Sylvia's Journal

This what Thursday was like: After an early morning meeting with the acting minister to which I was summoned the night before by one of her staff, I returned to the office at about 9:00 AM. I was in for a surprise. All day I experienced, albeit only a fraction, of what it is to be a Finance and Operations director.

Like a lave stream pieces of paper that required signatures oozed around me, wherever I went. Everywhere there were people with pieces of paper in their hands that needed signatures (all of them now). I signed things that I didn’t even knew existed. This experience has given me a new appreciation of what it takes to run a multi-million dollar project (and I only dealt with the small stuff).

The risk of course with me, a neophyte, to sign (which means authorize payments) is that people can slip in things that were denied by our previous Finance and Operations Director. I was warned about that and tried to sign everything after some due diligence. But one can only do so much due diligence when the pile of paper starts to get close to 10 centimetres, and the incoming stream is relentless. My extra bad luck is that it is the end of the month (or rather the beginning of the new one). Imagine doing this day after day.

Luckily my Afghan finance and administration colleagues were patient with me and everyone took great pains to explain to me what I was signing. I have a long way to go to understand accounting terms.

I tried to get to a debriefing from one of our consultants who is returning home and who had a mid morning meeting at the ministry, but on my way to him not only did I meet more people with papers to be signed but also, something I should have remembered but forgot, three new staff members in my team who reported for duty, their first day (a moment of panic until they were safely placed in the hands of knowledgeable people).

Steve has clearly arrived in Pakistan and found a computer as there was another stream of emails about things he hadn’t gotten to, some rather daunting and complex contracting issues.

There was an informational interview about a job we are trying to fill (I had forgotten I had made the appointment, thinking Thursday afternoons are usually quiet) and there she was suddenly in the middle of my attempt to write a fair and even handed first draft of our investigation report in the hope of speeding up the process so that the people involved in this messy case can get on with their lives.

And then there was the email from the incoming Finance and Operations Director about his reporting to work on July 6 (yeah!!!) and that he needed a letter for his wife about his employment in Kabul so she can get a visa. That too needed to be done urgently as we are closed (now) for a three-day weekend.

Amidst all this frenzy, we had to report to one of the ministries that controls (yup) NGOs like us with the material they had requested. We had not been able to provide all the documents and send a staff member with an envelope with about 60% of the requested information to show that at least we had not entirely ignored their deadline of today.

And then it was suddenly 5 PM and I collapsed, quite literally.

Across from our office voters are being registered for the September parliamentary elections. I was driving with five of my Afghan colleagues into town. I asked them whether they were registered. They all nodded, but immediately added that they were not going to vote again. With the typical western indignation I gave the typical western response: if you don’t vote you can’t complain.

But I quickly found out that that was a very silly remark that showed I had no idea about voting here. My colleagues patiently explained that they had voted for a particular guy in the previous elections and that their votes were pursued with a friendliness and sincerity that lasted until the elections were over. Once elected their (successful) candidates surrounded themselves with bodyguards and became, what my colleagues called, ‘commanders,’ building five story houses and ignoring their constituents, or at least those who weren’t paying for access.

The democratic process, as we know it, however flawed it may be in my two home countries, bears very little resemblance to what masquerades here as parliamentary elections (or presidential for that matter). Are these simply an infant democracy’s teething problems? Or what?

Part of our usual road to the ministry appears to be blocked these days. We are using another road, narrower than the usual one. The larger than normal traffic load for this road created an interesting phenomenon that I watched with wonderment from the car I was riding in.

The traffic flow obeyed its own mysterious laws of movement. At first a few cars started to bypass, on the left side, the cars stuck in front of them; then more followed. For awhile it was mayhem as cars drove by us, in both directions, on our left and our right. And then, as suddenly as it had started, all the traffic had changed lanes permanently and we drove on as if we were in a country that follows left traffic rules. Everyone had moved to the left and traffic flowed, slowly, but there was progress again.

There had been no cop, no traffic lights, white lines on the road or traffic signals. And when the road joined another major thoroughfare the traffic mixed together and became right traffic again.

I wondered about the systems dynamics at work. The first few cars led the way. One could call them leaders even though what they did was not really legal, but this is Afghanistan and people look for openings wherever they are (like a little bit too much space between oncoming cars). As others see they that these leaders are successful and move faster, more follow in the new path that has now become legitimate for reasons of volume. This is accidental leadership, not the kind we are teaching, but clearly very effective in attracting followers; those who are not leaders like to follow those who succeed and make progress. It is that simple. Wow, I thought, how can I make this happen for things that are legitimate?

Steve and I said our goodbyes. I was a little teary-eyed. I will miss him terribly. We complement each other nicely, in ways that couples do. He is irreplaceable but I will do my best to channel him, or, what’s better, call him back when we need his deep expertise, something that is rare and precious.

For the first time in my 9 months stay here I attended a meeting that is held weekly and brings together representatives from the ministry, from the NGOs, donor and UN agencies to share findings, vet processes, consult each other about things that affect health services to the Afghan population. Steve went faithfully to these meetings and now I realize that I missed an opportunity to learn from him by accompanying him. Why I never went I don’t know, I guess I hadn’t understood hints that were made to me, or maybe people thought it wasn’t necessary for both technical directors to attend. It is the first regret now that Steve has left.

While waiting for a meeting to start I sat outside a meeting room and noticed a tiny mouse, no bigger than one inch, limping from a filing cabinet to a small crack between the floor and the wall. With all the cooking going on in countless small places, in between offices, or even in offices themselves, in bathrooms, where hired women cook meals for government employees in pressure cookers on small camping stoves, it is a wonder I don’t see huge rats wander around the halls, living off the leftover bread pieces and grains of rice.

My animal medicine book tells me that the mouse stands for ‘specialization of knowledge,’ for scrutiny and filing things away in your mind for a closer look later. Among the many messages that mouse carries is this one: see what is right before your eyes and then take action accordingly. This was particularly good advice for a meeting I had right after seeing the darling little mouse (I hate rodents, rats, mice, hamsters, guinea pigs, squirrels, but this one was too cute as well as terrified). I can’t write anything about the meeting because it was a confidential investigation, but the mouse medicine was exactly what the doctor prescribed.

PS. My first day as ‘in charge’ went without any glitches, at least none that I know of right now.

It has happened: I am acting chief of party. Steve managed to get his final visa in his passport so he can fly to Pakistan tomorrow (he broke all records getting visas for Afghanistan, China and Pakistan in less than 2 weeks – it was a nail biting rollercoaster ride).

With the boss still in Pakistan, till Sunday, I am, in rank, the most senior member of our 225 member team here in Afghanistan. It is a scary thought but everyone is very supportive. I will cover two working days and then it is weekend and I will be off the hook.

I am trying to channel the two Steves which produces a strange triple split personality: my own self, then the bad-cop-rule-bound-strict-no-nonsense operations & finance Steve and the gentle-good-cop-go-with-the-flow-public-health-physician-Steve.

To be more or less ready for this temporary shift to highest ranking employee has taken me about 9 months, a symbolic time period in which I learned a tremendous amount of stuff about things I knew nothing about: compliance with regulations from two governments rather than only one (in Boston I never had to worry about the US regulations as we had an army of people doing that for me); about contracting and monitoring, about recruitment, about patience, about stagnation and white water rafting (that’s what working here feels like).

I now look back on the 20 plus years that I was functioning more as a consultant and see how it is different from my current job in one elementary way: as a fly-in consultant I never had to live with my own advice. I taught, read and wrote books about how to manage and lead but now I actually have to do it; not just for a short assignment, but day after day after day.

During these last nine months I have often thought about a quote from Joseph Mathews, founder of the Ecumenical Institute (later the Institute for Cultural Affairs) that Brian Stanfield quotes in his book ‘The Courage to lead’: “[… ] the source of charisma[tic leadership] is the capacity to stand day after day after day in the waterless desert. While this one falls over and that one fades away in the strain, you just stand day after day after day with the shells falling all around you while this one starts bitching and bitching and bitching, but you give up the luxury of bitching and grind away at the task. It is just that simple. […].”

My colleagues, those leaving and those staying behind with me, have been doing this for much longer and I watch them for cues on how to do this. That is what has made these months exhilarating, humbling, stressful, joyful, intense, and frustrating, sometimes all in one day, sometimes one after the other over a stretch of time.

I rearranged my two office bookshelves today. After my office was painted, a couple of months ago, the housekeeping staff had jumbled all the books together in piles. I took everything off the shelves. Within minutes my hands were black from the soot, reminder of the winter diesel stove, and gritty dust, part of Afghanistan’s landscape.

As I put each book back on the shelf I asked myself whether it contained anything that was immediately helpful and practical to me in my new role as senior manager and now, for a few days, acting chief of party. It was not obvious and I realized the great divide between theory and practice. I also realized I terribly miss teaching, something that I hope to return to, eventually, and something that I think I will be better at because of what I am doing now.

I live in two worlds. In one world I have to be ‘on,’ produce results, be efficient (use my time well), be productive, delegate, think strategically. In the other I have to be social, modest, patient, accept and respect the ‘process’ of life as it is lived here in Afghanistan. They are complete opposites of each other.

I started my day being in one world: making sure agendas were drafted, appointments arranged, people lined up for this or that, schedules set, be on time for meetings, and think about what needs to happen before Steve leaves on Wednedsay. I was focused on planning, anticipating, results thinking and the like. It is work with a high mental energy quotient.

And then a delegation of the ministry of economic affairs showed up and I found myself in the other world. My role was one of ‘being there,’ of being patient with whatever process was underway (all the conversation in Dari) whether I understood it or not, circuitous by nature.

I watched a team of four people from the ministry who had come to investigate us, but not in the western sense, at least not yet. Yes, they did want all sorts of information, especially financial, that we consider private, none of their business, but we will deal with these requests later, indirectly.

After an hour of mostly Dari talk which produced a list of questions and very little talk from Steve and me, we piled into a car to visit the warehouse where all our drugs are stored, part of their inspection. But student demonstrators had blocked traffic and we returned to the compound, to the small conference room where we started. And then we just sat there, waiting for a lunch that was ordered from a restaurant on the other side of the demonstrators, and thus delayed.

I took advantage of the situation by pulling out my Dari schoolbooks. Everyone became an enthusiastic teacher, correcting my pronunciation and trying to explain, in broken English, what I was reading. With their help I completed the lesson I was supposed to have later in the day – we finished the story about the sad woman who was going to throw herself in a well. It ended OK, as I had expected, with the son become a successful cook, marrying a nice woman and having two lovely children (a boy and a girl).He had only one wish left: to become literate (this is after all a literacy primer).

After lunch I excused myself and made my way to the ministry over roads abandoned by the demonstrating students. At the ministry I joined a committee, taking over from Steve who had taken over from the other Steve, that is tasked with the investigation of what one could call ‘undue influence by a financial consultant in charge of clearing payments to a third party.’ The third party had lodged 6 complaints about this undue influence and the consultant, who is on our payroll, was sent on paid leave awaiting the verdict.

I joined the investigation just at the point when the defendant was there to defend himself. It was like being on a jury and I conjured up images of Henry Fonda of Twelve Angry Men. What would he have asked questions about?

It is a little painful to see how many man hours (and now also woman hours) are being spent on this case of undue influence (no money or goods changed hands) when there is so much large scale and blatant corruption going on in this country.

My Dari class was a cinch after my impromptu morning class with the team from the ministry of economic affairs. I have completed two of the three literacy primers and my reading is now maybe at 2nd grade level – still a little halting but I am beginning to recognize the gestalt of frequently used words.

Of our six expats, two are gone now, one will return at the end of the week, plus the boss, and two more will leave on Wednesday; one for good, the other for 9 weeks. What’s left of us will be a bit busier than usual. My first day in the office was very much colored by this new and daunting reality.

During our first meetings of the day I heard several stories of the growing influence of the insurgents in the northern provinces. In Kunduz and Baghlan the insurgents are flexing their muscles and have, among other things, effectively silenced cell phones from 5 PM till early morning. In a district in one of the eastern provinces they, rather than the legitimate government of Afghanistan, are deciding whether health facilities open or not. The once heralded counter-insurgency strategy of ‘clear, hold, build and transform’ does not appear to be doing what it claimed. These stories and the daily avalanche of incident reports in our English language newspaper (it used to have more positive stories on the front page) only confirm that the idea of ‘winning this war’ is an illusion.

In the meantime it is clear that Karzai has left the American bedstead and is bedding down with Pakistan, a more logical mate since Pakistan will be next door forever. I am not sure whether it is paranoia or a logical consequence of this old new partnership that is producing logjams for us to get visas and working permits renewed. And who can guess which forces put Saturday’s bomb near the Chinese embassy?

Work-wise it was a day of stock taking as we are in the process of finalizing our activity plans for the remaining 15 months of the project. The deliverables loom large on the horizon. A critical look reveals many more challenges, problems, bottlenecks than signs of smooth sailing. Ahhh, where is appreciative inquiry when you need it?

I sometimes wonder whether the hiccups are just the unintended consequences of nothing more than a series of culture clashes. I hear daily about expectations that don’t line up for the simple reason that ‘we don’t do things like that here.”

It was good I did not go to physical therapy. Something exploded near the ministry of foreign affairs which is on my route to the hospital. The timing was around the time I would have passed. But I slept in this morning. It is not clear whether it was an unfortunate accident (exploding gas canisters) or an IED under (or stuck under) a police car. That car’s driver got hurt but that is all. Amazing, really.

Once again we stayed home all day, except for the two hour Dari class. I have started in my second literacy primer booklet, this one entitled ‘in the middle of the night God is kind.’ It is a very sad story about a woman with a 3 year old boy who lost her husband. They are poor as church mice and cannot afford rent and are perpetually hungry. The pictures are very sad. And then the rich uncle shows up to harass the mother to marry him but she doesn’t want to. I am halfway through the story and I don’t know how it ends (I think it will end well, considering the title).

We had cocktails on the porch while the humidity and heat increased by the minute. June must be the one month when high does not mean dry.

My cocktail was a Ksara arak, which came along with memories of the Beqa’a Valley in Lebanon where the Ksara family has its vineyards. It was a little stronger than I expected so I had a little nap, which turned into a night long nap, interrupted once for dinner.

We think we are getting some of the marginal weather of the Indian monsoon season. Hot and dry in the morning and then in the afternoon enormous vertical cloud masses fill the sky and the heat becomes oppressive. I have lived most of the day in our one air conditioned room, the bedroom, which is convenient because I am still jetlagged and fall asleep in the afternoon.

I did not join Greg and Axel who accompanied Steve on his last expedition to Chicken Street. Whatever Steve buys these days ends up in our house, since his stuff is already shipped home and his suitcases are packed for his departure next week. Axel came home empty-handed which I thought was a good thing.

I had planned to join them for and Indian lunch (in line with the weather) but ended up working most of the day: going through my very full inbox, reviewing the workplans that are being finalized (and with which I will have to live between July 1st and September 2011) and writing a review for a peer-reviewed journal that took some time and tender loving care.

I did not do my Dari homework (a challenging assignment that includes writing in my first grader Dari handwriting what I did during my vacation) and did not complete the work plan review. Thus, tomorrow’s day off looks like another workday. I am wondering whether to go to physical therapy as that would take another two hour bite out of the day (language class another 2 hours).

In between work, during meals and my 30 minute exercise routine I continue to read, like an addict, the second book of the Millennium trilogy (The girl who played with fire). It’s a rather creepy series and I don’t quite understand everyone’s obsession with the trilogy (including my own) but the fact is undeniable: I am hooked and can barely put it away.

After dinner Axel and I played a board game – it is part of our resolution to not
only work here (or veg out in front of the TV) but do things we haven’t done in the years since the girls have grown up and computers have started to dominate our lives. We have our four favourite games at hand: Lost cities, scrabble, mah-jong and backgammon. We now have played all, some multiple times; we play seriously and are alternating at being good winners and losers.

The flight to Kabul was a bit harrowing even though I knew we were in good hands, with 3 very experienced pilots in the cockpit, our friend Courtney one of them. The clouds were thick and low and there had been rain and thunderstorms over Iran and a good part of Afghanistan. Our approach into Kabul was expertly handled despite zero visibility.

We are safely home now, in the heat and dust and at altitude, which takes some getting used to.

Our grape trellis was painted while we were away, a nice cream color. The leaves and the few bunches of grapes that were produced by our recovering vines were also painted. As a result I don’t think we will have an abundant harvest. This is no problem as abundant harvests will be available at all the other guesthouses, the office and most of Afghanistan.

I missed the first half of my Dari lesson because I had simply forgotten my time slot. I had not had a good night sleep and as a result had been up and asleep at the wrong times, woken up by the language class administrator’s call.

The rest of the day, one of my two last Thursdays off, I alternated between cleaning out my mailbox and reading the first book of Stieg Larson’s Millennium trilogy. As predicted by everyone, I could not put it away and I am ready to start book two within 24 hours of starting on book one.

We had dinner with all my expat colleagues and some new ones at Steve’s house. One of the Steves has already left and the other is leaving next week.

This is a cause of anxiety on my part as I will suddenly be propelled to old kid on the block who knows little about the special expertise of either one of the Steves. Although I have had nine months of senior leadership experience here, it was a shared experienced with three people more senior and more experienced than I. Now it will just be me and the boss. Hence the anxiety.

The McCrystal disclosures in RS magazine are the focus of dinner conversations, of course. Many people are happy that he is out. What Petraeus will bring is anyone’s guess, especially since we are not convinced that his Iraq accomplishments are things we want here (or, for that matter, could even be possible here), if one would call these accomplishments at all.

The public health director (or hospital director, not sure which one) of Kunduz was killed in a blast – supposedly intentional according to our ‘event analysts.’ I believe it is the first open attack on public health and it makes us wonder, once again, where are we heading?