The reputation of my training manager with the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan preceded my meeting her. Everyone seemed to know her and they unanimously had the reaction, a worried and sympathetic look in their eye as they asked, “Oh, and how is that going for you?” One Venezuelan man gasped when I told him who my manager was, “De veras? Estas trabajando por la loca??? After a couple beers this more times than not translated into, “como es el trabajo con la bruja?”
My boss, who shall remain nameless, was a Brazilian woman I’m assuming was in her fifties and severely unstable mentally. She did look good for her age, though I believe she secretly loved Botox. She always wore revealing shirts showing off her obviously enhanced chest saying, ‘It’s a like dat Looreen, they’re real! Everyone thinks that they are fake, but it’s a like dat, they’re real!’ Every bizarre thought she had would always be preceded with her waving her hands saying in a think Brazilian accent, “It’s a like dis…or, it’s a like a dat…"
Unfortunately, she suffers from extreme insecurity and takes it out on her subordinates. Your guess is as good as mine as to how she got to be in the post she’s at and making the salary she does—as a senior manager put it best when he was asking me about her, ‘what a f@!*%ing waste of money.’
I tried to not judge her before first meeting her. I even tried not to judge the fact that she wore completely inappropriate low cut shirts in front of Afghans. I even tried not to judge her when I would be stuck in her office listening to endless ramblings of her thoughts which included her berating other staff members, love for her cat, talk of Moses on a hill, theories on life and death, her passion for Portuguese men and her praising herself for how great a manager she is—going as far as to tell me that most of the staff at UNAMA wanted her as their manager. But I did have to judge her after what she put me through during my initial months in Afghanistan.
Also I did judge when she told my colleague to have all the most important items in her grab bag—passport, money, medications and condoms. The logic of including condoms with the other obviously necessary things is understandable unless she was thinking stress sex would inevitably be needed in the case of evacuation. The fact that I can even attempt to analyze the workings of her mind scares me.
After nearly two months into my time in the country, it was finally decided that I would be deployed to Bamyan. Upon my initial acceptance, I was to be deployed to Mazar e Shariff in the north, very close to the Uzbekistan border—after my shoulder surgery I delayed going and that assignment was given to another. I was later told Bamyan and it was Bamyan that I had originally been told I would be based and was the location I had mentally prepared myself to go to; however, upon arrival in country my boss informed me that I would be going elsewhere—to Gardez. If you paid attention to the news and heard of the suicide attack killing seven CIA officers in a place called Khost then you are aware of where my boss intended to send me. She also told me that she did not have a map to show me where it was located—merely waved out the window saying the helicopter went that way—yes, she was in fact crazy.
After Gardez, I was told I was going to remain in Kabul. I was fine with this until I was then told that I would be going to Herat—a beautiful city on the border with Iran. People were calling me from Herat and asking when I was arriving—everyone was asking except my manager. When I went to her office she informed me that I was not going to Herat, oh no, in a very thick Brazilian accent she informed me, “it’s a like dis Looreen—you are going to Kan-da-har.” I honestly think the floor dropped out from underneath me. Kandahar is the spiritual home of the Taliban, in the thick of the fighting and is NOT the place to be posted, especially as a female, especially as an American and especially as a UN Volunteer making half the hazard pay of an international employee. And especially since in my interview I was specifically told I would not be sent there—I raised this question to her and she waved her hand, “things change Looreen.” What’s changed? I didn’t change. The situation in Kandahar didn’t change. Obviously it was her decision that changed.
She assured me that we would go together—in her own words, she told me that we would go and stay for a couple days and share the same room-toast each other with wine and then I would realize that Kandahar really isn’t such a bad place to be. Of course she herself having been in the country had never been there for herself. To top it off, she then told me I had to go and if I didn’t want to then I could go to Gardez or if I was still would not go then I could pack my bags and go to the US. Mind you there was another English teacher and friend of mine who, upon arrival in country, told psycho boss she actually wanted to go to these places…crazy pants boss told her, “We don’t send women to places like that.” I guess I was different. Honestly, I think she kind of wanted to kill me in some sick passive-aggressive manner.
I did pack my bags and was about to board a plane the next day, not for Kandahar, but for the USA. My awesome friend and neighbor and emotional rock in Kabul learnt what was happening and had an intervention with me and basically told me to go to every high level UN official who would listen to my case and raise hell. And so I did. First to my sympathetic UNV manager—she got the worst of it because I had kept so much bottled up that it came out in a stream of profanity and tears. She herself had suffered abuse from the boss I had.
She then walked me to the boss of my boss (in retrospect, the bureaucracy of it all was quite funny). He is a very understanding man, American and a converted Muslim. Despite the amount of craziness he encounters in the mission he is able to remain calm and understanding. It drove my boss crazy I’m sure.
I sat and first apologized that I was too upset to be diplomatic and for the next five minutes let out a monologue of all that I had endured with my boss. I’m leaving a lot of the details out, but it was complete abuse of authority and, as I reflect, I realize it was close to harassment in many aspects. At one point he sat rubbing his temples saying he did not know how to professionally respond. What was my response? “Well that’s all understandable, but I just thought it best to let you know why I have packed my bags and am ready to depart Kabul tomorrow morning.”
He then called in a colleague of his, they documented what had occurred and it was agreed that my boss was to be reprimanded harshly. I also added in this meeting the fact that I was being harassed into going to the South of Afghanistan, a place I was not willing to go as a UN Volunteer, but there was a volunteer who did. It was agreed that the solution to this was simple—and I would be swapped with the volunteer who wanted to go to Kandahar.
And so, after being told my duty station would be Mazar-Gardez-Kabul-Herat-Kandahar…I was deployed to Bamyan. The place from the beginning I was to go to. As bad as my boss was to me, I kind of feel impervious to office politics now. I mean, I don’t think it gets much worse than your boss doing a smear campaign on you and attempting to send you into the line of fire because they are on some power trip or in some state of mania. If it does, let me know.
I arrived in Bamyan in September and remained until December. Unfortunately for my colleague sent to Kandahar, she arrived and was then evacuated out of the country five days later due to a horrific Taliban attack that resulted in a large number or UN staff to be relocated outside the country.
Recently I began an internship with another UN agency, the UN Relief and Works Agency, in Beirut, Lebanon. Second day on the job I met the training officer who was asking me of my time in Afghanistan. She then asked me if I knew a Brazilian woman working in training there—I couldn’t help smiling when she gave a perfect description of my ex-boss. “Yes, she was my manager.” My colleague gave me that all too familiar look of people who had encountered my boss, “What’s wrong with her? She’s kind of crazy, isn’t she?”
Yes,she truly is.
