fancy hard cheeses, Christmas gifts. Axel still hasn’t colored in his good luck head but he is keeping his lucky penny and chance tightly in his pocket. We have good hopes. Some of his good luck rubbed off on me when I managed to get the last non-middle economy comfort seat on the 15 hour flight from Atlanta to Jo’burg. Not everyone would call that luck but I do.

Sita is back from Davos and rubbing elbows with the rich and famous. She claims to be looking really pregnant now. We can’t wait to see her next week when she has a gig in Boston.

We are home again and trying to help our confused bodies figure out whether it is day or night. This made for fitful sleep, waking up every two hours.

We came home to the noxious fumes that are emitted by our current political climate – expected but still repulsive in this election year. There are the irritating statements of the republican candidates to each other and to Obama (the prize goes to the one who compared Obama to the disgraced captain of the Italian cruise ship). Our local daily, which Axel calls The Gloucester Daily Fish Wrapper, opened with the headline “American Dream in Peril: Fast Action Needed.” I suppose all this is still better than Afghanistan but it is only a matter of degrees.

I finished my long overdue reading of Ann Jones’ Winter in Kabul.’ Her experiences in those early post-Taliban years (which now is referred to by some as the good times) match ours, especially the section about education. It is a sad indictment of the judgment of all the experts who have converged onto Afghanistan at such a high cost that, at least in the education sector, things are not a whole lot better than 9 years ago. At least in the health sector there is a little bit more to show for all the effort.

I am now redirecting my gaze to the south, more specifically South Africa, Namibia and Lesotho, where the next assignment will take me 10 days from now.