Sylvia's Journal

Last night it finally happened: one of my dinner guests stepped blindly into the ditch that runs in front of our house. Here in Kabul, and in this part of the world, these are the drainage ditches that run everywhere along both sides of the street. They are basically open sewers. It was dark, Pierre’s eyesight isn’t so good in the dark and we were chatting when suddenly Pierre dropped down. As he pulled himself out he acted like one would expect a doctor to act, ‘oh, no problem.’

But I know doctors as I was brought up by one and have a few in the family; I was worried that he would not give himself the same advice as he would give to a patient. One of his shins was bloody, skinned from knee to foot. His driver fished one of his shoes and his cellphone out of the ditch. A little later we discovered that Pierre had put on the wrong shoes, and that it was Steve’s shoe that had been submerged.

Steve had earlier quoted me a saying from his time in Shiraz that when you fell into one of these ditches you would never leave town. We thought that had applied to Pierre but since these were Steve’s shoes this may now apply to him. It was an unfortunate ending to a lovely dinner with a few friends.

One of them first arrived in Afghanistan 44 years ago. He also read Paula Constable’s article in the Washington Post a week ago (Dread and Dysfunction in Kabul) and was even harder hit by it than me. He remarked that in the olden days typical Afghan (mudbrick) houses, even in the city, had a series of small rooms built along the walls of the compound around a beautiful garden occupying most of the space; a garden that received attention all day long.

Now garish monstrosities are built to within an inch of the outside walls leaving very little space, not even the size of a walkway, between the house and the house next door. There is no more outdoor life because there is no more outdoors, only cement, brick and tiles. Gone are the roses, the grape vines, the fruit trees. Many people who lived here a long time ago can’t find their houses back. They are gone.

Our Afghan dinner was cooked, served and cleaned up by our cook and housekeeper who had offered to stay, for the evening. Steve and I immediately accepted. That’s one thing I will miss: having a dinner party and when you go to bed everything is cleaned up and put away.

The discovery of a large cache of weapons, explosives, army uniforms, hand grenades, rifles and other instruments of death at the airport left only the very stoic among us untouched. When I left for the airport to go to India some weeks ago, I had been pondering just that question: what’s the next highly visible place for a complex attack? All the fancy hotels in town have been attacked and some of them twice already, there is no railway station so the airport seemed like an obvious target. Of course it is well protected with a perimeter that runs along the international forces bases. But then again, as we discussed yesterday with the midwives, everything, including conscience, can be bought.

One of our consultants is flying out today and is nervous but the rest of us who are flying out in the next couple months think he is lucky – they surely aren’t going to try anything now as the perpetrators have to regroup, steal new uniforms, get new weapons (that’s probably the easy part). Steve is leaving on August 13 when things will have slacked off a bit as the news and attention has worn off. Although we will also be deep into the Ramazan slack; it is not a month of great exertion.

Those of us leaving in September have more to worry about as active life resumes in Kabul after the holidays. There is always the hope that the holy month of Ramazan will put the fear of God in the hearts of the people who are supposed to do the dirty work. And so we pray.

I had lunch with the SOLA founder at the small French restaurant where you can get real coffee, real croissants, real baguettes and real ham. We discussed the fate of SOLA and are in agreement that it has to be Afghan owned and run if it is to survive the no doubt tumultuous years ahead.

We also discussed the continued denial of American visas to students who have received full scholarships and the difficult line to walk between pushing people at the consulate too hard or too little. Some people in high places really don’t like to be pushed by the ‘representatives of the American people,’ and become even more rigid. Ted is unfazed.

The restaurant with its young Hazara waiters is packing up. I am not entirely sure what the reason is but one rumor has it that the owners are getting squeezed for protection money and that it has something to do with security, threats and such. I haven’t been able to verify that as no one was there to confirm. The place already looked cleaned out, the inside furniture removed, only the second hand French books, a rug, the small shop where you can buy fresh baguettes, jam, fruit tarts and croissants and the kitchen remained. Even the starched peach and white striped vests of the waiters were gone – the boy served us in black street clothes.

The rest of the day was agony as the stifling heat in my office appeared to turn off my brain. All I could manage was clean my inbox, score the MBTI results of a colleague’s husband and write a request to the US government about distributing personal protection equipment kits that are clogging up are scarce warehouse space; and all of these things very slowly. It was one of those slack days that don’t have a place in the American work philosophy of efficiency and effectiveness but are quite common in the rest of the world, especially where it is hot.

Another hot and slow day as we are inching towards Ramadan. Kabul is blanketed by a stupefying heat. Food is spoiling easily, even a hardboiled egg I had on my desk for a day had gone bad. And so, not surprisingly, people get sick, either from food gone bad producing sometimes fever sometimes persistent stomach rumblings or rashes and breathing problems from the stifling and polluted air. Aside from some minor rumblings (I took one bite and swallowed it before realizing that the egg should not be eaten) and very low energy I am doing OK.

I was invited for lunch by the midwives and their allies in the house of the (midwives association’s) president. It is near our house, on a quiet lane off the busy main shopping street, right past the Mann Continental Restaurant which features the McDonald arches. They do serve burgers and Afghan kids apparently love going there as much as kids around the world love going to McD.

From the windows of the second floor salon, the place to receive visitors, covered in traditional Afghan style with carpets, think mattresses and pillows, I could look into neighboring compounds, all hidden from the street by high walls, and imagined myself in a rural area. I could have stood there for a long time, observing, eavesdropping on ordinary lower and middle class Afghan lives I have so very little contact with.

While mom and sister were busy downstairs turning raw materials into a copious and delicious meal, we sat upstairs, eight women in total. I listened to countless tales of corruption, fraud and sexual abuse perpetrated by people, some I knew and had worked with and some I don’t ever want to know, who are all protected at the highest levels of this country’s government.

I heard about the battles to get rid of these folks. Most of these attempts have been unsuccessful and the solution in some cases has been to get rid of oneself by quitting jobs or worse, leaving the country. It was all very discouraging and it made me regret even having had contact with some of those folks and believing the things they told me (about how good and committed they were). I now know they had dollar signs in their eyes and smelled greenbacks when seeing me, a foreigner who could get them a piece of the money pie. My sisters tell their stories with laughter even though I know they hurt deeply inside. But what else can you do if this is your home?

One clever tale was about a man, since found out for many fraudulent actions yet also still in his job, who proposed to open a ‘chance account.’ Later, in the office I asked my colleagues to explain what that was. It was, I learned, a gimmick started by Kabul Bank (now of ill repute) and followed later by others, where one could open a special account that was like a lottery. For every 100 dollar in your account you got one ticket. (Presumably) random drawings paid out to the winning numbers. Prizes would go as high as several million dollars. People could tell me about lucky winners they knew. Of course now we know that this money was ill gotten money after all and the scheme has been abandoned since.

This clever man suggested that the money for a project be put in a chance account so that, if there were any prizes, these could be pocketed. Of course, compared to the Kabul bank fraud this is all petty corruption – but we know that petty can easily slide into serious. I am afraid that the abundance of easy money took many down that path. It also makes me have even more respect for the honest people in this country.

The young woman who opened the workshop on the establishment of a nursing and midwifery council in Afghanistan, on behalf of the Afghan midwives association, was the same woman who I met a little over 3 years ago in Bangladesh at a conference that we both attended.

We became friends, not just on facebook. Over lunch at her house, just over two years ago in Kabul, we talked about personal vision and I demonstrated how to use the challenge model that we introduce in our leadership courses – a heuristic device to get from the big ‘why am I here?’ question to the establishment of a short term goal and then eventually, after having analyzed what’s in the way and what to do about it, to ‘what am I going to do tomorrow?’

Sitting on the ground we filled in the model. Her short term goal was to get an MPH and the obstacles where many, as one would expect for a young Afghan woman.

Now, only a couple of years later, she is the president of the midwives association, has an MPH in her pocket and some UN consultancies on her resume. If anyone would have foretold her future to be like this she would have laughed. She charted her course that afternoon and then went to work.

The workshop at which she spoke took place in the ministry’s auditorium which was built decades ago has been poorly maintained. It is now old and decrepit with 20 aircos attached to the wall at various places and none working – in fact a good part of the time there was no electricity either and we sat in hot semi-darkness. The heat is draining all one’s energy.

But it was another good Dari lesson as most speeches were in the local language and with the slide projector not working to show us the English slides we foreigners, only a few, were on our own. At least I didn’t have to sit on the stage which looked even hotter than where the rest of us were sitting.

In the afternoon we had our usual meeting with USAID where we pointed out that we will start close-down procedures in a few days if the no-cost extension is not signed. Everyone knows this is a doomsday scenario but we are contractually obliged (and also by Afghan labor law) to start these procedures. We hope they will shock the contract folks into finally signing the last pieces of paper so we can get on with our lives.

And so I will be one of the people who will receive the slip – I requested to be in the first batch which would put me back on American soil mid-September, a few weeks earlier than my original departure and a few weeks later than I had hoped.

A bunch of us went out to Babur Gardens tonight to see 14 short films by various young Afghan film makers and media companies. The restored harem (queen’s quarters) are spectacular and various screening rooms had been decked out with mattresses and cushions – probably in the way the place had been decked out 500 years ago.

The whole event was sponsored by the American embassy, something to be proud of. The sponsorship was not just for the development of young talent but also included unlimited cold water, juices, tea, and finger foods. Two of the films, which will all be shown on local TV over the next few weeks, were projected on a large screen outdoor in the cool night air. The rest of the films were screened inside.

After seeing another 4 films in a row in a hot and stuffy room I had seen enough as each film started to merge with the next and I couldn’t tell them apart anymore. That’s when everyone else was also ready to go home. I would have liked to see the other films at well but not all at once. Ariana TV will show them one evening a week for the next 7 weeks. I think I may watch them from the comfort of an air-conditioned room.

We have offices in the main building that are AC-ed but those of us in the outhouses, probably at one time houses of guards and household staff, can’t have AC because the electrical circuit in our part of the compound cannot accommodate the high loads of an AC. In the winter this means fumes from the diesel heaters and in the summer it can be insufferably hot, as today. Only the spring and fall are pleasant. On the other hand the view of the garden, flowers, fruit trees, grape arbors is wonderful.

While I was slowly suffocating in my small office with its three concrete walls and open door, a fan whirring papers around, I watched our aging gardener dig up the part of the volleyball field where the grass has disappeared. It was very hard labor for such an old man in such heat but he kept on digging with his helper, both with jackets on – as incomprehensible as Africans walking around with woolen caps in 40 degree heat. It shows our different tolerances for discomfort and is evidence of the amazing ability of human beings to adapt themselves to discomfort.

I had my first fresh fig, plucked from one of the four or five fig trees we have in the compound. One has to be quick picking the fruits from our many trees – I really is a case of the early bird gets the worm – I do tend to get in earlier than most others and I scan the tree for dark blue spots between the foliage.

Today by 2 PM I was totally wiped out, the combined effects of heat and a sleepless night. And so I went off with everyone else at the official end of the workday, much earlier than I usually go home. Last fall ACs were installed in our house and I am taking advantage of that now even though I feel slightly guilty about the luxury. Our guards who live in the back have a fan just like in my office and like we did last year in our house.

A colleague called from Washington trying to unravel the mystery of an email she sent to three people that got sent around the world with ever more people copied, all triggered by a quote from my blog. Although I was never copied (and she didn’t either) eventually it made its way to me – amazing. It is a reminder that if one sends an email one should always assume it will escape, tail and all.

Steve left for dinner in another guesthouse, taking the protein dishes and dessert the cook had prepared for him along as I had already dined on greens and fruit. And now I am wondering do I really want to watch Pat Buchanan tell his life story on AlJazeera to what’s his face, Riz Khan?

The grand finale turned out to be a Grand Finale after all. The conference was an all around success – the proof of that was in the pudding: senior people who said they could only come for a while stayed for hours, fascinated by the presentations and general upbeat and hopeful atmosphere. I was thrilled. Nearly everything went as flawless as it could be and the end result was very close to what we had envisioned about a month ago.

But it was also a Grand Finale because the decision to leave Afghanistan sooner than later was made final by announcing it to my boss and staff. When I will actually depart is not clear as I don’t know how much notice I need to give – the decision has lifted a stone from my shoulders.

In Dutch we say, when a difficult decision is finally made after long pondering, ‘the bullet has gone through the church.’ It’s a war term, dating several hundreds of years back, when churches were kept outside the line of fire. When the bullets finally went through the church a point of no return had been reached. That’s what has happened over the last 48 hours. As the Quakers say: ‘way opened.”

Steve arrived today and it is wonderful to have company again. I had instructed my cook, in my best Dari, to consult with the cook of guesthouse zero where Steve used to live, to find out about his eating habits: lots of meat or chicken or goat, lots of rice, no vegetables. And so he proudly showed me an oven dish full of chicken (for Steve) and a bowl of vegetables (for me).

But first I served him a G&T – this guesthouse is a little different from the others in that respect. It was the gin that had been sitting unopened since my return because I am not a lone drinker but this was an occasion to celebrate: a successful conference and company and the difficult decision made.

I don’t know how having a male guest in my house who is not my husband will be perceived and whether we will be a source of gossip. It hadn’t occurred to me at first but when it got dark, at time at which I usually draw the curtains of the living room, I decided to leave them open so the guards could see whether we were behaving properly.

I believe the time has come for me to go. The pattern of disconnect between what people saying is very important and how they act is too obvious to ignore.

I have come to this place I didn’t expect to get to but it is here now. People try to shush things by saying, “oh no, don’t” but I have heard this before. I am too tired of all this and I don’t want any more of it. I have been crying a lot and not sleeping. That should be a hint.

I came home from another intense day, teary and depressed even though I was surrounded all through the day by people who are totally engaged and with me and sacrificed their weekend day. But they don’t have the power to turn things around and influence priorities. After Sunday most go back to the provinces or return to low power admin jobs.

The conference was not canceled, a threat uttered last evening that had me up and worried all through the night and was the cause of much of my agony this morning. I had to assure the doomsayers today that things will work out OK (they will) and that we have prepared as best as we could against a thousand odds. Yet some is still unresolved such as “will those we considered champions at the ministry show up to give their blessings?” All that is outside our control and so I let go.

Back home I poured myself a stiff drink and sat down to watch TV which made me cry even more as I saw people that made my problems pale in comparison in Africa’s refugee camps and in Norway and Libya. I am in that shaky psychological state where everything that is sad and difficult makes me cry.

I went to bad at 8 PM and slept 9 badly needed uninterrupted hours.

I had a six handed massage this morning which was heavenly. Sammy was back and worked wonders on my painful feet and Lisa on my kinked shoulder muscles. I told her those came from a rough week. She managed to untangle things on the physical side.

After massage I picked up Pia from her guesthouse for a goodbye lunch. The drivers are always happy to see her because she reminds people of the previous MSH project that created some very strong bonds between staff up and down the hierarchy. She reminds me of Boston and the people I miss from there. She is on her way home to France and then to Boston. We have seen more of each other this five day trip than in most of her previous trips combined.

I decided to quite Paradise, or rather listening to Paradiso, where Dante is making his tour of the Celestial Bodies to learn more about heaven. Heaven is beyond me at the moment and the language too complicated as I walk my 6 kilometers on the elliptical machine. My mind is drifting off to other more urgent things than heaven.

I worked the entire afternoon, more preparations for the conference that some now call into question – postpone or cancel is being suggested by people who are questioning our readiness. Despite all the assurances that this event is important, the actions I observe around me make me think it is actually not all that important.

I signed 12.5 pounds of certificates before dinner – hundreds of them – while listening to Sherlock Holmes failing to prevent death or suffering two times in a row, unusual and humbling scenarios. There is something in the air about failing and humbling (I think it was papa Murdoch who said that his day in committee was his most humble day – an odd grammatical error for a man who made millions from writing.)

Because he arrives after I leave for work and he leaves before I return home, the cook and I have been communicating via notes written in Dari (by me) and English (by our housekeeper). I got an A+ for my last note which said that I was eating in a restaurant on Thursday night and therefore did not need him to make a meal but that I was going to be eating home over the weekend. I am quite proud of myself that I can do this now. In two days Steve will arrive and the cook will be delighted as Steve likes to eat real food, none of these silly salads I am asking him to prepare.

The cook did prepare me a wonderful meal with spinach-stuffed chicken breast slices, small quiche triangles and lots of vegetables. I enriched the meal with my first Kandahar melon – a delicacy beyond description and one thing about Afghanistan I will sorely miss.

Farid and his friends have been working on their tennis court for girls and managed to get some TV coverage, apparently. They have a facebook page on which people can follow their progress. The group is called First Tennis Court at Rabiye Balkhi – Help Needed!!! (yes, the !!! are part of the name of the group). It is wonderfully inspiring to see the enthusiasm that Farid has created around him. He does exactly what we teach in our leadership program – aligning and mobilizing people around a shared vision. If the vision is shared and the action owned you cannot go wrong.

If yesterday I wrote about small complications that seemed to resolve themselves, today the big ones came flying in from all sides. It felt like one grand test that I failed miserably; everything that I thought was true and good was turned on its head and we moved two steps backwards rather than another one forward.

It is always when the data are needed that we discover how much still needs to be done. Data, people, money and drugs – those are the focus of attention of our management training. Except for the drugs, which have their own challenges that seem to be without end, and the money from which I am at leas now shielded, the people and data elements are causes for great headaches.

When we first started planning this conference political considerations related to language, tribe and geopgraphy, dominated our conversations about who would present in which way. We had assumed that the technical considerations were solid as we made choices between this and that winning team.

But today we discovered that the data weren’t as sound as we had thought and so the technical considerations pushed themselves to the front. “Let us be criticized about having made politically incorrect choices – but let us not be criticized on technical matters,” one of my colleagues said when decisions of weeks ago were reversed and the arguments of then appeared no longer valid.

I do agree. This kind of reasoning shows in how much a minefield (sometimes literally) we are working. What I hoped would be the grand finale for my time here in Afghanistan may not be all that grand and certainly not a finale. The whole process of studying the impact on services of our leadership development program has been full of big (BIG) lessons. I am very clear in my mind what I would do different if I were granted a next time.

Like having a solid team around me reporting only to me; like having people going every month to the provinces to spend a week with teams and go over their data, check their accuracy – find out who is fudging to look good.

I had to actually prevent that from happening today. Data were shamelessly altered to produce the right graph and many people seemed not to mind – it’s common practice I know. Not knowing about previous data that turned our success into a failure is one thing, but knowing the data and altering them went a little to far for me. There probably is a very well defined legal term for it. I said a few things about ethics and things coming back to haunt you. I have lost yet another ounce of my naivete and trust today – I have shed a few pounds altogether over the last two years.

The changing of presenters brings with it all sorts of other complications such as who is flying in on Saturday and who should be; about translations in Dari and Pashto and English. And then there are still the hundreds of certificates – the person whose idea it was that to have these handed out has been out of the country for the last 2 weeks. I will call him to my house tomorrow to sign 400 pieces of paper and then convince someone very high up in the ministry to do the same. I would offer to make a stamp but I don’t think this is a habit here as stamps require a certain level of trust.

This conference has too many moving parts and too many wires crisscrossing that should have run smoothly side by side. As a result there were some sparks today and an urge to point fingers. On the positive side there are some great people running along my side – we are all out of breath now and Friday is a welcome break. Many of them are cutting their weekend short and coming to work on Saturday. But tonight is free and I am going out with dear friends who will help me adjust my mood to a place that serves wine by the glass.

Today was a quiet day in Kabul but not in Kandahar and Mazar on the northern and southern ends of Afghanistan. I am getting quite inured to reports of fighting as long as it is not next door.

Preparations for the conference are proceeding with small complications that somehow seem to resolve themselves. Tomorrow we will do a dry run by those who are presenting – assuming that both presenter and poster or powerpoint are ready and available. Nothing can be taken for granted.

One of these complications is that the most senior ministry official cannot sign the several hundreds of certificates before I and the lead trainer, both of us also signatories, have signed them but the lead trainer is in Dubai and won’t be back until tomorrow night while the government has entered its weekend. Still, I think everything will work out OK in the end. Our champion turns out to be there after all.

I joined some friends, one of them the neighbor of the strongman who was killed the other night, at an empty French restaurant with 70 dollar bottle table wine poured into tea cups. We declined that opportunity even though we don’t have many such chances.

Instead we sipped our water while Michael gave us part three, the grand finale, of being a neighbor to an 8 hour battle between the Taliban and the Karzai advisor. He was finally told by the friendly police to leave the (his) house as a suicide bomber was about to explode himself – which he did with a loud kaboom – not a pleasant sight. Getting away as far as possible from things that could break and also explode (like the fire truck) he settled down next to a heavily armed guard from Karzai’s inner circle who was eating a melon and got a piece. I am trying to imagine that scene.

Walking up to the restaurant we were asked to make way for an armored, blinded car, the kind that cost a quarter of a million dollars, followed by another one full of large men with large guns. I prayed that whoever was in the car was not on anyone’s hitlist and was relieved when the convoy had passed and we were out of ear and gunshot. Now I am a bit more suspicious when I see this kind of wealth and power go by and make sure I move in the opposite direction.

We settled on the terrace of the more or less empty restaurant. Outside on the lawn a large table was prepared as for a French Sunday family meal. The people sitting down were indeed French. I found, among them, the circus trainer lady whose boys we had seen tumbling last week. It was an animated (anime) dinner party, partially because of the many teapots and tea cups filled with a Bourgogne-colored liquid. They were drinking away what may well amount to a month’s salary for Afghan workers, while we, continuing to sip our water, after having discussed dread and dysfunction in Kabul, reviewed the Murdoch drama through an American, a British and an Australian lens – quite fun.