Sylvia's Journal

Steve said he was going to fast for 36 hours but changed his mind around 4 PM. That was a good thing since the cook had prepared a meal that was too much for me. Now things are back in balance and the food supply reduced to manageable levels. Such a luxury, I realize, while I watch the desperate situation of the Somali displaced.

A and I met with A’s future boss at the ministry, Doctor J. I am very pleased that I sent the two off to Dubai for a course on management and leadership as the effect of his two weeks of training is visible. Upon his return Dr. J. has taken the bull by the horns and is moving ahead of us, drawing us along for support rather than the more common practice of technical assistance agencies heading out in front of the ministry, dragging willing or unwilling counterparts along.

It is what was supposed to have happened a long time ago. Watching him taking the lead makes me giddy with excitement. I whisper softly to myself, “move, move, while you can,” as there are always unexpected (and sometimes rumored) leadership changes that can make all the difference, positive – we hope, but sometimes negative, setting everything back by a few miles, months or years.

It is very hot in Kabul these days. Every day it seems a little hotter than the previous day. In the Human Resources section of the ministry the electricity is often gone as they say in Dari. In the stifling heat, as if to play a joke on me, my hot flashes kick in. In those situations it is good to have a chador – I use it like a towel.

On the way back, stuck in traffic, the airco in the car could hardly manage. I felt faint from hunger and thirst and wondered about my colleagues as I am not even fasting for the full 16 hours they do. But when I go to the ministry I refrain from eating and drinking. Back in the office I was parched and drained a small bottle of water in one fell swoop.

I went home early to receive the supervisor of the packing company underling who came yesterday and was found to be wanting in his surveying of my packing and shipping needs. The boss walked around with a clipboard and a measuring tape and identified the items, mine and Steve’s, that needed special boxes. He thinks I may be a little heavier than the young man indicated yesterday. He left me with paperwork to fill in for insurance and US customs. I think I have about 5 weeks to do this. The day of my departure is still not clear. It depends on whether I receive a pink slip this week or whether our contracts officer notifies our funder of my resignation. Whichever comes first plus 30 days will be my departure date. I am still thinking mid September.

Everything is slow, lethargic, even the hours of the day that usually go by so quickly. The weekend was endless, long enough to knit a baby sweater and watch a bunch of movie and about 6 repetitions of everything on EuroNews, BBC and Aljazeera. No one can say that I don’t know what’s happening in the world.

In the morning a young man from the moving company came to survey the stuff I plan to ship back home. He scribbled down some notes on a piece of paper and guessed 800 pounds. I think he is a little off and he will be even more off if Steve goes on another shopping spree – something that is entirely possible.

Since Steve appears to like the buying more than the having, I am taking two magnificent instruments off his hands – for Sita and Jim. To complete their wish list I will have to go to Chicken Street at least one more time.

At the language school another student was asking me why I continued to take lessons when I know I am leaving in about 6 weeks or less. I explained that there are some people in the world who love learning languages, especially if there is a chance at immersion, and other people who dislike learning languages and that I belonged to the first group.

I can only take one class once a week now because of Ramazan – after work hours is too late so all that remains is Saturday. My teacher and I agreed I would do one hour of Dari and one hour of Pashto. We are reading moral stories inspired by former Education Secretary William Bennett, translated into Dari.

One of the stories is about the Dutch boy who sticks his finger in the dike and saves a town (altruism) and others are about honesty, courage and such. I am to read the Dutch story (that isn’t Dutch) and tell it in my own (Dari) words next week.

In the second hour we are studying Pashto. Learning Pashto this late in the game may seem silly but I love it. I want to make some progress on my Pashto which has stagnated a bit since my Monday class ended. I completed the short course but am far from saying anything meaningful. My new teacher, the head teacher of the language school, suggested an approach that seems a bit more effective than that of my previous teacher. We are using an adult literacy primer to avoid the confusing transliteration of the short course I completed. It is printed on cheap paper and with pictures that have been photocopied from poor photocopies. Another example of technical assistance, I suspect, that has not produced much of a legacy to be proud of.

It is hard not to go to Chicken Street when you have Steve as a house guest. The pile of stuff for the US has increased a bit more but now I am keeping things on display – our living room is getting increasingly interesting.

After a pedicure and massage I joined Steve at the Wahid’s where the repaired carpet was waiting for me. The repair job, for 200 dollars, was extraordinary. These things are done in people’s homes in family businesses where the craft of carpet repair is handed from parents to children, generation after generation. Wahid was so enchanted with the carpet , a Caucasian from the area just north of Baku, that he offered to buy it from me if ever I would get tired of it.

After Wahid we paid a visit to Mr. Khoshal which means Mr. Happy in Dari. He is indeed always smiling and was very happy to see Steve, someone who has contributed considerably to his business. We pawed through piles and piles of embroidered pieces from Central Asia, some in their original state and some cut from clothing. It is a mystery to us how people living in ill lit places, or as nomads, in places where there is no JoAnne Fabrics when you run out of yarn or lose your needle can produce those tiny perfectly consistent stitches; just threading what must be a very small needle seems like a miracle.

We broke our 2nd shopping spree in a row with lunch at the Bistro, a restaurant that caters to foreigners, and thus is open during Ramadan. Our driver and guard were not very happy with our long stay in town as the day was hot and the waiting long. I look forward to be able to simply get in a car and do what I want to do without imposing on others, even though driving us around is part of their job.

I am knitting like crazy to get a baby gift ready to return with Steve next Friday for a baby that is coming this month, alternating a sampler for Sita and Jim for their upcoming first anniversary. This means that I watch lots of TV or movies.

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In my best third grade written Dari I wrote a note to my boss asking for permission to go on a shopping spree with Steve, leaving the office an hour before the end of the work day. He wrote me back, in handwriting that I couldn’t quite read on my own, in poetic Dari, that it was OK. My next goal in my lessons is to be able to read handwritten Dari. I can already read some of the graffiti on Kabul’s mud-brick walls.

The reason for this workday shopping trip was the appointment I have made with a shipping company to come and survey my household goods that will be shipped back to the US soon. I wanted to make sure that some last minute purchases would be included in the estimate. Just like the books I have been bringing home from the office.

Canadian friends followed us in their own car to Chicken Street where Steve took them around to his favorite shops. Of course now that he is no longer living here he had to rein himself in and not buy more stuff himself, just being a guide and making social calls. But my upcoming shipment is a great opportunity for him to add a few things to his own collection which, after I gave him a positive nod, he is now enthusiastically doing. It’s a win-win: I have room, he wants to buy the stuff and the shopkeepers need to save up for Eid.

Some of his acquisitions (from last December when he was here for a few weeks) were already waiting in another guesthouse and have since been moved to mine. The small room where his treasures are stored is filling up slowly, just like his room did when he lived in Kabul. I am sorry I did not chronicle it more closely – I could make a flip-book of the expansion of the stuff.

I would have liked to buy lots of the Nuristani carved wooden furniture, some brightly painted, some old, some new. But I have to remember that we don’t have any space for more stuff back home and I don’t have a guaranteed income after October 1; so I limited myself to two things I have been eyeing for a long time.

In the Central Asia jumble shop I priced several instruments – a last opportunity to bring some home for the musicians in our family – these things are either too large or too fragile to carry home by myself. I expect Sita and Jim to say they want me to buy all of them. I don’t know whether they can be restored to full use – something I assume our musicians have in mind. If not they are certainly magnificent pieces of craftmanship.

The driver picked Steve and me up at the usual time and mentioned “I am resigned.” I was just verifying whether this was in the passive or active tense (had he resigned from the job or was he asked to resign) when it dawned on me that this was the first batch of people who had received their ‘termination’ letters – a 30-day notice requirement under Afghan labor law. We have to give these notices because our project extension has not been formalized by the US government and the current ending date is September 30, 2011.

And so the close out has started to become real. I too will receive my notice, next week. In my case the giving notice and receiving notice adds up to the same thing, with a probably departure date around September 11. It’s a fitting day to leave Afghanistan I think, reminding me why I was here in the first place but also that the ripples of that day have not faded away. On the contrary, here the dust clouds of that event have still not cleared. An extraordinary documentary about Osama Bin Laden that I watched on AlJezeera (English) this morning had the same message.

Despite all our communications with our staff that these notifications are formalities – we can’t quite believe that the doomsday scenario of a total project closure is really what the US government wants – having the letters in their hands made many people nervous and suspicious (why me and not him?) as some people got their notice today and others will get them in two weeks. Deep ethnic rifts and other rivalries instantly rose to the surface.

We, the senior staff, try to explain that a project as large as ours cannot be closed in a few days. Some 200 people have to show up at the administrative offices to clear their advances, return computers and any other equipment, and get various superiors to sign off that they leave clean and clear. And staff is just a small part of the closing. There is real estate, millions of dollars of drugs, inventory to distribute and a thousand other things. Normally a close out of a project our size takes 6 to 4 months; we have less than 2 – hoping, hoping all along that the signatures would materialize in time. We still hope but it is getting close to the wire. A bit like the debt ceiling thing.

This turbulence comes at difficult time. First there is Ramazan in the hottest month of the year, then there are the countless acts of revenge and intimidation by insurgents, Taliban or others, across the country, the unease left by the American’s announcement of withdrawal, the talks about the second Bonn conference with endless speculation and rumors about the role of the Taliban.

One rumor that is being aired on various TV stations is that Karzai is keeping several ministries in the hands of acting (caretaker) ministers so that these can be offered to the Taliban. Health is among them. Among my colleagues they make jokes about serving the old Taliban minister of health again, a lawyer mullah who became a health mullah overnight. If true it will probably undo a lot of our work, especially efforts to bring more women into the healthcare professions.

Our first work day of the Holy month of Ramazan started with a ceremony that included a long recitation from the Holy Qu’ran, followed by prayers to usher in this month of daytime fasting. I had forgotten about the event and had rushed down at the last minute. With such ceremonies I never know whether I should attend them, out of respect, or whether I should not be there. I asked one of my female colleagues whether I should quickly go to my office to get my chador to cover my head, to which she replied, “yes, it would be better.” And so I sat there with my head covered listening to the slow, long, nasal cadence of the recitation, wondering how long it took the young man to learn to do it so flawlessly.

Gifts were handed out at the end, a booklet, I presume with prayers, and boxes with dates – the food with which the fast is broken. And then everyone went to work. I had asked the kitchen to keep bringing me a thermos with boiled water so I could at least have my morning cup of Nescafe. For the rest of the day I made do with one hardboiled egg and a airplane peanut packet plus a can of V8 at lunch time. It was enough to keep me going and stop the rumblings in my stomach. Steve went home for lunch to have something more substantive.

Our workdays now end at 3 o’clock as the half hour for lunch is removed from the workday. the ministry is a bit more lenient, letting people go home at 1 PM. In this summer month with its very long days this means that there is still a long wait for it to get dark, about sixteen hours without food and water. But here people don’t see it like that – it is a collective experience of sacrifice and suffering, followed by, what I suspect, joyous family meals together at nightfall and before sunrise. I joined the crowd, eager to leave my hot and stuffy office, to sit for awhile in an air conditioned room and cool off. I suspect most of my colleagues probably laid down for a long nap.

I am preparing for a private MBTI session with one official in the ministry. Reading through all the materials I realized how much I miss this kind of contact with individuals, helping people to become more self aware and recognize their own and other people’s gifts. With all the criticism of the MBTI that I have encountered over the years, it still is one of the best and most compelling tools to help people look at their interactions with the world around them and the world of ideas and thoughts inside them. An new lens on interpersonal relations, whether with a spouse or with one’s nemesis, is always eagerly received in my experience. If, as a result of this looking, people stop wanting other people to be more like themselves the pay off will be grand.

The first day of Ramazan was hot, long and quiet, even for Steve and me who are not fasting. For Steve fasting is more than entirely unimaginable, for me simply hard to imagine. Yet I know from my more devout Muslim colleagues, here and in other parts of the Muslim world, that for them the fast is a significant, holy, even joyous duty.

I spent most of the day listening to Sherlock Holmes stories, four audio books I downloaded from the Manchester public library, while working on the sampler for Sita and Jim – I have just one month to get it finished. I have eight more diamonds of various sizes to complete.

In the afternoon Farid and his brother, a medical student, came by to say hello, collect another donation for the tennis court from one of my colleagues and to talk about his brother’s vision for health services to the severely underserved Hazara population on the western side of the city, the same place where the wool factory is.

Their father worked for MSH some 30 years ago in Ghazni. I called Steve down to join us and be inspired by these two delightful young men who are bright lights in an otherwise dark, depressing and dysfunctional Kabul.

Steve had worked in the district where the boys were born. He treated us to lots of wonderful stories about the place some 40 years ago. There had been quite a bit of progress since he was last there. But when he asked the medical student about how young people are currently trained to become doctors, the news was disappointing.

Things appeared more or less the same they were decades ago: medical students with less than one year to graduation who had never examined a woman, taken blood pressure, held retractors in surgery. It is a bit similar to the little progress in primary school textbooks (none if to judge by the 3rd grade textbook I am using in my Dari class). It leaves one wondering what happened to the millions of dollars and years of technical assistance that were poured into improving the situation?

Our conversation drifted into the topic of the Hazaras, the ethnic group to which the boys belong, and their treatment, as a minority despite the fact they are the third largest ethnic group in Afghanistan. When Farid mentioned how Abdurrahhman Khan (Emir of Afghanistan from 1880 to 1901) had killed or chased away a significant portion of the Hazara population in the late 1800s, Steve pulled out copies of two of Kiplings tongue-in-cheek ballads about the cruel king who was his contemporary. We all listened spellbound as Steve read his favorite poem. Singing, and reading poetry are two of Steve’s many gifts.

In the evening Steve and I watched Bertie Wooster and Jeeves, only the second of countless episodes Axel had bought back in the US in May. I have watched a few episodes alone and realized tonight that one has to watch these movies in company; they are much more fun that way.

We are making some progress, we think, on getting a management and leadership department established in the ministry. We met this morning with the person under whose directorate the department will sit. A course about management and leadership he attended with one of my staff, in Dubai, for which I was criticized (why now? Why them?) is paying off. His attendance at the conference last week put benefit upon benefit and he seems engaged and mobilized to change how things have been done before. I think this is a good and practical definition of leadership.

We explored the form and modality of a leadership program within the general directorate for human resources; funny how something I was tasked to do and had wanted to do from the time I arrived may finally happen on the cusp of my departure. He invited us to have a regular Sunday morning meeting – this too is good as people usually don’t want to make such a commitment unless they find it useful. Usually it is us asking for meetings, and us trying to push a string across the table. This pulling is very encouraging.

It looks also as if the staff, we have been advocating for, to populate this department, can finally be recruited, at least from the ministry’s side. But since we are, for now committed to paying for them, this time it is us who need to stall as we are still waiting for the project extension documents to be signed. Until they are, our project ends on September 30, 2011.

All the women I asked today, and even some of the men, have been busy over the weekend preparing for Ramazan. It is a bit like the spring cleaning that happens around Easter, but for a different reason: no one wants to do any unnecessary heavy lifting during the coming month. And so curtains have been cleaned, windows washed, carpets beaten, pillows fluffed so that the little energy left at the end of a water- and foodless day can be used most economically.

I made arrangements with our cook to prepare two meals a day during Ramazan, especially for Steve, as the lunchroom will be closed. I can manage by taking some fruit and yoghurt in, or an energy bar, which will see me through, but that doesn’t work for Steve who needs real food. I did ask the household staff to continue putting a thermos with hot water in my office for coffee and tea; other than that I expect to lower my caloric intake as well – it is not well regarded to eat and drink in the presence of those who observe the fast.

I am following the mayor of Kabul on Twitter (KabulMayor). He started tweeting on July 24 with the words “This is my first Tweet! I’m a great supporter of information sharing and social networking. Please feel free to contact me.” The mayor and I are both following Obama who was tweeting like crazy last night to constituencies in AK, CA and CO.

I did contact the mayor to find out what’s up with the Darulaman roadbuilding project. He tweeted a few days ago that three major road project will be finished in a month. I hope that this main road we navigate several times everyday is one of those three. This project is the source of much of the dust that has settled in Axel’s lungs (and probably mine but with less ill effects). Today the mayor had another encouraging tweet: 1st phase of Kabul Municipality’s solar street light project complete. More streets have light at night. Important for Kabul security.” It’s good for the night vendors but it makes no difference for the women – taking back the night is a long way into the future. Right now they are focusing on just being able to walk the streets without being hassled, pinched or insulted.

The mayor is a brave soul. Not only is being a mayor is this country a very hazardous occupation, the major of Kandahar was just killed a few days ago, but being modern in this society (as in ‘tweeting’) is also risky where so many want the country to return to the time of the Caliphate. And then of course there is the corruption and the backlash from more powerful people who are unhappy about how the loot is divided.

Several months ago a powerful opponent of the mayor, probably someone who felt he didn’t get his fare share, threatened to have him brought to court for this or that ‘irregularity.’ The mayor’s response was, that’s fine but first let me get my job done. Since then sidewalks have been created nearly everywhere in town.

I have also befriended the mayor on facebook – he is very much with the times. Sometimes I wonder whether the ideological Taliban (as opposed to the crooks and criminals also heaped under that umbrella) have a division that monitors the electronic media and social networks as part of their intelligence gathering operations.

Last night Steve and I went to the Korean restaurant and had a seafood hot pot – a rare treat in this landlocked place. Afterwards I invited Steve to watch the Monsoon Wedding (Mira Nair) but he declined. I watched it on my computer and recognized the pattern of the Hindu wedding but had forgotten much about the movie. It is worth viewing, especially by all of us who went to Kerala. But I think our wedding was funner.

This morning I introduced Katie to Sadiq the woolman who runs the ‘wool fatcory’ – a grandiose name for a mom and pop entreprise in a decrepit old mud-brick house. Armed with cookies, juices and grapes we headed out to the far western corner of the city and visited the place where some twenty women are busy spinning, carding and knitting.

We invited the women to take a break and they obediently sat down with their backa against the wall on the flat mattresses while we tried to communicate in broken Dari and smiles. This time the women allowed themselves very little time for the break that we had introduced – maybe because it was too close to lunch time (and too close to Ramazan?) and they needed time to cook. We were invited to several lunches but politely declined, as would be expected.

We purchased wool, cashmere socks and a hat and talked about the usual topics of age, babies, children, marriage and such. I need to hand over the baton to Katie to support this group, not only financially by buying things but simply by going there from time to time and chatting and having a good time.

This morning I arrived early at Lisa’s place where I got the royal treatment: hair, feet, reflexology, Swedish massage and a mask, ‘because you’re special,” said Lisa. Sammy the hairdresser decided I should have a Princes Di haircut, “because I look like her,” as if she is still around. I did see a picture of Princess Di recently which was photoshopped to show her at age 50 – elegant with a few wrinkles and dyed hair, with a haircut that doesn’t look anything like the one I got today. It was more a Twiggy haircut, a reference no one at the salon would understand.

With face and feet soft as a baby, and very little hair left on my head, I went to the shop where foreigners buy locally produced and highly marked up handicrafts that make us feel good because they make for unusual gifts while we support destitute women. I had received an announcement that they would have a “Blue Herat Glass and Ice cream event.” The blue glass was there but not the ice cream which was cancelled for reasons unknown. I bought a decanter and two water glasses to replace the plastic water bottle on my nightstand – very stylish and very ethnic.

In the afternoon I went over to SOLA to say goodbye to Angela who is leaving for Virginia on Sunday to start her four years of college at the University of Richmond. Her departure is a big loss to SOLA but also a victory as this is yet one more Afghan girl who will come back to join her sisters who are trying to change this place. Connie from the European Police trainers, another volunteer teacher like me, showed up with a lesson plan about the Berlin Wall, German bread and Dutch cheese, complementing my cake with its ‘safar bakhair’ (safe travels) written across the frosting.

Connie always has to come with an armored car and guards, this time one male and one female. The female one was from Sweden and the male one, who patiently waited in the car outside until we called him in, was from the UK. I have met a few of these guardian angels now and all have said that their visit to SOLA is one of their best experiences in Afghanistan. They live between barbed wire and blast walls surrounded by armaments, and corruption, and have an impossible task.

Although not living in the same conditions, I too have found my time at SOLA among my most fun and rewarding experiences here in Kabul. Each time I leave the girls I feel that some good is going to come out of all the good that is streaming into Afghanistan, usually undetected and under the radar compared to the bad stuff, arms, too much money, misguided strategies and arrogance that streams in highly visible and in abundance.

The two remaining boys at SOLA, which will return back to its original state as a girls’ school, are shipping out next month to Kent School in Connecticut – one has his red card in hand (this means he will get the visa) while the other is waiting for some form from the school without which the interview at the consulate cannot be scheduled. We are all keeping our fingers crossed for all the kids who are now waiting for the much coveted visa and start their new lives.

As usual, while the kids introduced themselves, Ted provided editorial comments and context that consist mostly of stories that make you want to cry and that restore one’s faith in the goodness of people, an effective antidote to the constant barrage of bad news. He has a large trunk full of such stories and I can’t hear them enough, even though I have heard many of them more than once already. Apparently during his latest stay in the US he added another layer of stories, of random people stepping in his way and bringing things he needed but did not ask for.