Be Brave, Be Kind, Show Up For Each Other
It has been an unusually busy week interspersed with small disappointments. Plus some horrible stuff and a suprise little visit.
Work has gotten even worse than usual, with most days starting well before 7 am and ending around midnight. Last night, I stayed up until midnight to finish reviewing one document and giving my comments so that I could focus on two others. By 7 pm tonight I hadn’t opened those two documents, in favour of about five hours of on-line meetings and calls plus endless emails. So I gave up and decided I needed to move. That led to another of this week’s little disappointments.
On Tuesday, I discovered I didn’t have the code for my Zoom ballet class. Tonight, I couldn’t connect with my Zumba class. I had been pumped, and even broke out my new leggings from No-Mi-No-U, an eco-conscious Canadian company (they are beautiful and super comfy). I ended up doing a stretch class from Movement Union, a local fitness studio that has moved to Facebook for the duration. It was fine, but not the hard workout I had been hoping for. I missed one day of moving altogether because I just couldn’t get out from under my laptop. Fortunately, I did manage to get out for a nice social distancing walk on Tuesday when an old friend called unexpectedly. It was good to catch up.
The truly horrible thing was finding out that the aunt of one of our locally-engaged staff a the Embassy in Kabul was killed during an attack on a maternity hospital on Tuesday. There is still no word on her baby, though some 18 infants were rescued and are being cared for in another hospital until they can be reunited with their families, so I am holding out a little hope. She was one of 24 people to die, in a terrible day of violence against civilians (there were two attacks in other cities, with at least 29 others killed and 70 wounded - one attack was at a funeral, and the other was a bunch of children walking along a road). The employee who lost her aunt is a sweet young woman who was generous with her time when my daughter wanted me to buy a locally-made musical instrument. I grew very fond of her in the short time I got to work with her last year, and looked forward to seeing her again, before COVID upset all the travel plans.
In my nearly three years working on this program, this is the closest the violence has touched me. One of the contracted security guards was killed when a polling station was bombed while he was trying to vote last year, one employee had his house damaged during another bombing (his family was home, but okay), another just missed being caught in a major bombing on his way to work (he had not yet turnd a corner that would have put him right in harm’s way), and another guard had her face slashed while on her way to work. I know the people who had near misses, but not those who were directly affected. All the other attacks that affected the Embassy happened before I joined the program.
I want to end on a cheery note, but just recording this has me spent. So I offer you this photo, taken in Seattle by a social media friend named Susan Dennis. Be Brave. Be Kind. Show Up For Each Other.
Work has gotten even worse than usual, with most days starting well before 7 am and ending around midnight. Last night, I stayed up until midnight to finish reviewing one document and giving my comments so that I could focus on two others. By 7 pm tonight I hadn’t opened those two documents, in favour of about five hours of on-line meetings and calls plus endless emails. So I gave up and decided I needed to move. That led to another of this week’s little disappointments.
On Tuesday, I discovered I didn’t have the code for my Zoom ballet class. Tonight, I couldn’t connect with my Zumba class. I had been pumped, and even broke out my new leggings from No-Mi-No-U, an eco-conscious Canadian company (they are beautiful and super comfy). I ended up doing a stretch class from Movement Union, a local fitness studio that has moved to Facebook for the duration. It was fine, but not the hard workout I had been hoping for. I missed one day of moving altogether because I just couldn’t get out from under my laptop. Fortunately, I did manage to get out for a nice social distancing walk on Tuesday when an old friend called unexpectedly. It was good to catch up.
The truly horrible thing was finding out that the aunt of one of our locally-engaged staff a the Embassy in Kabul was killed during an attack on a maternity hospital on Tuesday. There is still no word on her baby, though some 18 infants were rescued and are being cared for in another hospital until they can be reunited with their families, so I am holding out a little hope. She was one of 24 people to die, in a terrible day of violence against civilians (there were two attacks in other cities, with at least 29 others killed and 70 wounded - one attack was at a funeral, and the other was a bunch of children walking along a road). The employee who lost her aunt is a sweet young woman who was generous with her time when my daughter wanted me to buy a locally-made musical instrument. I grew very fond of her in the short time I got to work with her last year, and looked forward to seeing her again, before COVID upset all the travel plans.
In my nearly three years working on this program, this is the closest the violence has touched me. One of the contracted security guards was killed when a polling station was bombed while he was trying to vote last year, one employee had his house damaged during another bombing (his family was home, but okay), another just missed being caught in a major bombing on his way to work (he had not yet turnd a corner that would have put him right in harm’s way), and another guard had her face slashed while on her way to work. I know the people who had near misses, but not those who were directly affected. All the other attacks that affected the Embassy happened before I joined the program.
I want to end on a cheery note, but just recording this has me spent. So I offer you this photo, taken in Seattle by a social media friend named Susan Dennis. Be Brave. Be Kind. Show Up For Each Other.
Comments
Post a Comment