Norm went to Mazaar-i-Sharif last week with Habib and Ahmad Zia. I was planning on going as well but had to stay behind to work. It is such a treat to get out of Kabul and Norm has been here for 4 straight months. Mazaar-I-Sharif is in the province of Balkh and the city of Balkh is the birthplace of the 13th century poet, Rumi. (first photo). Afghans have a great tradition of poetry present in their daily language and the dialect of "Dari" which is "Farsi" would sound like old English to us-complete with "thee" and "thou" and prefacing important pronouncements with "in the name of Almighty Allah".

It is challenge to conduct trainings in organizational development with a translator because we tend to have to spend time trying to define the concepts. For example "bottomline" in English might be translated as "where the rivers converge to make the tide flow" and then I would have to say "No, more like where the match meets the firewood to make the fire burn..."and these metaphors just simply don't communicate like they do in the short and abrupt English language.
Imagine trying to lead a business meeting where you try to emphasize the importance of the bottomline or taking corrective action in "Dari" It might sound something like this "Listen, La La, Jaan, (big brother, dear) you need to pay more attention to where your match meets the firewood"....... or you try to discourage gossip among your employees (stop "carrying the watermelon under your arm for them")...It is a whole new world for Western consultants and without great translators we often miss the mark.

I heard of one consultant who felt he was doing a fantastic job of getting across the definition of a "paradigm" in business-only to be told by an Afghan American in the audience that what his translator was discussing was a description of how beautiful his home province of Laghman was-as he couldn't firgure out how to translate "paradigm" into his metaphorical and poetic language and he didn't want to disappoint.

Mahbouba and I are starting a manual for working on organizational development concepts with Afghan managers. Our first chapter will be about the concept "He is eating my heart and liver" which is a behavior that is a cross between "passive-aggressiveness" and "the peanut gallery"...and at its worse it becomes like a team sport-the victim of which becomes enraged to the point of insanity.

But as you can see from Norm's pictures it is an ancient and heart breakingly beautiful country. Afghan's are justifiably proud of their legacy of great poets and I hope they do not lose this as they move back into the 21st century.