Planning with hope

I've spent the whole week doing planning. Planning on the trainings to come, the groups I will work with, the provinces I will go to, the times I will go, the number of women I will work with per training, the materials I'll need, the subjects I will teach, the this and the that, the here and then that.
Then I started to put these 'planned' activities into a calendar.
What a difference that makes.
The calendar really puts the plans into the scheme of things.
I have too many plans and not enough time.
How do I make the wisest plan? Who can benefit most from the training we do? How do I choose?
It feels like such a hard call. 35 associations in Kabul, 18 in the provinces.
Crossing out groups from my list leaves me feeling guilty. We can never cover all.
Then of those who do get invited, who will be able to come?
Will the women be able to commit a full day to sitting and learning 6 times in the year?
Will my teachings be of any real help?

I went to one of, or the poorest association. They are embroiderers. I sat with them. We had tea. I explained what I do. They listened. Most were too shy to respond.
One of them caught my interest. I didn't get her name. I just go a bit of her story. Mother of 6, 3 are mentally handicapped, all 3 are teenagers or older, she is a widow. She was the most responsive. Seemed to be the leader.
She smiled, it was a genuine smile.
Her misery was nothing to frown about. She makes a living as an artisan, she embroiders her life away.
She lives in a tiny square of a room, there are 6 such squares in the place were were in, so 6 families live there. No green. All dust.
They share a water pump.
She made me wonder. Is anything I know of use to her?
Does my training provide an improvement in her life, now, later or whenever?
How do I enter her life?
She immediately touched mine. How do I reciprocate the big lesson she taught me today?
There must be joy in the struggle. This seems to be a recurring phrase I turn to, believe in, love reminding myself of, but seem to use very little.
Yet there she was, all smiles, eagerness, questions, acceptance of what I come and offer.
Full of joy in her daily struggle.
What can I give?
As my planning continues I can only wait in God's grace to fill my work with wisdom.
I want to leave all my ego, and expectations, and comforts behind, and when I enter their room, and sit with them, I hope I may truly feel like their sister.
I want to be a sister with hope. I want to truthfully hope that my Afghan sisters will be ok. That tomorrow does bring a brighter day. That their daughters will suffer less and less.
I want to plan full of hope.

Out of touch

For some reason Blogger had my blog as a possible spam scam and so my blog was blocked for like 5 days...
Though i have done a lousy job of letting all my amigos know I am online and blogging....for those of you who have been reading up, my apologies. I was pretty frustrated with the whole thing. But I am over that...Now it's time to share about my life.

Today something sweet and real happened.
I'd been feeling disconnected spiritually since I arrived in Kabul. Maybe I was just assigning too much energy to external things rather than spending time alone, moments of real processing my being here.

But this very afternoon, suddenly, as I was being driven back to the office, coming back with Shabibi and Palwashera from my first meeting with a women's handcraft association(about 40 minutes away, district 6 of Kabul) just sitting, just looking curiously out the window, I felt Jesus so close to me, so everywhere and within everything my eyes could see.

I saw Him amongst the sheperd guiding goats along the road, through the various bakers stretching out long slabs of local bread called nan, while people awaited in line, in the eyes of little girls to and from school, in Shabibi's words as she told me of her life as an Afghan refugee in Pakistan, in the grapevines I could see growing inside homes we passed by, in the strong heat I felt in a dusty afternoon but with a cooling breeze brushing my hair and pushing my scarf back. In the lemon stands on every street, offering refreshment from the heat to passersby.
He's here, amongst us. His lifestyle is all around me.
The paths that Jesus walked. I look at this arid, desert place, at men still wearing turbans, long beards, tunics, women covered from head to toe, and then slowly take in the closeness I feel to Him as my eyes drink in the landscape and people that He walked amongst not so long ago.
I recovered my hope, picked up His grace, and made a promise in my heart to remain and keep walking the same roads He walked on.

My DMP

Part of my job is leading a program called the DMP(Design Mentoring Program). What this means is that the Design center recruits women interested in pursuing design as their career and mentors them for a year and a half. We provide in-class workshops, training, lessons that will introduce them to the world of design. I, as the in-house-designer for the center have the task of providing these classes for them.
So far, the center has 6 DMP students. And we are planning on starting a new class in September. As this one is starting later, it will run for a year.
The 1st DMP group, the one that begun in April began with a lot more students. One by one they have stopped attending, and well, now, 4 months later we are left with only 6 BUT quite dedicated students.
I met them briefly, when I came in May, but the day we met was the day they were bidding farewell to Dani, the Bolivian designer who had been here for 3 months and had opened the world of design to them. We had no time to talk.
Yesterday was my first day with them. Of the 6 only 3 attended. Our work tends to move in this direction. We prepare, plan, and invite women to come to the center to receive training. They agree to come, sign up and then don't show up for one reason or another.
Now in our world that just seems incredible. We ask ourselves, why would these women with limited resources and work skills do this to themselves? Why don't they take advantage of such a great opportunity?
I find myself asking the same questions even though ever since I graduated university my work has been all about development work, working with people in the countryside, villages, and very retired, off-the-path places.

At the same time, I find myself always reminded of all the struggles these women face day in an day out.
Why don't they come?
I have asked my mother the same question. She leads a scholarship program in Honduras, funded by a Presbyterian church in Dayton, Ohio. She has done this work for years, and similar work all her life.
She is full of answers all the time. Well, because fulanita(so and so) didn't have the money(a quarter of a dollar) to pay for the bus to come to the house to get the scholarship money for her son.
Well, because her husband was shot and there is no one to take care of him but her.
Oh because, she makes tortillas for a living and she couldn't find anyone to take over while she came.
And on, and on, and on. She could give me a million reasons of why they don't come to receive the scholarship money, or the school supplies, or the basic foodstuff they would receive if they haven't eaten for days.
This is real. I am not making it up. She lives this. Honduras is full of this.
Then I come to Afghanistan, and when the women commit to come and receive lessons in elements of design, color theory, trends, booth design, product development, quality control, customer service, etc. I ask myself once again, why don't they come?
I find myself thinking "Why if I was them I would so take advantage of these opportunities."
But then I chastise myself as once again I remind myself that I am not them. That I have no idea of what their daily struggles to make it through each day are like. That if I was really in their situation, would I really be able to come?

Do women have freedom here? No, not much.
Can they manage their own lives? No, their husbands, fathers, brothers, and all the men around them dictate how their lives are lived.
Are they allowed to get an education? The new government states they are, and can. Yet many families, specially the traditional ones, the ones who are still stuck in the past, in Taleban-era times, firmly believe it is a waste of time to educate a woman.
And on and on and on.
So, I have 6 students. 3 came yesterday.
I am promised they will all come on Saturday.
They are brilliant. You would be astounded. I have been.
Their projects tell me so. Their manner emates so.
They had an exhibit on Monday. They recapped how they began their design experience from 2-D designs to the final products they showed us which are all their designs. They blew me away.
They were confident, composed, spoke eloquently and showed they have learned something this past 4 months.
I am full of excitment to begin working with them. Moreover, walking with them, being their older, foreign sister if they allow me to be.
As I write all of this, I am once again reminded they are willing to do it. They do want to come. It's just that when the day finally comes, they as much as me, have no idea what the day will bring, and if they will be able to make it to my classroom again.


Ps. The 6 women in my DMP class are far more priviledged than the average Afghan woman. However, they because of the priviledge of having an education, are a small percentage of the Afghan female population seeking to absorb anything and everything. They try to grab as much as they can and in doing so I believe end up spreading themselves too thin.

An OFF Sunday!

Independence Day! Wait...they just celebrated independence day, Ryan said.
No, no, our driver, Tor explained. This one is from the British.
So, Ryan, ATA director, who's been here just 3 months, has had the opportunity to celebrate 2 independence days, one from the Russians, and today, from the British.
Today was a very lazy day for me. A pensive one too.
Yesterday, a German-woman, an NGO worker, who was having lunch with her boyfriend inside a local restaurant was kidnapped. The Taleban are claiming the kidnapping.
I haven't been able to shake her off my mind. I have been praying that God holds her up in His grace. That she doesn't feel hopeless.
I keep thinking of her and looking at me.
What if it would have been me? How would I deal with this.
These are questions I never thought I would have to think about.
With this latest happening, my outings are even more restricted...not sure how that can possibly be but they are.
So with no plans, and no where to go I slept in, way in. 10am.
I've been getting up at 630am, and those of you who know my daily habits, know this is quite a change. A drastic change.
I got up, had breakfast at 11.
Did emails, surfed the net.
Had lunch, chatted with Ryan.
Read. Have been reading Cien anos de Soledad(100 years of solitude) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. And am not reading just any old copy, I have in my hands my mother's copy of the book, signed by her 1971, when she was a university student at The National University of Costa Rica. This makes the reading experience a lot richer, so unique. I turn each page with care and keep wondering what my mother's thoughts were while reading the same pages I am reading.
The book is so full of new words for me. Spanish word I have never heard. I wonder if she knew them all, if she got the book in a whole different way than I am getting it.

After reading I napped.
Then I watched one of the few channels that I can actually underestand, BBC food. I took notes on Indian recipes.
Had a snack.
Worked-out for an hour. Yes! There's a treadmill here.
Sat, and found Julie-Dung online. We talked over Skype. It was wonderfully clear, and wonderful to speak Vietnamese with a friend again.
Now...I'm about to go off to bed.
This was my free-Sunday. I'm sure I won't have many of these.

I'd rather be at the office chatting with the Afghan ladies anyways...

A page on contrasts

My vonage phone works! For those of you not clear on what a 'Vonage phone' is, let me enlighten you.
It is a phone adaptor you can purchase in the US/Canada/England which gives you a phone line including the area code for the city in the US where you live and which allows you to make calls anywhere in the US/Canada and England for a flat rate, plus international calls for a rate per minute. My brother in law got me one about 3 years ago while living in Vietnam. It was heaven to have in Hanoi, and I was crossing my fingers it would work here and I just found out today: IT DOES!!!

I also just found out today that there are no phone lines in Kabul. I had to fill out my insurance papers and went to ask where I could fax the filled out forms from, and was told, "There are no phones here. Just cellphones".

No worries, we do have a scanner and can just send the forms off as an attachment.

As of yesterday I have a direct internet cable connection in MY ROOM. I am so excited with such a gift. This is why I have a vonage phone installed. I have to share another praise with this, I was not going to bring a phone to Kabul. I thought, 'Oh, i'll just buy one there.' But at the last minute my sister mentioned she had a spare cordless I could take and so I packed it in my bags. There are no phones here, so I couldn't have bought one.

Going to the market is out of the question for us. So if I want anything I have to tell the driver or ask Cristina Grecu(one of my housemates, CIPE staff) to tell the cook to get me what I want. I asked for tomatoes, cucumbers, lemons, etc to make a salad.
He brought a huge cucumber, 2 sad looking tomatoes and a small shriveled- up lemon. I had been told I had to do my own cooking at the house. But then, from the day I arrived we've had full dinners made by an adorable-looking man named, Mohammed. He is literally the image of a cartoon from a french film. He is short, chubby, with a moustache, all he needs is a chefs hat.

So now I get to come home to a homemade dinner which includes desert. Yesterday the menu was pizza(with olives), potato cakes and stuffed cabbage, and for desert a pudding. We are having to talk to Mohammed because his meals are quite the carbohydrate. Take today: another kind of potato cake, pasta with chicken and another kind of fried cake with cabbage inside plus another kind of pudding.

Tomorrow we will have another talk to ask him to please bring back the veggies and leave carbohydrates and desert behind.

Then there is Mrs. Nikidar. She is our cleaning lady. When I first saw her I thought she must be in her sixties. I asked her age and was taken aback, she is 43 years old. She is the definition of a happy woman. She gives me over 8 kisses in the morning.
I had planned to do my own laundry. I left my clothes for washing inside a bag inside my closet. When I returned from work the clothes were neatly laying on my bed. I left her the message to not bother doing it, that I'd do it. Once again I returned to find clean laundry waiting to be put away. And so far, today being the 4th day, the same thing has happened all over again.
She insists on doing my washing everyday.

Life is full of contrasts.
In Hanoi I had all the freedom to come and go where I wanted. I lived on my own. I took care of my washing, cooking. Life was in my control. People always look younger than they are. A 25 year-old woman always looked like a teenager to me.
Kabul is all about restrictions. I live with other NGO workers, someone else does my shopping, washing, cooking. People here tell me I look 21! Which is hilarious to me! But in their lives I do, as a 30-year-old woman like me looks like she is in her late 40's.
But life is all about similarities too.
Both places have given me the priviledge of walking with amazing people. I just started my walk here but so far I am amazed at people's hearts.
This journey has just begun, and I pray that I may more and more walk away from the contrasts and just focus on the similarities.

On my 4th day in Kabul

Today is Sunday, a normal work day in Kabul.
I had no time to think about yesterday and today being my weekend, these are normal working days and there is just no point stopping to wave goodbye to my usual weekend.
Thursday, my half-day and Friday my off-day will soon come, leaving no traces of Saturdays and Sundays and their beautiful, restful meaning in my life.

As I updated previously I not only got to arrive in Kabul with ALL of my suitcases, but with new stuff I acquired in Dubai. Karla was amazing enough(despite her surgery) to insist on going over all the things I was bringing to Afghanistan and 'repacking' for me. This process involved separating a big pile for "The second mile thrift shop" and creating a 2nd pile of winter clothes and other 'stuff' that could wait to be brought to Kabul in December. I had to stop and re-evaluate my situation, I knew I was over my head with stuff, so I agreed.
Even after such intervention, as I struggled to put each bag onto the scale at the Delta counter, I saw each bag marking 70 pounds. I smiled a knowing smile, and asked how much(for the few extra pounds)?
Though I arrived into Dubai bagless, I must admit there was great advantange in not having to carry 2, 70 pound bags especially as I changed rooms in the hotel I stayed at 3 times.
On the day of departure, at 5am, ding dong there they were. I had forgotten their weight, yet was quickly reminded as I once again struggled to put each one on the scale, but this time on the Kam Air counter where I was only allowed 30 kilos, meaning one bag less 2 kilos.
I was allowed to go pay excess luggage and so arrived into Kabul with both.
Now, don't get me wrong. They are inconvinient to travel with, they do require paying excess poundage yet there is no pricetag on the comfort of being in a place so full of limitations with all my 'STUFF'. My hello kitty zip lock bags, my Vietnamese embroidered scarves, my body shop shower gels, my pearls, my mother's copy(from her university days) of 100 years of solitude, yeah, yeah, I did bring these unnecessary items to most of you but oh so necessary to someone like me.

I am sure like Karla said, that after less than a month I'll be full of all kinds of new local stuff. But for now, on my 4th day of being here, I must rely on this stuff to get me by.

Homes as I hop

Well here I am. Me, the one who never intended on blogging, me the one who used to wonder who ever had the time to blog!?! and post their life for others to read? Yes, it is I.

But come on, moving to Afghanistan has got to be blog-worthy, definately one of the accredited reasons to blog, and so I must.
The last month has been a tornado of directions and emotions.
Leaving Vietnam on July 9th was the hardest thing I have ever done.
My grieving is not done. It's a like a cookie I keep biting into now and then, always leaving some for later.

My heart is still there.
Suddenly I have become very aware of being homeless. My life there was my home. Never had I felt so much a sense of home in my adult-life. Now, I'll have to adjust to temporary homes... transient housing here and there, changing homes along as I go.
After Hanoi my first stop was Philadelphia.
There was a big new someone to meet: Dahlia, Karla's second daughter, and now officially one of my favorite people on earth.
Lovely, calm, smooth, satisfied, happily grunting through life. That's how she spends her time.

After 5 days I flew to Honduras. Amidst the many guests my mom houses at the bed and breakfast(July being her high season) I got to spend day in and day out for 2 weeks with my mom, dad, Laura, my Gonzi, Tia Pia and Tia Marta, plus my closest friend, Belkis.
Time simply jumped from arrival day to departure day. The last 3 days I spent with angst...every time I remembered I was about to leave I'd get a pang in my stomach.
Leaving my mom was the hardest. She is the best flavour of home.
Despite the short time we sure enjoyed away the days. I got all the tortillas con queso I could eat. I got all the time with my 2 tias, all the afternoons by the hammock with my mom, all the time to sit and admiringly watch my nephew in action, awestruck at who he is, at his manner of expression.
My favorite is how he says: Me encanta or No me encanta referring to things he likes or doesn't like. These, he either adores or doesn't adore, and this very well describes how intense he is about life.
I'd forgotten how wonderful it is to live in a place full of garden, full of green and the space to just sit and stare away at leaves, petals, turtles lurking around.
On my return to Philly I was to just stay a day before flying to Dubai.
This didn't happen. The night before flying I started getting sick with fever, shivers, body-ache, and a very upset stomach. We feared dengue fever, as Honduras is full of it as I type.
My flight was changed, and I stayed with Karla for an extra 4 days. It wasn't dengue fever, maybe the flu, not sure what.

Philly is another one of those places I easily call home. I always look forward to spending a few days there and enjoy Karla's homey home and homey neighborhood.
Karla had had gall bladder stones removed the day I arrived. But despite me being sick, and her coming out of the hospital the day after, we got to spend great time together along with Dahlia, Emilia and the compadre, Dan.
I got 2 days to walk through the farmer's market, eat all the blueberries and peaches I craved, have breakfast at 2 of the Green Line cafes, even got a whole afternoon shopping at Target....

Again, a couple of days before flying I got anxious, and didn't feel ready to leave.

As quickly as I had decided to move on and retake my passion of working with artisans by moving to Afghanistan, I have not really had a good enough break to just relax before the big move. So a teaspoon of Honduras and a bit less of Philly had me feeling so emotional and anxious. I wonder if this is why I got sick.
Within a deep breath I suddenly found myself on the Atlanta-Dubai direct flight, then suddenly walking the hallways at the Dubai airport.
I arrived last night, getting a hotel and Dubai visa quite smoothly compared to my first time going to Kabul in May. But, but, but my luggage did not arrive.
About a dozen people on my flight didn't either, we were assured it would be delivered at our hotels by tonight.
It better because I fly to Kabul tomorrow at noon, where I shall begin to scoop out sand and plant a new home.

UPDATE: My luggage did not arrive on today's Atlanta-Dubai flight. I fly to Kabul at noon tomorrow. Am waiting for the reception to call and let me talk to the airline. Am trying not to panic....but am panicking.
Will let you know how this ends.
2nd UPDATE: My luggage arrived at 5am on the day I was to fly to Kabul as 12 noon. I had already shopped, was planning to move with 4 new outfits, basic toilettries and the faith that somehow, one fine day my luggage would appear. But that didn't happen. I flew to Kabul with my 2 70 pound, 32 kilo bags plus the 4 new outfits and toilettires I got in Dubai...