Sylvia's Journal

We took off from Kabul airport in the rain and clouds. The Hindu Kush mountain range forms a bowl with Kabul at the bottom. It wasn’t great weather for flying but also nothing unusual for the pilots of the UN flight who shuttle between Dubai and Kabul year in year out (since 2002) several times a week. I thought a lot about my three colleagues who perished in a Kam Air plane that flew into the mountains as it approached Kabul, three years ago. I am acutely aware of the risks of flying in bad weather in the mountains. But I am also acutely aware of the thorough training that pilots receive and that dealing with emergencies is a big part of their training. So I settled in my seat with the intent to sleep all the way to Dubai. Little did I know that we were to need the pilot’s experience very soon.

Suddenly the plane started to shudder and bank first left then right, then left again. I felt the plane’s nose going down and I could sense that we were losing speed and altitude. The view from the window was solid white; we were still in the clouds. A loud roar coming from the back accompanied the shaking and banking of the plane. I don’t think I have ever prayed that hard in my life. I later understood from a veteran pilot sitting across the aisle that the plane went into a stall on its climbout over the mountain. In July my plane went into a stall which makes it uncontrollable and we crashed. Now we were over high mountains. Taking the nose down is only possible if you have enough clearance. I had no idea whether we did.

In my little Piper Warrior I had to practice stalls all the time and learn what to do. It is very simple, you put the nose down and gain enough speed to produce the necessary lift so you can pick up speed again and climb out. It becomes problematic when you cannot put the nose down. This happened in July. We were lucky to crash in a pond. I have never in my 30 years of flying around the world experienced a stall in a big jet. I knew that if our altitude was too low to clear the mountain we would not survive this stall. The passengers were all looking at each other in great fright and I kept thinking about Carmen, Cristy and Amy, wondering whether it had been like that during the final last minutes of their doomed flight. My body was preparing for a calamity (the body knows), with a surge of adrenaline and a fast heartbeat. It was nothing like the serenity of my last fall out of the sky. I wondered, would I be lucky, again, this time or would this be another one of those early morning calls to Jono, his third.

The whole thing lasted only a few minutes but it felt like an eternity. We saw the flight crew run to the back, I smelt gasoline and wondered wether the plane was dumping its fuel for an emergency landing (where? I wondered). And then the crew returned from the back of the plane with two thumbs up and smiles on their faces. From the hard to hear explanation over the intercom I heard something about ice and windsheer, a potentially fatal combination. Later the second pilot made the rounds, shaking hands with us. I asked him what really happened and that is when I found out that we just escaped what may well have been the same scenario that killed our three sisters. As the plane was climbing to clear the top of a mountain, wind surged over the mountain top and pushed the nose down; trying to bring it back up caused the stall. As I am writing this I realize how close a call it had been and that it was much worse than I had thought. In aviation this event is called an ‘incident’ which requires investigation. Why did the plane go in a stall and why was there so little clearance. The veteran pilot across the aisle who flies for USAID in Afghanistan is going to find out.

Although the second pilot, a Ghanaian, claimed that God, not the pilot had saved us, I knew that the pilot’s experience and strength to hold the controls, was an important part of our narrow escape.

Later I was asked to fill in a standard customer survey questionnaire about cleanliness and politeness of the crew and all that. I put a big line through the whole thing and wrote in the comment section that none of that actually mattered; the only thing that did matter today was the pilot’s skill and whether the aircraft was airworthy. That is really all I want from an airline. It is amazing how quick your priorities change. I learned that in July and I am reminded of it again.

The passengers bonded instantly as we recovered from our scare. In front of me sat an Ethiopian looking gentleman. I ask him if I had identified him correctly and the answer was yes. He was a USAID IT contractor from Ethiopia who was on his way home. I might see him in two weeks. When you have been scared to death together, you become instant friends.

With the adrenaline still coursing through my body I could no longer sleep and all my tiredness was gone. So I wrote; it helped to get some of the fright out of my system. Going to a hot flat place suddenly felt very attractive. And then there is that thought…. that someone is watching over me.

I shared a taxi to my hotel with two Brits, one military and one carpenter. Neither one had realized that we had just had a very close call. The military guy was not perturbed the way I was. I guess death is a professional hazard for him. The British taxpayer paid for the ride.

I am at Kabul international airport. Everyting is in slow motion. That includes me, someone who is rarely in slow motion. All the adrenaline that had carried me through the last few weeks is gone. I feel totally drained and putting one foot in front of the other takes effort and concentration. I am looking forward to collapse in my seat of the UN plane that will take me to Dubai. But everyone else is also in slow motion too. This airport has nothing of the usual airport hustle and bustle. This is partially because only passengers are allowed even near the entrance hall to the aiport; and the people who facilitate their arrival and departure, up to a point. Those people have a special badge that opens gates and makes uniformed people step aside. My counterpart doesn’t have a badge like that and so he was turned away 100 m before the airport building, which is were we said our heartfelt goodbyes.

People also look a bit glum. Where I live that would be explained by the weather, it is gray, drizzly weather. But here such weather is a gift that may shorten the annual summer drought by a few days. I have a suspicion that people are glum because they are leaving Afghanistan. It is that kind of a place. You lose part of your heart here. I know no other place in the world where I have that feeling when I leave. From the outside you would expect people in the departure hall to be smiling because they are going home and leaving a dangerous place. But never have I felt threatened here. Instead of the bad and scary side of Afghanistan that is shown in the western media, I have seen people of all ages painstakingly putting one stone on the other to rebuild their country, or supporting those who do, with a smile and a great deal of commitment, patience and faith.

We women have our own security path from entrance to exit. I am constantly directed to tiny curtained spaces marked ‘females’ as if they are toilets. Inside, these spaces are about the size of a toilet.  Each time I am told to enter such a place (there are three from beginning to end) I feel like I am intruding on an intimate women’s party. Sometimes there are as many as three women packed into a space that barely holds us. Adding luggage gets tricky. They don’t speak a word of English; they are huddled together around a space heater and a water kettle with a giant and well-used rusty coil heating the water for tea. There is much smiling and a cursory review of my belongings. Last time I was here my scotch tape was taken way (Why? She demonstrates me taping someone’s mouth shut. Oh, I say without getting it, but I did not protest. I can live without scotch tape). The final body check is only for men, at the entrance to the tarmac. There are no women to check us females, so we get a free ride.

My luggage needs to be opened because the scanner noticed a stone. It was the map of Aghanistan made from various types of marble and lapis found here, a gift from the MSH team. A bit heavy to carry in my hand luggage I had stuck it in my checked bagage. They were looking for rubies, more precious stones than those. I was allowed to keep it.

In the waiting hall there are a handful of foreigners who also respected the 2-hour-before-check-in boarding convocation. Customs and immigration actually didn’t take all that long and I have plenty of time, especially when the plane is not showing up at the appointed hour.

There is Indian TV; a documentary about Indians (or maybe Pakistanis) playing marbles on a gutted dirt road. It reminds me of our schoolyard marble games where we would sit down on the concrete tiles with four small marbles or 1 large one sitting on a ridge between tiles, spread a few inches apart from each other and are legs creating a basin that would catch the incoming marbles that missed their mark. That would be our profit, the purpose of the game.We would advertise our wares by shouting at the top of our lungs what we had to offer, such as 4 from the 6^th, which meant that anyone could try to hit one of our marbles from an imaginary line between the 6^th and 7^th tile. You could trump the competition by shouting 4 from the 5^th which would bring in more traffic but also more chance of losing. We all took advantage of the little kids by telling them that they should put their marbles really close together, like a short wall. We would pretend it was more difficult, and then of course we had an easy hit and accumulated our wealth of marbles. I suspect all but the most intrepid and smartest kids had been victimized by this when we were young and naïve but then the tables turned when a new batch of credulous youngsters came in. It was a good preparation for the world of the grown up where things are not fair for those who are small and powerless. This is how school prepares us for life. Adults who are interfering with such behavior are not necessarily doing kids a favor. At school and in my (large) family I learned much about resilience and assertiveness that has helped me greatly in my adult life.

Today was the last day of the workshop and of my assignment. It is countdown time. It is always a little stressful because there is no more room anymore for forgetting things or postponing. There is much to do: certificates, signing, thank you gifts, evaluation, assigning people to sessions, lining up speakers, etc. It takes much concentration to keep all of this in my head. But luckily I am surrounded by a large team of people who all play their part near-seamlessly.

For each trip I throw a large number of serious gifts, inexpensive symbolic gifts and snacks into my suitcase. I never know how I will use those and I never know how many I need. So part of the before last day routine is matching people up with gifts. It is a bit tricky because I cannot leave anyone out and my supply is finite. This time about 90 people participated in one role or another. I had brought a large pack of colorful mechanical pencils and had given a good part of those out (‘keep your pencils sharp’) in last week’s workshop. I had some but not enough left. We quickly sent someone to the market and replenished the supply with items, not as colorful and fancy, but symbolic nevertheless. I will use the granola bars I still have for the kitchen staff, symbolically feeding them instead of them us. Various other nice office supplies such as fancy highlight pens, unusual post-It notes will be gifts for the Tech-Serve staff. A large chocolate bar will replenish the energy that the support staff has lost over us.

We are now in the closing reflection and from time to time I hear a word I recognize, such as ‘coaching’ or ‘methodology’ or something that sounds like ghaonum zulfia which means Miss Sylvia. This is how I am called here. I have no idea what they are saying but I stopped asking for translation as it gets a bit tedious after awhile. I am sorry I miss some of the flowery language. There is much use of figure of speech and I am lucky if I catch one in translation. The mechanical pencils I handed out last week were compared to the human body (casing) and soul (lead). There was more to it but I didn’t get it all.

I took some last shots of various familiar places on this trip, like my before last breakfast with Mirwais and some picture of the outside and inside of the MSH compound, to please Sita who is always asking for more pictures. Here they are.

I have discovered the document shredder that hides under my desk in the office that has been given to me. I love feeding the shredder. I am like a little child with a new toy. I am sure the shredder is meant for highly sensitive papers that are not allowed to fall into the hands of the reactionary forces in Afghanistan, in case the office ever gets attacked. But I have no sensitive information and yet I am shredding at least one container full each day with drafts of programs or facilitator notes that no one claimed, or the printer instructions that come out when I press the wrong buttons. There is something primitive in my reaction to seeing and hearing a perfectly fine piece of paper shredded to pieces.

The day is over now. Mirwais and I just had another fine dinner, leaving enough to feed a family of four. It goes into the leftover category now and joins the leftovers from yesterday and the day before. After a few days the cook takes the leftover someplace, to make room for new leftovers in the fridge. The chocolate cake from a few days ago is still there and today I found an open container of (long-lasting) cream that added greatly to the cake experience. Sometimes we have cake (or pie) for breakfast, as a breakfast desert.

Today was an intense and long day. In the morning the provincial teams started their practice sessions under the very critical eye of their peers. Compared to last week this group is noisy, loud and very opinionated. It is because many have been trained in the materials, so they know. As a result it is a tough crowd to practice on. Although all is done in Dari, I can nevertheless see the dynamics and can give some hints on how to deal with challenging participants. The default way is control. I teach them martial arts techniques, as in going with the energy that is coming your way by turning. If only people knew how effective it is, they wouldn’t have to fight so hard.

My counterpart showed up in the middle of the morning out of a sense of responsibility for the workshop. The tragedy that befell his family is much worse than I had understood. His in-laws and cousins, heading home in the dark and in the rain from a funeral hit, at full speed, an unlit truck stopped in the middle of the road. They slid under it and 5 members of the family died instantly, 7 were alive but comatose. With our accident so fresh in my memory, the story hit me more than I had expected. One of the women, coming out of her coma this morning, asked where her husband was when nothing could have saved him. In my case the dice were thrown the right way; Axel lived, her husband died; and worse, two of her children as well. The hospital is not of the same standards as the Umass Trauma hospital that has everything that is needed to treat trauma patients. The hospital here lacked oxygen for example. This is why we are doing the work we are doing, we said, and with those words we sent him home, to be where he is most needed.

In the afternoon three of us headed for the ministry to align the senior leadership team with the leadership efforts of the provinces. We had prepared well for this important four hour meeting. The first thing I noticed when I walked into the office and conference room of the deputy minister was Sita’s framed illustration of his speech at the conference two years ago. From then on everything could only go right, I thought. And it sort of did, even though we were told we had only one hour instead of the four we had expected. As a result it became a very informal conversation around the table and around the results that we showed for the leadership development activities that had taken places in the provinces. It was exactly the kind of conversation I like to have. It was a very open and frank discussion about the stresses and frustrations at the top of the health hierarchy; about all the stuff that comes up through the ranks that cannot be handed over to anyone else; about signatory procedures that are seen as not negotiable; but also about the possibilities for changing what does not work by addressing these challenges as a team. In the short time (we end up getting more than an hour as people don’t want to leave) we can only scratch the surface but I can see the team is hungry for more of this sort conversation which they rarely have.

There are about 55 participants in our two parallel workshops which we merged back into one after the first day. This includes teams of four people from 13 provinces. Somehow the numbers don’t add up but I haven’t figured out why.

Afghanistan has more than 13 provinces, but these are the ones assigned to USAID and where our project works. Donor agencies do this everywhere; they split up the country between themselves, just like the division of Africa after the war among the colonial powers. One of the consequences of this is that the various provinces don’t speak the same planning language. What one calls an objective, others call a target or a goal. Of course we are also introducing our own language, further confusing people. I am trying to show that the concepts are more important than the language and that, as long as they can tell the difference between a result and action the words don’t matter.

Compared to the small group of people last week (twenty one) this is certainly a large crowd. I was able to learn everyone’s name last week but this time I won’t even try. The room is a mass of mostly bearded and/or mustached men dressed in shades of grey, black and brown. There are only six women, about the same percentage (10%) as last week; they are only slightly more colorful in dress, each with a scarf loosely wrapped around her head. I have a scarf too but it is only draped around my head/hair when I am in a public space

Yesterday I had lunch (Chiefburgers again) with three women, sitting on top of a table in a side room. With over 50 participants we are filling all the space so you have to be creative in finding a spot to eat lunch. One of the women was with us last week; she is now here as a facilitator. She also serves as a translater. I ask questions about the Taliban era and they tell me about the stupidity of the Taliban with a big grin. Like sending a woman in labor, on her way to the hospital, back home during the night, telling her to come back the next morning; or beating all female hospital staff with a stick, telling them to go home. There are thousands of stories like that. As a psychologist I wonder what it is about these men that they are so fearful of women and need to, literally, beat them down.

In the office this morning I hear that my counterpart lost a relative in a car accident yesterday. He will not be coming in. I rely very much on him so, aside from the personal tragedy, it is also a setback for us. But the team regroups quickly and with only minutes notice one of them jumps in and runs the session. It is like one of those dances in West Africa where a circle of people forms around a few dancers and cheers them on; when the dancers get tired or had enough, other move in when they move out. I often ask my co-facilitators if they are good dancers. This is why; it is about rhythm, flexibility and going with the flow. I am very lucky and grateful that everyone here is a good dancer.

With that many actors the coordinaton of everything remains a bit of a challenge. There are all sorts of suprises, uncontrollable variables and unforeseen things. Like people from the ministry showing up to facilitate a session when all sessions have just been assigned. While they are settling in I frantically search for a session they can co-facilitate without sacrificing quality. There are many challenge that require improvisation without looking disorganized; deferring to hierarchy; people or things that don’t show up when expected and all this in the face of a hard stop at the end of the day when cars and busses are leaving to take people home. Because we start earlier (wintertime office hours are over), we also end earlier.

Tomorrow’s session with the Ministry’s most senior leadership is also full of question marks. I was going to facilitate it with my counterpart who is now attending to bereaved relatives. My other counterpart, his boss, has been called to a meeting with USAID, taking with him my third choice of facilitator. Those who are left would be OK except that the meeting goes more than two hours beyond the official office hours which means the cars are gone that take them on the long ride back to their homes, 40 minutes away.

But again, everyone appears to be cool about it and so I am cool too. Somehow, in all its complexity and confusion, and with this large cast of characters, everything appears to have worked out well. One of my big victories for the day is that a woman facilitated a very rowdy crowd of men taking them on a personal visioning journey, with great finesse and bravado. The other victory is that I got the Tech-Serve Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) expert to do a session about some basic monitoring and evaluation notions in the leadership program.

A Saturday here is like a Sunday back home. As a result I got all mixed up with days, dates and even the pills from my pillbox that is marked by days of the week. The carefully prepared agenda I had copied this morning had all the days and dates wrong; so much for aiming for perfection. Of course, in the end such little things don’t matter.

The second set of training of trainers (TOT) workshops has started and it is an entirely Afghan/Dari affair. While last week there was still some effort to use English, all that is now out the window. My role is supporting those who support the facilitators, so I am far removed form the action.

Of course I still regret that I cannot understand anything of what is being said. This is both good and bad. I miss the conversation. I can’t figure out why they are suddenly laughing but on the positive side I don’t feel any need to interfere or correct. As long as people come out of here knowing how to facilitate the Leadership Development Program without lecturing through the material, all will be well. I’ll be inquiring about this at the end of each day.

The Kabul climate at this time of the year is difficult for my body, my head in particular. It is true that I arrived with a cold. But since I got here, my cold has manifested itself in a different way each day: a stuffed up nose or a runny nose, pressure below my eyes or above, a dry cough or a productive cough, a tickle in my throat or a painful cough that comes out of my chest, or any combination of those symptoms. Mirwais had offered me some wonder drug (an antibiotic) that has to be taken for three days but I decided to wait it out until the cold begins to interfere with my work. So far I have been able to function despite the coughing and sniffling. One thing that has been very helpful to me is that there are Kleenex boxes everywhere. Every horizontal surface, both at work and at home has at least one box of Kleenex, including our high table set for the three speakers at the opening ceremony, the DG for Provincial Health, the head of the Capacity Building unit of our project and myself. Instead of bunches of plastic flowers that so often decorate such high tables, ours was decorated with three boxes of Kleenex, one for each of us. I used mine gratefully.

Yesterday I concentrated on preparing the facilitator notes for the teams that will facilitate the provincial TOT. There were many loose ends, such as who is doing what, which made it a little difficult for me to prepare. I decided to write very detailed facilitation notes so that even the least experienced facilitators can manage by simply following the steps.

At the end of the afternoon I went to House #26 to use the rowing machine. I rowed 5 kilometers in 26 minutes, on fairly low resistance. Most of the time I had my eyes closed, imagining myself on the Charles River where I know the distances between places. Thus I rowed past the MSH office, past the pedestrian bridge, the Radcliffe Boat House, the Northeastern Boat House, then all the way to the Elliot Bridge and back. I discovered I could bend my ankle enough to push off the foot rest and so I think I can try to row in a real boat on water when I get back. It felt quite good to exercise for 30 minutes. It is the first exercise in more than a week.

After replenishing liquids and finishing Fred’s book in the sunshine in the back yard, it was cocktail hour. Paul had invited me and my house mate to join him and Brad in cleaning out the accumulated leftovers from two refrigerators (of both Guest Houses). This way our cooks can start afresh on this first day of the new week.