Sylvia's Journal

Last night I decided to remove all noisy distraction in my room and sleep with my AC and air purifier off. I opened a window, so I would hear mayhem, if there was any, before our security would come to whisk me away. This time I would be prepared, and not in my nightie. But all was quiet and also very hot. At about 11 PM I closed the window and started the AC. After that I slept well and in the morning all was quiet.

I asked the guards why, when I came home over an hour after the fighting had started the night before, had they not mentioned anything to me. The answer was simple, they had not wanted to upset me and make me worry. It is their approach to protecting me.

They figured Axel would have called me (he did indeed) and were anxious for me to convey their best wishes. Life goes on and they keep missing him, not quite the same way I do, but missing nevertheless.

At work, my team and I are in a race against time to get everything, brochures, posters, banners for the conference on Sunday, printed in time, considering that the weekend for the ministry starts tomorrow afternoon and the printers close Thursday afternoon. The printed invitations didn’t arrive as promised – I should have known – and so people will get their invitations two workdays before the event instead of the planned week.

Our champion in the ministry, I found out, will be boarding a plane in Delhi just about the time he was supposed to give the speech I wrote for him. This is a huge disappointment although we knew the risk was there all along. We are one of many shows and side shows in town and the critical things in one person’s universe are not the same as those in my universe. It was for his sake that we changed the date of the event. I try to keep my cool. A deliberate shrugging of my shoulders felt slightly therapeutic.

Back home I settled in front of the TV and watched with great fascination the committee hearings on the BBC about the phone hacking scandal. Especially the interrogation of the Murdochs was as good as a detective movie. This peek behind the curtain of a big news empire and watching this father and son duo perform kept me totally engrossed. I think living in Afghanistan is less painful than what the Murdochs are going through.

And then it got really exciting when a man with a Boston cream pie or platter with foam went for Murdoch senior and we could all see his young pink-clad wife pull a swift right hook and, though off camera but reported on Twitter, threw the plate right back.

The viewers got to see the results of this through the plate glass windows as the perpetrator and the police were busy wiping the white stuff off their faces. That was the best distraction of all and from our troubles here.

A dinner last night on the lovely terrace of the Gandamack guesthouse, a glass of cold white wine (actually 2) and a nice reunion with P. (last seen over lobster at Lobster Cove) made me forget about all the badness of the day and my sense of gloom. In the garden of the Gandamack you can pretend to be very far away from Afghanistan.

I arrived home in a good mood and went upstairs to make it an early night. I was just stepping in bed when I heard a car enter our compound. That is rather unusual but possible if a guard needs to be changed because of some family urgency. With my air purifier and the AC on full blast I didn’t hear what was happening outside.

But when the car didn’t leave I decided to go downstairs and find out what was going on. In my robe I stepped outside to see several drivers and security guards, talking on walkie-talkies and phones and looking grave. I was made to understand that fighting (‘jang’) was going on across the small river that separates our street from a street with the house of a doomed warlord/Karzai strong man, someone with a profile quite similar to Wali Karzai. My cooling and purifying apparatus had kept me from hearing the shooting and explosions.

I was taken to another guesthouse a few blocks away to reduce the risk of being in the line of fire of stray bullets or breaking glass in case of suicide bombers. I had a restless sleep in one of the empty non AC-ed guestrooms wondering whether all hell had broken loose or this was number 2 in a ‘ten little Indians’ drama and I just happened to live close by.

At 5 AM I returned to my guesthouse and calm had returned just an hour before at 4 AM according to my driver. The fighting had lasted 8 hours. Some of it was done from my friend Michael’s house who had the bad luck of living next door and found his door kicked in by Afghan police who demanded access to his rooftop, eyed his whiskey, and told him not to worry. Michael sent a lively and rather humorous description of the entire night but he is staying home today to collect himself. Trained as a nurse Michael was able to play a role in the improvised field hospital that was set up in his living room and treated some of the terrified women of the household for minor cuts and bruises and its children to chocolate and Pepsi.

I suppose all this was to put in perspective what I had only hours earlier considered a ‘concatenation of bad.’ Actually, today I feel much better, like the clear weather after a thunderstorm. The planning for Sunday’s big conference (my swan song?) about management and leadership for better health is going more or less according to my expectations and pieces are falling into place.

I do worry a bit about who will be the third little Indian, and, more importantly, where he lives.

First I learned from Axel that someone has been busy stealing our identity and was caught by an alert employee of our bank when he asked to have a new ATM card sent to an address that wasn’t ours. The man seemed to know a lot about our finances.

Then I read Paula Constable’s article in the Washington Post (Dysfunction and Dread in Afghanistan) and would have packed my suitcases right there and then to go home – her story resonated painfully with my experience over the last nine years and the last two in particular. I felt very despondent after reading it and I am not even an Afghan and have the ability to leave and go home. I can’t imagine reading this about my own country.

Forces in the universe and in Afghanistan in particular, seem to conspire to worsen my gloom. Over lunch I asked what I thought was an innocent question to two of my colleagues, “How was your weekend?” I expected the usual ‘fine,’ or a description of family and fun activities. But no.

The first one said, “very bad.” I asked what happened. Her 19 year old niece was admitted to the hospital with fluid in her heart or something as serious as that. Her niece is a TB patient. She is a little better now but for the foreseeable future remains a TB patient with continued risks. Tuberculosis is a huge problem here with women more affected than men, a unique situation in the world. One of our MSH projects is aimed specifically at helping to detect and treat TB patients.

The second person I asked about her weekend also said, “very bad.” She and five of her colleagues frequently travel to the provinces to check on the results of clinical training given here in Kabul to specialists from the provincial hospitals. They were on their way to Ghazni when they got caught in the cross fire between government troops and anti government forces who had attacked a fuel convoy. For three hours they hunkered down in their car while fuel tanks got riddled with bullets and fuel streamed out through the holes. Both cases ended OK with an ‘alhamdu-lillah.’

Then, as if this wasn’t enough, I was informed about a team from the ministry that hasn’t settled their account with us about advances given to them for a trip abroad to attend a training course. As it turned out they blatantly falsified their hotel bills (which must have required some bribing) to pad them with an extra 100 dollars per night so that instead of them owing us, we owe them about a thousand dollars each.

The saddest thing about this is that people don’t want to make waves about this and there is a tendency to accept it as the inevitable cost of doing business here. It may well become the only thing that will be institutionalized after we leave. The revelation made me want to cancel all further assistance to this team that includes a senior level director; so much about setting a good example.

And then, as a special bonus to me, a huge dust storm turned the sky yellow and blanketed everything with the fine dust that made Axel so sick. Everything is gritty now.

Before joining some of my colleagues at the ministry (it is a workday for the government) I was invited by one of my staff to his house for a pre-work social with his wife and youngest daughter, an architectural student with impeccable English. They served me fresh apricots and plums from their country house – a place I will not be allowed to visit despite everyone assuring me it is safe.

He lives in one of the ugly Russian apartment blocks, many still pockmarked by gunshots from the Russians and Mujahideen. I have always considered these buildings eyesores and assumed they were also poorly built. But today, in spite of the intense heat in my part of town, these flats were cools even without fans. There are many trees that provide shade and the walls are thick. So I take back some of my criticism (they are still eyesores from the outside).

At the ministry we tackled the difficult question that the Kabul Conference organizers and funders have posed: what have we (the Afghans and those providing funds and/or technical assistance) learned from 10 years of capacity building. It is a very complex question especially since the organizers want evidence for recommendations – yet when looking at the so-called evidence most of it consists of opinions, points of view rather than evidence.

In my book capacity building of individuals can only happen if there is a counterpart and a sense of what capacity is weak or missing and a plan that spells out how one is to go from point A to point B. But not all advisors (those who are supposed to do the capacity building) have counterparts – as we used to joke: we are asked to paint a wall but there is no wall to paint. It is the critical factor that distinguishes those capacity building efforts that have borne fruit and those that have not. It is that simple.

I returned home in time for my Dari class. I have reached a plateau. Where once I thought my Dari was progressing very well and I could understand a lot I now think not. Maybe this feeling is part of a more generalized malaise, induced by the heat, the deteriorating political and security situation and Axel’s absence. And so I am plodding on, wondering sometimes whether I should quit now that my assignment here is coming to an end. But then I so much enjoy my classes that I don’t want to quit.

We read a brief essay in Dari about teamwork that a colleague had been circulating. It comes from the association of Afghan engineers and is a complex piece (both linguistically and culturally) about why the boss should not expect to always have the last word and how to handle opposing views in a team setting. The fact that it was written from within a very hierarchy conscious culture made it all the more interesting.

In the evening I went with two colleagues and their families to a performance by young circus artists – 9 teenage boys who showed us a combination of tumbling, pole climbing, uni-cycling and other easy looking but very difficult acrobatics that required great strength. I have a feeling that in one of my colleagues’ houses there will be some tumbling around bedtime tonight.

The shows put on by the Alliance Francaise are always wonderful. The hall and auditorium where all this takes place are modern, clean, dust-free and comfortable, making you believe you are in France or Europe rather than in Kabul. The French here are masters of the Art of the Possible and always manage to lift my spirit.

The bad news in the world, debt crisis here, debt crisis there, combined with the ever increasing bad news about Afghanistan did nothing to lift my spirits on this Friday weekend day. The distressing news about what is happening in this part of the world, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan is jumping out from every newspaper and newscast, yet I kept on reading and watching. It left me with a big hole in my heart and a strong urge to leave. As if I am on a sinking ship – especially people who write about Afghanistan seem to think it is.

My masseuse told me that many of her foreign clients are indeed leaving and she is wondering whether she can stay afloat without them. I am the only one left who comes to her place – the others ask her to come to their guesthouses and now there are fewer places to go to. We all felt a bit gloomy.

But then she and her young Afghan assistant gave me a four handed massage that made me forget of about everything bad, at least for an hour. Lisa jubilantly stated that all the kinks have been worked out of my muscles – it took about a year. “Look,” she exclaimed, “how my hand slides easily over your back.” It is a small victory but worth celebrating as it is very easy here to get all knotted up.

I found out about the gender of my hairdresser. Sammy is a girl born in a boy’s body. A high priced Chinese doctor has already made some adjustments and more are coming for an exorbitant sum of money that will require a lot of haircutting. Some people think it is ridiculous to pay that much to create congruence between body and mind but I can imagine why that would be worth a lot, especially in societies that are quick to classify people as misfits or degenerates.

I sat down after dinner to watch the Breakfast Club for the umpteenth time but the DVD player keeps stalling and I gave up. I do have to watch it sometime to develop the promised discussion notes for the SOLA girls. Right now they are in the middle of their exams and won’t have time to watch, so I have time.

I flew in a spotless but crowded Safi jet to Delhi for a very low price – an introductory offer that is no longer available. There were many sick people on the flight. I occurred to me that flying out of Kabul to a prime medical tourism spot, may therefore be nearly as risky as living in Afghanistan.

Unlike Air India with its predictable delays, Safi left and arrived as scheduled. They have that reputation on their other routes. And so I arrived in plenty of time to catch my connecting flight to Cochin (Kochi).

I did what Axel had wanted to do in India and never did, and that is checking out McDonalds. We had wondered during our previous trip, with pork and beef off limits, how McD had adapted its menu. For one there is the Maharaja Chicken and the rest is variations on chicken and fish with the usual names.

Their advertising trick (what is more spicy, McSpicy Chicken or McSpicy Paneer?) succeeded in getting me to buy the spicy paneer. It was a little disappointing (should I be surprised?) and was not all that spicy and the question not interesting enough to entice me to buy the other McSpicy; I don’t think I will be a repeat customer.
At the beginning of the gate area for the domestic travellers a circular upward pathway shows the sequence of the Surya Namaskar, sun saluations, with an explanation. It is more or less what I do every other morning though my spine doesn’t quite bend the way it is bend this way or that way by the bronze life size manikins.

According to the explanation provided on an engraved plaque ‘the Surya Namaskar holds equal benefits for the body and the intellect. Its practice results in a shapely and strong body encompassing a sharp and focused mind. Working out the routine at dawn with controlled breathing uplifts the mood and provides an invigorating start of the day. This alleviation of anxiety and stress grants a clear and alert mind that is capable of concentration and meditation which is the ultimate path to creating complete harmony of the spirit and the body.’ Imagine what my life in Kabul would be like without this routine.

The statement above the money changer’s desk is exactly the kind of state of mind I am in: Please bear with any inconvenience if there is any. Indeed!

This morning I spent about one hour trying to get my malaria prophylaxis. It was not as simple as I thought. I mobilized one of my colleagues, a specialist in infectious diseases who connected me to his friend who runs the national malaria program. I pulled him out of a meeting which he didn’t seem to mind. As it turned out he had studied a year in my homeland and we exchanged a few words in Dutch while being served cake and tea.

I left the place with an insecticide treated bednet after I had declined pills to treat malaria, since I don’t have it, don’t plan to get it; I plan to avoid getting it. Prophylaxis is not so common here, despite the fact that there were about half a million malaria cases last year. The disease is fought mostly through education and bednets; only pregnant women are given prophylaxis.

I ended up getting the pills my Boston colleague had suggested, against the judgment of the chief malaria epidemiologist – but the small pharmacy had nothing else. And then the parents of the bridegroom wrote me they are not taking anything because their son claims there is no malaria in India. He is a young and healthy entrepreneur in the age group that doesn’t expect to ever get sick. What he doesn’t know is that malaria is a big and deadly problem in India (although apparently not so much in Kerala), so I will bring my pills and maybe even my treated bednet.

After several calls with Boston about what happens next I spent over an hour mindlessly removing beads from a scarf that some poor Afghan woman must have spent days sewing on the outlines of a paisley pattern. I don’t even know why I did it and seemed not able to stop myself. The reptilian brain had taken over – not wanting anything nubby to mess up the smooth texture of the scarf – a yearning for something.

The box under the TV that lets me access international news channels was broken again so I watched the local news. Most of it was about weapons or money and/or the damage caused by one or the other or both. Although I did not really understand the details of the coverage of a workshop, I could read on the banner that it was about senior government officials disclosing their assets. The number of 2 million was mentioned several times and I wondered whether that was the limit above which officials had to declare their assets or whether it was the amount already declared. A couple of dozen men seemed to be squirming around a conference table, suggesting the latter. I am all for disclosures like that.

Next the viewer was treated to footage of a huge courtyard presumably somewhere in Kabul with thousands of weapons that were confiscated from the private security companies that are being disbanded. That they were removed from these companies gave me little comfort as they are still in Kabul and will surely go to some other user, official or non official. I just can’t imagine these arms being put in a smelter and turned into plough shares though that would be the right thing to do.

The complexity of the work here can sometimes overwhelm any sense of duty, responsibility, idealism, optimism and what not. Today was such a day. Where to begin? I read the newspaper and it is full of things that didn’t work out as planned, that misfired, that got waylaid with criminal intent, that never got off the ground or that went unnoticed. How about this for a front page headline: Karzai seeks honest US support in anti-corruption drive! (grrr)

The newspaper retains its balance, somewhat, by always having a provincial news page. It is written by, what I assume are the communication people, the PR folks at the Provincial Rehabilitation Teams. They write in good English (unlike most other pages of the newspaper) and their stories are always upbeat, encouraging, heartwarming, optimistic. They write about small do-good projects like pizza parties for the local kids, a visit by women soldiers to women in purdah, a school, a bridge built, and locals doing things for themselves now that the foreigners used to do for them. Often I read that page first, for therapeutic reasons, but today it didn’t help.

Sometimes I can write like that in my blog, and I have done so many times, but not today. Today was a day marked by people second guessing me without asking, by not being asked for my opinion, by walls, things to run into and I came home a bit bruised – the empty house didn’t help, except for Axel’s email about the excitement of the Fourth of July – he is in the parade on one of the floats. I try to imagine him. Me, I am floating on a wave of self pity.

The visit to India on Thursday is timely, a moment of respite, a psychological breather. At first permission was not granted but the decision was reversed, thank god. During my preparations I realized a bit late that I will need to take malaria pills. I have gotten out of the habit and threw away my last Malarone tablets because they were two years past their expiration date. Not something to ignore when dealing with a serious disease like malaria. I have never gotten malaria pills here because the malaria areas are out of bounds anyways. My public health friends in Boston sent me advice on what to take that can be obtained here – doxycycline, bad for the stomach but also bad for the parasite.

Sitting in an airconditioned living room with all but one of my favorite things around me I am floating upwards a bit again. There is much work to be done before takeoff on Thursday and a good night sleep seems just the right thing.