Sylvia's Journal

The real International Women’s Day Celebration was a day off for us at MSH but a workday for the rest of Afghanistan. and ended up a workday for me just as well. In the morning I caught up on outstanding reviews. Never in my life have I had to review so many documents. It is astonishing how many terms of reference, minutes, drafts of strategies, policies and concept notes are being produced here. Not reviewing such documents in time means you cannot complain later. Some of these will serve as foundational documents for activities later so there can be no slacking.

It was a lovely spring day, blue sky, warm sun, which had a softening effect on people’s moods and the pace of work. At the ministry many of the women I had wanted to wish a happy Internal Women’s Day (roz-e-jihan-zan Mubarak) were not in. I don’t know whether they had been given the day off or took leave.

On the streets in our neighborhood I saw clusters of women in their finest walking to or from one celebration or another. The combination of the spring weather and the well dressed women gave the day something festive.

In the evening Ted had organized a dinner at SOLA for the girls and those foreigners who are contributing one way or another to the success of the school and, more importantly, its students, especially the girls. It was a most inspiring evening, with heartfelt speeches, gifts of roses, a heart shape cake and a chance for some of the foreigners who live in bubbles (people from Eupol and the US Consulate) to interact with a most promising segment of young Afghanistan.

Ted told us that one of the SOLA alumna will be with Michele Obama at the White House – such an honor. We are very proud to be part of this school.

Today we had our International Women’s Day celebration. S and I read the poem, she in English and I in Dari – we were equally nervous about reading in each others’ tongue.

There were long speeches and poems by the leaders of our projects which I could barely follow. They were full of references to passages in the Koran and Afghan culture that I did not understand. I can follow meetings about health much better in the local language than these speeches about women.

There were also Pashto poems I did not understand but they sounded nice and poetic, a out mothers and tears and what not.

M. did an excellent job on her presentation about her stay in Egypt. I was very proud. I hope others were too. When I left the celebration she had received three congratulations. I am counting because this is not a culture in which praise is easily dispensed, so three is a victory already.

At the end of the celebration all the women received a gift. After the gifts were handed out we had to sign a paper that we had indeed received them. Those are the rules here – everything needs to be signed for because there has to be proof, just in case.

Here is the poem:

She sits there often
In the rain
On a small piece of cardboard
Hands outstretched
In the mud
In the middle of the street
Cars, bicycles and people rushing by

عموماً در زیر باران
در سر پارچه کوچک کارتن
دستهایش را دراز میکند
در سر گل
در وسط سرک
موترها و بایسکلها و مردم
تیر می شوند
او در کندهار مکتب را شروع می کند
بعداً وقتیکه دیپلوم در دیوال نصب شد
حالا او تا ناوقت شب درس می خواند
بعد از ختم شدن تمام کارهای دیگر

She will start a school in Kandahar
Later, when the diploma
is hanging on the wall
Now she studies
Late at night
After all the other work is done
She entered the room
Eyes red from crying
Why? What happened?
We asked as we embraced her
Back in our midst
I am not allowed to be here anymore

او داخل اطاق شد
چشمهایش از گریه سرخ است
چرا؟ چی گپ شده؟
ما از او پرسیدیم
وقتیکه او را در اغوش گرفتیم
دوباره او را با خود داریم
اجازه ندارم که دیگر اینجا باشم
او سرحدها را تا اندازاهای شکستانده
در اول مشکل بود اما حالا آسانتر است
او در جهان قدم می گذارد
او برای دیگران الهام بخش است
همراه فامیلش که در کنارش است

She pushed the boundaries
An inch at the time
Rigid at first, more supple now
Stepping out into the world
She will become a beacon
With her family by her side
Choices are made that aren’t hers
We don’t do that here they say
And she sits there
With a heavy heart
Will she be one more lost
to her sisters she could have helped?

چیزهای برای او انتخاب شده
که دلخواه او نیست
ما ان کارها را انجام نمیدهیم
و او با دل پرازغم انجا میشیند
و او یک باردیگر باخت
که خواهران خود را کمک کند
انها پیش من دویدن
دستهای خود را دراز کردن
با چشمهای روشن
آموختن لذتها به من
دختران و پسران کوچک در کنار هم ایستاده شد
ایا چیزی را که ما نمیتوانیم
انها می توانند؟

They run to me
Outstretched hands, eyes sparkling
Teaching me about joy
And standing side by side
Little boys and girls together
Will they do what we could not?

I came home late, 11 hours after arriving at work, tired and hungry. I found a plastic bag with melting ice cream, two half frozen steaks and a roll of thawing minced meat outside our door. Our refrigerator went to the repair shop – it would only cool correctly if you pushed the door up with your foot before closing it. This I forgot to do 9 out of 10 times. And so they took the refrigerator away after taking everything out.

The temperature in our unheated kitchen is about the same as inside the refrigerator, and so keeping the food out is not a problem at the moment. But it is no longer freezing outside and this did pose a problem for the contents of the freezer. It was my Dutch mentality of never wasting anything, plus being cold, hungry and tired and in great need of comfort that led me to eat the remaining pint or so of mango vanilla ice cream before I had even taken my coat off. There was no time to lose.

Only after that, and some not so nice remarks back and forth about who was to blame for the thawing goods, that we had our pre-dinner drinks with the last of the (also thawing) ice cubes. Every end of day is one day closer to our departure date on March 25 to Sikkim.

At work some of us put the final touches on various Women’s Day Celebrations. M. will do a powerpoint presentation about her stay in Egypt, there will be presents given by the men to the women (though the women bought the gifts), some speeches and I will read my poem in Dari while S. will read the English part. We rehearsed our parts in each other’s language. It will be far from perfect but good enough we hope.

Many people tinkered with the Dari that my teacher and I so carefully crafted yesterday. There were typos and the few men I let in on my secret made corrections that were then corrected again by the next one. I can see why we are having so much trouble with getting agreement on translations of some of our leadership materials.

In the afternoon several of us (health) implementing partners went to hear about the US civilian assistance to Afghanistan version 2.0 and the implications for our work. It is all about migration and transfer, those are the critical words that will have to figure prominently in the paperwork we will need to submit by next month to make the extension of several of our projects official.

The poem is translated now, in more or less poetic Dari. I could not get my teacher to take poetic liberties so the Dari may not sound quite as much like a poem as I would liked. Now I have to work on the pronunciation and practice a bit in the office tomorrow so people can understand what I have to say.

With three hours of Dari lessons and another few hours of catching up on work that had not been done and needed be done before the start of the new work week there was little time left to do all the thousands of things I always plan to do over the weekend: cross stitching, knitting while listening to the adventures of Antony, Cleopatra and the Roman empire (he died, she’s already ensconced in her tomb but still alive and the Roman Empire strong as ever) and cooking.

We had some old and some new friends over for dinner; a small intimate gathering around good food and good conversation – something that makes our constrained existence here so much more interesting.

Now the last guests have left, some by an unmarked car, one by a marked car and the others on foot. We all live by different rules. Which rule depends on one’s employer. Our security regime is somewhat in the middle of those three options, nearly the best of all worlds.

I woke up with a poem in my head – a poem for International Women’s Day – and rushed down to type it before the lines would disintegrate upon leaving my semi-sleep state. I had gone to bed wondering what I would say at our celebration – there is that expectation – and my brain had clearly been working on the task while I slept. Amazing!

I have decided to turn it into a Dari poem. Afghanistan is a land of poets. I started the translation myself and, with the help of press-apply Dari characters on my keyboard, typed in the words I knew, right to left. When my knowledge of Dari was exhausted I wrote to the language school for an extra one hour lesson tomorrow to turn my dictionary words into real poetry. It is a bit of a stretch but that seems appropriate for International Women’s Day.

The gray blast walls on the way to the massage place have been painted a soft ocher color on one side of the narrow passageway that leads past all sorts of military places. I am curious who decided that it was a good use of (military) money to spend it on painting several thousand square feet of concrete. But only one side of the road has been painted which makes me think another part of the military must not think ocher all that important.

There was lots of maneuvering of large trucks between these gray (one side) and ocher (other side) walls; several looked like water or sewage trucks – Kabul is built on ledge and the sewer system is problematic. One of the trucks had the words ‘blue water – black water – grey water’ painted on its sides. I wondered whether they had painted the blue and gray water text on either side of black water to avoid any association with the company that used to have that name; a company that is not very popular here.

In the afternoon F. came over to our house to propose some designs around the sapphire stones that Lisa gave me for Valentine’s Day – rings for the girls and earrings for me. F. is part of a new company that was founded by graduates of the Turquoise Foundation’s revitalization of old Afghan crafts. After a three year study under the watchful eye of master jewelers he completed his schooling and struck out on his own. That is the idea. His shop is in Murad Khani where the jewelry school is now located, next to the ceramics and woodworking schools.

He brought more than his sketchbook – a large bag full of boxes with rings, necklaces, bracelets, pendants, lapis lazuli, polished and rough cut emeralds, rubies, tourmaline, turquoise, old coins turned into jewelry, finely worked Turkmen boxes and more. I talked Axel into a birthday present and stepped out of the room so he could complete the transaction and keep up the appearance of a future surprise.

I invited some friends and colleagues to partake in this jewelry feast, as if it was a Tupperware party – a concept of course unknown to F. I think F had a good day and expanded his network and several of us got some new treasures.

Axel has discovered how to rent movies via the internet. The downloading takes awhile but it is worth it as the movies disappear without us having to get ever larger hard drives. We watched A Room With A View and commented how similar the social mores and gender norms of England of 1900 were to those we see around us in Afghanistan one hundred years later.

It snowed on and off, with some hail and rain in between. All the unpaved streets turned into mud flats and mud spatter covered our shoes/boots and pants/skirts. Although for me this is lousy weather it is good for the farmers and therefore for Afghanistan. And so we take all the mud in stride.

My day was also a bit muddy as I tried to sort of various activities that are very challenging to manage; each with many stakeholders dancing to different tunes. In the middle of this I violated my own norms about consultation and not bypassing people. It was good that I was promptly called on this by one of my colleagues and I promised to mend my ways, wondering how I managed to miss my own cues. There is a constant struggle of staying on the rails, sliding off and trying to get back on. It’s not for lack of trying when we don’t easily (and sometimes not at all) get the results we intend.

Both Axel and I taught our English classes again. Although many of the girls haven’t finished the 1000 splendid suns book, we started reading Three Cups of Tea. This time I was able to get each girl her own book rather than the illegal photocopies with their wavy and hard to reach pages.

Z. showed up at the beginning of the class in tears because her brother won’t let her study. I don’t understand much of all these family dynamics especially since her father is very supportive of her. But the father appears no longer in charge. That’s also when R. got into trouble (when her father died) and her brothers essentially sold her to a cousin for very much money. One of the girls took Z. under her care and promised that she will talk with the brother. She spoke with such confidence that I trust things will work out.

This morning I witnessed one of the ways that this country is shooting itself in the foot. A member of parliament visited the office of a director of a training institution and insisted that her daughter be granted admission, bypassing the usual registration procedures. The request was given some weight by implying that if the wish was not granted there would be negative consequences during next week’s voting procedures in the parliament when the president re-introduces the caretaker ministers. Ours is one of those.

There is much intimidation like this and much fear about consequences. even if they are sometimes nothing more than threats. Last year I learned of one of such threats which turned out to be an empty one once (another) director had called the person bluff. The threat was empty. But knowing whether to call someone bluff or not is risky business because you never know. There is much fear in the country and understandably so.

Warlords and their cronies still have much power and can protect incompetent or dishonest people from having to live by the rules that everyone else has to live by. It causes much grief and headache for many serious and committed people I know who have to manage these situations. It also uses up much of the little energy they have left over from simply living in extended families and under much social pressures to conform, to do the job they were hired to do.

I made two round trips into the center of town for meetings which meant over 3 hours in traffic, nearly half my day not counting the time spent in the meetings themselves.

I used my afternoon outbound car ride into town to study my Dari assignment which is reading a newspaper from December about the elections. I used my colleague as a dictionary. On the way back he used me as a dictionary, testing English expressions on me to see if he used them well: like the difference between blow-by-blow and nitty gritty, what puddles and slush have in common and what it means to ‘be versed’ in something.

We both love languages, learning someone else’s language and trying out whether something is OK to say in the other’s language, like ‘can I say “I got off late?”’ and me: “yes, you can but don’t leave out the word ‘off.’” His mastery of the English language is far superior to my mastery of Dari but the enthusiasm with which we learn a new language is the same. Maybe I was a linguist in my previous life or this is just preparation for my next one.

We ended today with the monthly get together at the Dutch embassy for our monthly allotment of grape and/or hop-based beverages, and lots of haring and cheese this time.

A speech by the ambassador assured us that the Dutch ministry of foreign affairs has activated evacuation planning in light of what is happening in the Arab world. Axel asked whether we were on the Dutch list and I said we were not because we are on the American list. “Why?” he asked, impressed with how the Dutch have already organized their four phase alert plan, with the last phase being the airlifting of Dutch citizens off Afghan soil. The Americans tell us to check out their website – no personal speeches like that. But then again, there are only very few Dutch people here and many, very many Americans.

For a moment it looked like our International Women’s Day celebration was in danger of becoming a non event. The leadership (assigned, not volunteered) was more than a bit shaky and there was little commitment to make it work. And just when I had recruited a new coordinator the train got back on the rails. I was relieved to hear that we will have a celebration after all. Nothing is easy here, even something as simple as a one hour celebration.

My authority has been challenged more than a few times this last month and I wonder whether I am being punished for something I did in a previous life. I have invoked advice from my own boss and other trusted colleagues on how to manage the tricky dynamics of culture and gender that appear to trip me up now more than ever. I am holding on for dear life to my motto ‘keep talking, no matter what,’ and am hopeful that we can get past the current bumps in the road.

In the meantime we are watching the negotiations about how the US government dollars will be spent by the Afghan government once the tricky negotiations of ‘on what’ and ‘how’ are concluded. The result of all this will determine how we can support this brave new world. I hope to be part of this incredibly challenging and ambitious journey that the two governments are embarking on.

My requests for rest & recuperation leave, one to Sikkim at the end of this month and the other to Tessa’s graduation in May, have been accepted. We are very ready for a break and enjoy the freedom and warmth of India. March 25 still seems very far off in the distance right now.

On paper, or even in conversation sitting around a table, things always appear more clear cut or obvious than in real life, once the paper is read and the chairs have been pushed back for action. I find myself annoyed with little progress by this person or that person. But then, when I sit when them and talk the complexity of what we are trying to do here emerges in full bloom.

With the new USAID strategy of letting the Afghan government (as if it was one person) decide how to spend the US government contributions to the development of the country, we may solve the problem of ‘imposed’ initiatives and ideas. But what we end up with may not be the kind of initiatives that are badly needed, or services for the people without voice (usually women and children). We don’t know this yet but it is possible.

I talked with one of my colleagues about the little progress that has happened in some of the departments we are working with and expressed my impatience. He responded something like this, “well, we have moved a few inches. If we hadn’t tried we wouldn’t have moved at all.” I was wondering whether I should count my blessings and be grateful for those few inches or fire someone for having produced too little.

There is a time horizon that we are beholden to that assumes that significant results can be achieved in one year intervals and that each interval’s result adds up to the next and will eventually produce the massive transformations we are after in this country where a significant part of the population is still dwelling in the habits of the Middle Ages.

I couldn’t go to the children’s hospital today because Afghanistan’s president was either coming from or going to the airport. With his enormous cavalcade of dignitaries and men with rifles, such movements always leave the center of the city in a complete state of paralysis. And so I stayed in my office and watched the (wet) snow come down all day long while wondering whether we will get this pediatric triage business going to the point of a routine in a month’s time or not.

Once again my mood fluctuates between joyously recognizing the victory of progress measured in inches and the feeling of despair that sometimes wells up in me when the end result is so very far away in the distance.

Today I did little from my to do list and much impromptu coaching, something I like to do – mentoring younger staff how to be more effective in their jobs.

We worked on the upcoming leadership program for the midwives. Going over the facilitation notes, line by line, I helped M and S get ready for their facilitation task in this second of four workshops that will take place next week. It is the most challenging workshop to lead. They are throwing themselves enthusiastically into the deep end of the facilitator pool while I will be cheering them on from the sidelines, trying to understand as much of the Dari as I can, dictionary in hand. Brainy work for all of us.

Later in the day, with some other staff, we strategized how to contain the ripples of a confrontation inside one of the general directorates that we work with. We are getting mixed up in internal disagreements about procedures that make it hard for us to get our work done.

And then there was a textbook case of an email sequence that had spun out of control leaving people angry and undermining the very thing the people sending the emails had hoped to accomplish. It was full of examples of imprecise language, various interpretations of the same text and examples of the reptilian brain trumping more rational thought that would have considered consequences of actions.

I have seen a few examples over my 17 months here of reptilian brains in action at very close range (and further afield in daily newscasts, both here in Afghanistan and in the Arab rage countries). I explained to B how to recognize the tell tale signs of the reptile, the increased heart rate, the sweaty palms, the urge to fight or flee, so that next time she can recognize them and push decision making back to where it belongs in the frontal lobe. Maybe it’s time for a staff session on emotional intelligence.