Sylvia's Journal

His father is a shoemaker in Helmand. He helped his father fix shoes and at night he would count the money. His father then gave him part of it for his English language course. My mother, she is funny, she always wants to keep the money, he laughed, tenderly.

A year ago he rode a bike with is younger brother when shelling started. They were hit and knocked out. When he came to he saw that his brother’s head had been severed; his own eyes were all bloody.

This is the heart breaking story that one of the students of the leadership school where Axel works, told me. He had read it as a speech, in halting but very clear English in front of an audience of fellow students, teachers, well wishers and sponsors, just when we walked in at the restaurant where the fundraiser was held. A poster on the wall was entitled ‘Mr. Axel’s class.’ It an enlarged picture of Axel and his students around the table and sheets with poetry and prose pasted on it.

American eye surgeons have been working on the young man’s eye. The work is not done; he is waiting for a visa to go back to the surgeons in North Carolina. He doesn’t know if he will get the visa this time.

He talked lovingly about his parents and how he misses them while he lives in Kabul. They cannot read or write even their own language, let alone English. They are still in Helmand, a dangerous place as his story proves. It complements the other heartbreaking story of the girl without the nose, now of Time Magazine fame. Multiply these by tens of 1000s. This is Afghanistan – one long drawn out heart break in a place of stunning beauty, natural and manmade, and unspeakable violence.

A group of musicians called Sufi played and sang long mournful songs, intensely beautiful and sad as if to illustrate this juxtaposition of this country’s beauty and pain. I finally met Sabera, another student who Axel says reminds him of me because of the discipline with which she tackles life.

This was the second fundraiser we went to. The first one was to keep a school for girls going. I lounged most of the afternoon on a carpeted platform, leaning on cushions while watching Sisilia practice walking the catwalk for the fashion show of clothes made by Razia Jan.

It was an entire day of rest that started with coffee at Chris’ house, a badly needed massage at the spa, lunch with a new found friend and the fastest haircut I have ever had by a (male) Palestinian hair stylist, more artist than technician. Sisilia, watching me in the mirror, approved of my new style. She blew me little kisses while she watched in amazement how a foreigner (male) received a pedicure side by side with his female companion.

I sat in a restaurant realizing I needed to get to the airport and was already late. I called a taxi company and told them I had my own transport. The taxi dispatcher was friendly and said he would give me directions. With one hand on the phone and another busy scribbling instructions, I had no hands free to deal with an attacker who approached my table menacingly and started to take away foods. I ended up using my elbows to hurl plates towards him, in the hope of attracting attention through the clatter of dishes breaking. But the dishes fell down with a soft plop and no one came to the rescue. I was on my own and the attacker went on undisturbed. That’s when I woke up, with a great sense of loss in my heart.

The events of yesterday are recognizable in the dream. I haven’t had such a vivid dream in a long time; at least one I remember. The sense of assault is still present, so are the doubts about my presence here. Axel and I talked for a long time. He has been sensing that this was coming. We went to bed intensely sad.

Today should be better; it will be a girls’ day. First the massage, then, hopefully a lovely girls’ lunch outside with people I care deeply about. After that I will take one my colleagues’ young African wife to the fundraising party that went nowhere last week because of the ISAF vehicle accident and the drama that unfolded after that. She will be modeling clothes in a fundraising fashion show. Although I was also asked to model, I declined, having not quite the right body; but she does and she is excited about the prospect, having been sitting at home watching television the entire week with her husband on assignment outside the country. Her excitement is contagious. I think today I can forget about the dream.

Working here is like a roller coaster ride. Some days I am high and full of hope and confidence, like yesterday when the acting minister invited me to take a seat on the Technical Advisory Committee, or when the revised Basic Package of Health Services was signed. Or when I see people behaving with more confidence, strength, insight.

But now I am down in the dumps, so deep down that I am considering packing my bags and leaving. It is one of these days that I think the challenges are too big, the divides too wide to bridge and that there is little I can do to contribute to the kind of Afghanistan people dream about. For me, the arch-optimist, it is hard to even ask the question that so many other people ask, ‘can it be done?’

There are so many factors that make working here challenging. Surprisingly the security is the least of them all. Today I stumbled upon a landmine, figuratively I must add, since there are plenty of the real things here. The explosive response to my naïve stumble left me stunned and convinced that it’s this gender thing again and that it is going to break me.

We have three fundraisers lined up for the next three days – all to benefit girls in one way or another. It will provide a good antidote for the dark thoughts that are crowding in on my heart.

All week has been about gender, the socially determined roles for men and women and the obstacles and constraints that these pose for women’s access to resources, decision making and opportunities to better the lives of their children. For me the gender dimensions was pushed to the forefront because of tensions and misunderstandings that come from separate lives and probably much hurt inflicted .

For us westerners, it can be quite difficult to understand, this awkwardness between the sexes, between men and women.

Tomorrow we are meeting with a team from the US that is coming to look at how we have incorporated (or not) gender considerations into our project. Chris and I are the only two foreign women in our project. A quick scan of our documentation revealed that we have, as a project, not much to show. We scrambled all day to try to present something that is not hollow. I don’t think others understood what all the fuss was about – this gender thing is a loaded topic here.

We think this is the wake of Hillary, especially after her presence at the Kabul Conference. We noticed and advertisement for a senior gender advisor at the US embassy in Kabul; that too we think is part of the wake. During the Kabul conference, and in Hillary’s speech, there was much emphasis on midwifery education, women helping women, taking part in public life. That this is a good thing all by itself is not so obvious here. Sometimes the divide seems just too big.

Chris and her Dutch-born husband David came along to the Dutch embassy ‘borrel.’ A changing of the guard: new faces and new enthusiasm. I met a police woman who trains Afghan police, men and women. She sees a part of Afghanistan that few people see – women in uniform; brave girls with enlightened fathers (or may be starving families).

Our local (all English) newspaper, the Afghanistan Times, has two front pages: one for the people who read from left to right and the other for people reading right to left. They are different headlines. I haven’t figured out in what ways they are different.

Today the right to left front page had no news on it – only two enormous advertisements. One for the cellphone company Etisalat and the other for Azizi Bank that is building Dubai type office residential towers portrayed as artist renderings; gleaming and situated on an endless plot of manicured grasses. Where would that be, one wonders, in Kabul, or for that matter, in Afghanistan?

The absence of news on the right to left front page was unusual. Maybe the various anti-government-element (AGEs) attacks are getting tiresome and stop being news for the people who read right to left (Afghans). For more than half of the population, they don’t know any better. For us foreigners, the left to right readers, knowing about attacks still appears relevant and out of the ordinary.

A debate last night on Tolo TV (in Dari and past my bedtime), made it to our (left to right) front page. Ashraf Ghani, presidential candidate and organizer of the Kabul Conference, made a case for why the conference was a success. The key indicator should be visible in two years when 50% of foreign aid is supposed to be channeled through the Afghan government.

The implications of this intention are huge. For one, it requires a huge shift in the way the government deals with talent and prepares new talent because how else are ministerial departments going to manage this? Fifty percent of foreign aid is no small change.

The intention also requires a serious look at red tape and the efforts to both control and evade stringent transparency measures – something’s got to give because now all that is stifling anything from flowing through the system.

At lunchtime we said goodbye to one of the members of our USAID team, who is leaving Afghanistan for Liberia after a three year stay here, a one year twice extended. Most Americans employed at the US embassy compound stay one year, occasionally extended another year. It is easy to understand how one year in the bubble can be enough.

As a result of these short tenures, about 80% of the staff is rotating in and out during the summer months, each year. I asked about institutional memory. Not surprisingly, it is a problem.

It appears that the two boys have been evacuated with their wives, children and dad, to Germany. I took the news as both good and bad; good because they will get expert trauma care, and bad because it means that the military folks decided their condition was too serious to keep them here.

Life is resuming its regular course. This means the complex work with internal and external clients, preparing a farewell slide show for one of our USAID partners, looking after the young wife of a new colleague who is now at MSH headquarters for his orientation, Dari lessons, and a wedding in exactly one month. I am glad it is not going to be as fancy as Chelsea’s wedding.

At the ministry I noticed a secretary (female) checking out the Clinton wedding pictures on Yahoo. I wondered what she thought about Chelsea’s strapless dress. Seeing it through Afghan eyes it must be a little too revealing. I asked the young woman what she thought of the pictures. She pointed at Hillary and mentioned how beautiful she looked. Imagine that, the mother of the bride as the center of attention. But then again, nothing beats beauty and power.

The colleagues who ventured out to Badakhshan with me returned by road after their Saturday flight was canceled. The road trip was endless and not entirely risk free; they missed three explosions along the way, each time right behind them. But the alternative would have been another two days in Faizabad, till the Monday flight. I am glad that I left when I did as a road trip would have been out of the question for me, as much as I would have preferred it over the one hour flight last Wednesday over high mountains in continuous white-out conditions.

Too many bad things happened in July, all the way up to the very last day, in spite of Axel’s birthday and his reaching the ripe old age of 64 in good health and our 3 year survival anniversary.

The accident victims are still in a bad way and explorations of transfer out of the country are continuing. I wasn’t able to mobilize any more, having come to the end of the road and so I placed this duty in the hands of others, opening, I hope, a whole new network of possibilities. Bad news kept coming in until the very last minute of July: one of my American colleagues lost his brother in a motorcycle accident.

As if to confirm that things were going to turn around, we watched a lovely movie last night about the rising from the ashes of the Afghan cricket team. A kind of home movie with lovely scenes as the cameraman follows the cricket team first to Jersey island, of all places, and then all over the world. Slowly they are working their way from the refugee camps in Pakistan into the international cricket circuit. I would be the last to watch a cricket movie, but I am glad I went – I needed some distraction.

Today August started, a new beginning. The first day of this month is my mother’s birthday, a joyous occasion, always celebrated during our summer vacation. I have wonderful memories of her birthday celebrations in Switzerland where her day was amplified by it also being the country’s national holiday.

This morning I found an email in my gmail account, one I don’t check as frequently as I should, from Nuha who I had imagined married off to a conservative man forbidding all contact with the outside world. How wonderful to learn that I was completely wrong about this and that she is thriving professionally and is surrounded by family and good mentors, bosses and friends. The good news made my day.

There were riots in town this morning, allegedly instigated by religious fanatics who wanted video stores to remove anything that could corrupt Afghans. It got nasty when store windows were smashed. So we took the long way around the city to get to the ministry, along with everyone else. This claimed what remained of the morning.

I attended a few meetings after which I was called to represent our project at the ceremony inaugurating Breastfeeding week. Everything was in Dari and Pashto, spoken much too fast for me. I used my time of attendance (sitting far in the back where no one noticed) catching up on my reading, those long pdf articles about interesting topics related to Afghanistan that people send me all the time; some worth it, some not; some well written, some not.

The ceremony was long and people started to leave the large auditorium as soon as the snack bags had been distributed and the official work day had ened. It was very noisy while the bags were distributed and everyone tried to get a hold of these bags before they were gone. Scarcity (there should have been enough for everyone) does bring this out in people. The dean of the medical school made a joke about the few stalwarts staying to the end only to find out that they were the red carpet and sound installation people. Except for us foreigners, one of the remaining people did indeed roll up the red carpet.

Events of today reminded me of two important things: (1) when you travel pay the extra 100 dollars or so for travel insurance and emergency or medical evacuation and (2) put every new contact in your electronic or paper address book. Together these two simple acts combine to be a powerful set of tools to take care of people in case of a serious accident away from home.

We, and our children, know about this first hand of course from our own accident, but when the heat of the moment is gone, you grow lax and complacent, and eventually you forget.

Both tools were needed today. Early this morning I received a call from my colleague, the distressed father and uncle of yesterday (ISAF) accident victims. He asked me to mobilize my network and make contact with the embassies of the two countries his sons (and one daughter) have made their home. They had all come to Kabul with their wives, husband, and children for a joyful event, the celebration of the wedding of their brother, tomorrow. But all that has changed now.

As I racked my brain where to start I realized that I did not have all the numbers I needed to call at my fingertips. To track numbers down I required more phone calls (and because of poor phone lines and constant dropping of calls, even more calls than I care to remember).

A medical doctor of very high rank in ISAF who I had met at a conference some months ago, and then in a meeting at USAID a few weeks ago, sprung into action. As a result of that the three young men are now receiving the best possible care they can get in Afghanistan, at the NATO hospital at the military section of the airport.

I also tried to mobilize the consular sections of the German and British embassies but they may not be able to do much because assistance (medical evacuation) is a costly affair (hence the travel insurance bit).

It will be interesting to see how the two different health insurance schemes (German and British) deal with such tragedies suffered by its citizens abroad.

The Germans already made it clear that domestic health insurance does not cover an accident in Afghanistan and other than giving names of evacuation companies I don’t expect much else.

I am pretty sure that the victims did not have the kind of insurance that will cover the expenses of flying them and their wives and children to their homes in Germany and the UK. At such occasions, even membership in national Automobile Associations may have helped.

Axel noted that with all the bad press the Germans got for killing civilians in Kunduz, some months ago, they’d jump on this opportunity to correct their image and come to the rescue of an Afghan who lives in Germany and whose wife and child carry German passports. You’d also think that ISAF with its direct air link between Baghram Airfield and Germany for injured soldiers, could solve our problems in a flash. But that assumes two things: that the patients can travel by air and that all parts of the system communicate and, together, look at the whole. In the latter case, maybe they do. But maybe they see a different whole than we do.

As if he knew about the sad turn of events, even the ice cream seller outside our gate has selected a mournful song from his (limited) Chinese megaphone repertoire. He usually plays ‘Fur Elise.’ Not is is something in a minor key.

Axel’s birthday did not quite go as planned. It started out OK. We picked up a friend in town and went for a lovely walk in Bagh-e-Bala, toured the little pleasure palace again, took pictures of the caretaker, and promised to bring him medicine that will make him strong. We finished our walk with a cup of green tea sitting on a carpeted platform between the rose bushes.

After that I went for my usual Friday massage. Monalisa had made a slip in the bathroom and had pulled a muscle in her arm so I got to have Jamila work on me. Massages are not very Afghan. Afghan women would probably be horrified with the idea of total strangers touching their body, even if female. But Afghan-Americans brought the practice here and Jamila became a masseuse, a very good one.

For a birthday party we had planned to go to a fundraiser for Razia-jan’s girls’ school but then things started to go bad. An ISAF SUV hit a vehicle with four young Afghan men in it. As it happened, these four men were the sons and nephews of one of my staff, on their way to buying supplies for an upcoming wedding – my sewing project for the day had been for that very same wedding. One of the nephews died instantly, the others were taken to the hospital in critical condition.

In the meantime demonstrators set the ISAF vehicles on fire and a large crowd collected shouting and throwing stones. It was good that we weren’t anywhere near. We are not exactly sure what happened; there were reports of gunfire and efforts by the local police to quiet things down. We decided to stay put and skip the fundraiser.

The party dress for the wedding is done now, but the wedding is probably not going to take place any time soon. My colleagues all rallied around the very shaken fathers and said their prayers for the 24 year old who died.

There are really no words for this tragedy. It is all intensely sad, especially since it was not an ordinary traffic accident. It made us realize that even when things are quiet at the surface, underneath there is much resentment against the foreign military who have hijacked the city with their blast walls, occupying enormous tracts of Kabul’s prime real estate, who have blocked streets and now this, convoys that make everyone stop in their tracks, except these kids.

It was not a good ending to Axel’s birthday and it wiped out all the positive thoughts I had during my massage about my work here and things lightening up.

Our yard is full of little trees, seeds sprouted from the ubiquitous ‘darakht-e-rusi’ or Russian tree. It’s an ugly kind of tree that you see in the US in abandoned city lots. The guard and driver this morning described to me the tree: it is an invasive species and the Afghans love to cut it down; hence the name.

I spent most of the day with Lonna from HQ who is on a whirlwind trip of Central and South Asia looking for business opportunities for our organization. It was fun going with her to meetings and seeing her do her sales pitch – I don’t think I can do something like that and so I was paying close attention while marveling at the ease and grace with which she made the pitch.

We are supposed to do this kind of pitching all the time but we are not very good at it and have little time. So having such a ball of energy breeze in from the head office is quite an experience.

In the afternoon we managed to squeeze in a little shopping. As I am writing this she is trying to stuff a small carpet and a lovely Afghan jacket into her suitcase that needs to go to Bangladesh and then Nepal before going home to DC.

In the evening we were invited to a dinner (thank you American taxpayer) to celebrate the successful (people say) completion of an annual event that brings all key actors on the Afghan health scene together. It was an outdoor event with tables set around the pool of the Intercontinental Hotel. It is a lovely spot and one could easily forget to be in a country that is associated with war.

We were seated at the VIP table with the current acting minister and her predecessor who got the ministry jump started after the Taliban. She and her team made a series of extraordinary decisions then that remain solid now, nine years later, and on which much of the extraordinary progress in health has been built. We ate our meals under a light spring rain, the kind that coastal West Africans call ‘mango rains,’ something that is highly unusual in Kabul in the middle of its hot and dry summer.