Sylvia's Journal

It is weekend and I have some fun things to look forward to, including my SOLA class that starts exactly when my weekend begins on Thursday afternoon.

It was my last class before the summer vacation starts. Summer vacations as we know them in the US and Holland don’t exist here. There are two big holidays here: Naw Roz (the new year that begins on March 21st) and the time of Eid at the end of Ramadan. The long school break is at the beginning of our calendar year when it is mostly cold and snowy in Afghanistan.

The SOLA girls who are currently in 12th grade are busy preparing for their exams that start in about 10 days. After that they get a month off and then we will be deep into Ramadan. Two girls from Kunduz are in a neck-on-neck race to be number one in their class, a goal that is hugely important in this very competitive culture. Although they arrived as newcomers in their Kabul school they have already bypassed everyone else in their class. The rivalry is fierce as each is determined to be better than the other.

They don’t even have time to see the teenage movies that I brought back for them from Jo in Canada. I took the DVDs back to our house so I will have a chance to watch them myself first and then develop some teaching notes for a guided discussion. I have a feeling that just letting them watch the movies without helping them digest it afterwards may not work all that well and may harden certain ideas they have about America.

We finished the young readers version of Three Cups of Tea thanks to F reading in between classes. We had a deal that whoever read furthest, that’s where we would start reading aloud in the next class. It required of the fast reader to give a synopsis of what happened since our last class. F took this very serious. We didn’t miss one single detail of what had happened in the intervening chapters.

At the end of the book I asked if anyone had googled Mortenson so read up on the controversy. Only one had done that. When I asked her what her conclusion were about this man she said, ‘he is a good man.’ I must admit, even if not 100% truthful, it is a very compelling story and it was wonderful to read it with the girls.

Back home I watched Hillary speaking to the Foreign Relations Committee, giving statistics about Afghanistan and the results of the civilian surge. These statistics are extracted from countless databases that we civilians are asked to update frequently and from the quarterly, semi-annual and annual reports that all of us implementing partners are required to submit. She painted a rosy picture that left out all the messy details of daily life. The result was both easy to digest and utterly disconnected from the situation on the ground.

As I write this I watch more reporting by the military top brass and diplomats to present, in a positive light, all three stones (civilian, military and diplomatic efforts) over which we are stirring our Afghan brew.

Today was mostly a down day that started with more computer problems leading me back to my old computer with the fused keys. Somehow they had unfused. And so I requested to get it back, disappointing my IT colleague who was happily installing his programs and data on the nice small machine.

On days like this I find myself particularly sensitive to everything that is bad, crooked, dishonest, tiresome, unfair, not just here in Afghanistan but anywhere else in the world.

I get tired of the toxic air that has left black deposits on every horizontal surface in my office – a simple act of sorting through paper leaves my hands gray. It is no wonder that my throat produces a thick layer of glue-like mucus that I cannot dislodge because it is there for a reason. Everything is wrong, even the heat that I try to combat with a ventilator that swirls everything that is loose.

I am tired of hearing about people not playing by the rules – a daily occurrence I should have gotten used to be now. Although none of this is new, I am tired of seeing Afghans happily helping themselves to the tax monies of people from other countries while refusing to pay taxes themselves. I am tired of too many things that are not right.

I get depressed of the continued hopelessness of what the US military is trying to do, of Karzai’s double game, and Pakistan’s double game. Last night I read more unsavory reports about the misdeeds of Kabul Bank that is now busy advertising itself as the New Kabul Bank on local TV hoping everyone will forget quickly about its tainted predecessor. Some days I get so very tired and despondent about all of this.

On a day like this my judgmental self gets the better of me and I lift myself above the fray or, equally destructive, I feel sorry for myself. I resent having to be good, productive, efficient, culturally competent, sensitive, understanding, politically correct. I resent having to be at work for 11 hours. It is too much. I miss having my best friend at home to vent. This is, I suppose, why they let us out every now and then. The truth is, on days like this I terribly miss being home.

The one great thing today that lifted my spirits was the food left by the cook for my dinner: a great Afghan salad (made with yogurt), a spicy cold gazpacho and the most wonderful fruits, cleaned, peeled and cut into a salad, plus a little bit of the bottle of Chianti that I savor in very small glasses, taking days to finish the bottle. Reading messages and seeing pictures from back home put the finishing touches to my mood adjustment.

On my way to and from work I pass by the local police station. It is far enough from my house to not have to worry in case it is targeted (it was only once, two years ago) and close enough to be a pain in the neck because of all the bumps in the road the authorities created to slow traffic down and the sometimes large congregation of police cars and men hanging around waiting for something to happen.

On the long row of blast walls demarcating one side of the compound someone, each day, posts at least 15 recruitment posters featuring a handsome soldier dutifully saluting a large Afghan flag fluttering in a breeze. And every day someone else tears them all off the wall. It is a silent war between two factions.

Today, with a lot of fanfare, the agreement was signed between the US and Afghan governments about channeling US development funds directly through the Afghan government rather than through organizations like us. The ceremony included the US ambassador and ministers of those ministries that will be on the receiving end. The ministry of health is among them.

The ceremony will stress the principles and the philosophy of this move that few could argue with. It’s the high view, far above the melee in which we are engaged. The whole transition is immeasurably complicated to pull off. We are the foot soldiers trying to turn the good idea into something feasible, and, most importantly, something that will produce results – this is the mantra. Aside from our US taxpayer dollars much else is at stake, not the least the employ and future job satisfaction of many of our Afghan colleagues. They, more than we expats, are entering into a phase of great uncertainty and risk.

It is as if I am living inside a textbook of organizational change. Everything applies. Bill Bridges work on transitions is particularly relevant – we have let go of one trapeze and the other one is just swinging our way – our hands are outstretched, but will it get to us in time? The abundant complaints about poor communication are just surface symptoms that hide something else – something more political, more sinister, about turf and power. But the language we use is about communication, clarity, understanding, ownership. If only it was about these things, then we could fix it.

I continue to be very disciplined about my daily exercise regime. Every other morning I do my 45 minute yoga routine and on the other days I walk about 6 kilometers (in about 30 minutes) on the elliptical machine while Dante is descending, about 2 circles every walk, deeper and deeper into hell. It makes me count my blessings.

The cook is learning to cook for one and getting a bit inventive, going beyond the green and fruit salad I had asked him to prepare (this is not considered ‘cooking’). Yesterday, when I arrived home late after teaching at SOLA, I found a dish with a handful of peas, carrots and three small pieces of breaded fried fish, a rather unusual dish for Kabul; today he made me two small triangles of Bolani, a sort of savory fried dough with tasty but not quite recognizable stuff inside.

I am getting in the bad habit of eating in the kitchen, standing at the counter. The alternative is a TV dinner but the BBC is getting a bit stale – constant repetition of yesterday’s stories. I suppose I could watch the local stations – it would be good for my Dari, but it is not relaxing and relaxation is what I need after an 11-hour day at work.

It is customary to serve the unsweetened green tea with plates full of candy (called chocolates here though they are rarely chocolates) or sugar-coated almonds. So you don’t drink tea with sugar but through sugar.

Ever since one of my colleagues reported on a documentary about the deplorable hygienic conditions in which these sugary sweets are made in Afghanistan (even the ones that say made in Iran, Turkey or the ones with Cyrillic wrappers) I have restrained myself when these candies are put anywhere near me.

This morning I forgot all about it and a sugar craving got the better of me. By the end of a four hour meeting this same colleague counted no less than eight empty wrappers where I had sat.

After four hours of workplanning with ourselves, we had another meeting at the ministry to deal with the planning on the other side, what we call the ‘on-budget’ planning as opposed to our own (‘off-budget’) planning. It is all part of the transition from American to Afghans in charge – or rather I should say American organizations in charge to Afghan institutions in charge – since nearly all the staff of our American organization is Afghan.

We are moving in unchartered waters and the call for clarity is unlikely to be heeded – no one has been here before and clarity is elusive. But we try nevertheless to get from our funders and clients some degree of clarity of what they want. The next phase is to see what is actually possible – wants and abilities are not necessarily in alignment.

With three colleagues we completed the day coaching the executive team of the Afghan midwives, one of seven that had participated in a leadership development program we started in December and that has been hard to continue. It was all done in rapid Dari which was a little over my head. But once again there were candies, butter toffee, coffee toffee and chocolate toffee. And once again I couldn’t help myself.

We had set up a cascading coaching scheme that had me coaching one of my staff while he was coaching the two female facilitators who were coaching the executive team who were to coach their absent team members. My coachee described me as a ‘coach tond’ which literally translates as ‘spicy coach’ and more loosely as ‘strict/harsh (not soft)’ coach. I like the idea of being a spicy coach.

While we were meeting the daily afternoon dust storm had picked up and the dusty breeze slammed doors left and right. There is something very annoying about this when you watch the open door and know it is about to slam shut and then the wind from the other side pushes it open again, to slam shut again and again. The experience surfaced faint childhood memories of our home (this was long before the arrival of airconditioning) where summer heat was combatted by opening windows and letting the breeze in and out of the house, slamming doors shut and then blowing them open again. The memory was sweeter than the experience of today.

Weekends aren’t that much fun without Axel. We talked last night and he asked whether I would have a G&T, and a chilly omelet, part of our past weekend routines – but these things don’t taste the same alone.

I worked a bit on my Dari homework and took care of a bunch of private email chores that I had collected over the week. My new computer is defective. As soon as a power cord is attached the power turns off. And so I spent a lot of time between three computers and three batteries, using one up while recharging another; a royal pain in the neck.

At the end of the morning I went to see Katie in her new old Afghan house across town. The house came with several turtles and a bunch of very messy pidgeons who live in a fancy multi-room, gabled but poop-filled bird house that stands high on a pole in their yard. The small house looks like a cube, tiled on the outside with the kind of tiles we would put in a bathroom or kitchen. But inside it is cozy. The walls are thick and the breeze through the open windows cools the house off nicely.

This breeze is going to be important because painters were busy with the same high gloss/high fume paint that gave us headaches and nausea in our house – the thing that may finally have short circuited Axel’s lungs.

The house is tucked away behind an enormous poppy house, owned by Turks who have used every inch of the land to build as large a mansion as could possibly fit between the neighbors’ walls. Once again it is the juxtaposition of the very beautiful and the very ugly that is so typical for this country.

I left just about the time that four suicide bombers approached a police station a few miles away and then blew themselves up. I found this out only later when I got to the language school where everyone was busy texting to friends and loved ones.

And so this was another day in Kabul, another weekend passed mostly alone. I hope I will get the hang of it soon.

After my weekly massage I took an old and threadbare heirloom rug that I had brought from home to Wahid’s carpet shop on Chicken Street. He noticed it was old, very old, and beautiful. Repairs are possible but will take a long time (‘I have a lot of time’ I told Wahid). He is going to have it washed first and then he will get a quote. I wished I knew the history of the rug, how it came to America.

I learned from Wahid that the brown vegetable dyed wool ‘eats itself.’ The blues and greens and reds are still vibrant but the browns are gone. I also learned that moths like brown wool better than the blue, red or green wool fibers.

I asked permission from my boss and the US government to skip out of Afghanistan for a week in early July and head down to Kerala to attend the monsoon wedding of the son of an old college friend of mine. He is marrying his Indian sweetheart and business partner. And so, my second errand on Chicken Street was to look for gifts for the parents of the bride and groom. I found an abundance of lapis treasures and settled on a few items that are of the deepest blue with tiny gold veins (pyrite).

Back home I arranged my flights, my hotel in Delhi and explored hotels in Cochin. A break three weeks from now is certainly something to look forward to.

The rest of the day I worked on various things that had not gotten attention during the week. The US Government gets some extra hours out of me now that I have no housemate to keep me from working – especially on Fridays when Boston has a regular workday.

Despite the dust storms that sweep each afternoon through the Kabul Valley and over the thousands of construction sites carrying with them all the pollutants that made Axel sick, and that make me grateful that Axel is not here, life goes on.

This included the volleyball game between a ministry team that administers the NGO contracts for health services and a team from our project based in our compound.
The setup had been a bit shaky as the challenging team had made a list of conditions that were essentially ignored about who could play and who could not (not our drivers as they practice nearly daily and are very good) and how the game would be played (international volleyball rules versus ‘Pakistan refugee camp’ rules – the ones most Afghans are playing by). One of the conditions that everyone agreed on was ‘no biting or scratching’ and ‘no one should be hurt.’

There was much arguing at first, before the game even started. It occurred to me that in this country the purpose of rules is to guarantee wins, not to ensure fair play. One of the contested rules was the practice of rotation. The Afghans prefer to leave the experts in their places all the time guaranteeing best use of talent. It does make sense on one level (more chance to win) but it also takes some of the fun out of the game. In the end, and with some difficulty, both teams adapted, with much prodding by the umpire, to the, for them, new rules, including the rotation idea.

About 80 people were in attendance, cheering the two teams on. I was the only female. Sports are for men even though there are valiant attempts by women in nearly every sport to break in. It would have been fun to have a real tournament, with many MSH teams. This may well happen after yesterday’s success but having female teams in the mix is out of the question. I don’t think I could mobilize a team but even if I could, women playing in front of men would be unacceptable.

We don’t have many events like this where we sit around, cheer each other and just have a good time. At work we tend to work; there is little playfulness in the way I know from my 25 year career at headquarters. When I first joined the Kabul team I had some hope that I could bring some of that playfulness along. I organized a few events – they were fun – but no one seemed to have much energy for picking up the baton. Maybe it is the daily stress, the difficulty of living in Afghanistan that work against this. And now that the end of my stay here is in sight I have lost the drive.

My first week alone came to an end with my SOLA class. The girls were happy to see me but sad to see me alone. I delivered Jo’s teenage movies and books to shrieks and laughter. I hope we can have a class about the Breakfast Club – I am so curious how these young Afghan women will react to this classic US teenage movie.

We are still reading Three Cups of Tea. A few more of the girls had picked up something about the accusations that were made about the veracity of the story and comingled finances of the person and the institute. I gave them an assignment to Google the name of the author and explore what it means to be a critical consumer of information. I had introduced these words about a month ago and they had looked them up in their dictionaries (What? judgmental eaters of information?). But the concept is so alien that I had to review it again.

SOLA will be closed for the summer soon, to the dorm girls’ disappointment. Since I have no one waiting at home I promised to return on Sunday and maybe again on Tuesday do have a few more classes before summer vacation starts. I too will miss the classes, as they are among the high points of my week.

I stumbled into a fascinating meeting this morning. It is or was Mother’s Day (today or yesterday) in Afghanistan. I am not sure about the history but it has something to do with a previous first lady or queen’s choice – her birthday maybe. This may require some more research on my part.

Because of that earlier this week a big Safe Motherhood event was organized. For reasons I don’t quite understand another big event, basically about the same topic, was organized today in the auditorium of the ministry. I had not intended to go there (I didn’t know and none of us at MSH had received an invitation) but the meeting for which I showed up turned out to be cancelled (which I also didn’t know).

Having made the trip across town I decided to attend the grand event but found the cavernous auditorium mostly empty – maybe 20 people at most in a place that seats more than 250 people. I settled down for the inevitable long wait for things to start with my Pashto homework and so I didn’t mind waiting.

After a few minutes the minister showed up with her usual entourage, quickly scanned the empty hall and, after a brief consultation with the organizers, turned around and invited the few people who were there to join her in her office for a more intimate gathering.

And so I spent the next two hours sitting around a big table with some 25 other people, including representatives from various other ministries, talking about what should probably be the center of Afghanistan’s efforts to rebuild itself: paying attention to mothers/women/families rather than its obsession with the military.

Although from an official point of view the event flopped because speeches were made to 25 people rather than to 250, I thought the conversations that ensued were more productive, relationships built, common ground explored and I was thrilled that I had stumbled into this event. Even more so because all was done in Dari and so I got a two hour immersion. The only speech during which I got totally lost was the one from the ministry of religious affairs as that vocabulary is not part of my usual exposure.

One of the big differences between the US and Afghanistan is the slow pace of life. Despite the war effort frenzy and the impatience of donors to get bangs for their bucks most everything else moves at a different pace than in the US.

I have to make the mental shift from ‘an impatient wait’ to a ‘leisurely wait.’ I recall a quote (a Twain kind of quote) that speaks to this: if you are patient you can wait much faster. This is true.

Yesterday my wait at the Indian embassy speeded up after I befriended an Irish woman in the line. The wait became more manageable.

Today I spent the entire morning at the National Blood Bank for the ceremonies of World Blood Donation Day (slogans: ‘Saving Lives is Easy’ and ‘Better Blood, Better Life.’). Much of that time was spent waiting for the festivities to begin, which required the presence of important people who were a few hours delayed.

During the wait I met two impressive American-Afghans who have come back or plan to come back, to help their people. I also met Mina who is 18 and in her last year of high school. Mina is a Red Crescent volunteer who helps to spread the word that voluntary blood donations are safe, good and compassionate.

Mina wants to be a doctor; her parents want her to become a famous doctor. Since she is of marriageable age I asked her whether that was a dilemma. Not for her, she replied, ‘I hate boys! I am never going to marry,’ adding quickly that of course her parents will marry her, but hopefully not too soon.

Her mother has 7 children between 2 and 20, has a full time job and studies after hours for an engineering degree. She is away from home between 7 AM and 7 PM. Mina is proud of her mom and is bitten by the same education bug as the rest of her family: her dad is a school principal and her older sister a teacher.

Mina did not speak at the ceremony though I thought she should have. Another girl spoke, an 8 year old, telling a tearful audience how her life had been saved by donated blood. The journalist jumped on her after her televised speech for more interviews – a perfect media moment.

The girl spoke into the many microphones pushed into her face with great confidence and poise, making the whole thing a very compelling story as this girl is going somewhere!

For the first time in over a month I asked the cook to prepare me a real meal rather than a salad to use up the meat that Axel had bought before he left at the Turkish meat shop. I had thawed the meat and left the Dari cookbook open on the page of beef biryani for the cook, hinting at a way to use up the beef. He called the office to ask whether I was giving a party. I told him no, and to please cook a small meal. I don’t think he quite believed me as he cooked for 2 people (which will feed me for about 4 days) and bought two small cherry tarts for dessert.