I haven’t written since I left Dubai.  Not for lack of things to say; more for a lack of time.  That and, well, day to day life here isn’t anything I can photograph.  Which is fine since the ‘Ville changed their wireless rules and we can’t upload photos or stream video anymore.  (how’s that for a sentence fragment?) 

So it’s Feb 25 and I’m nearing the end of my second month here in Afghanistan.  Haven’t hiked recently, no trips to fancy malls to tell you about and 92.4 percent of my day involves things I can’t talk about.

What to write, what to write… oh, yes.  I discovered something about Fridays.  If I show up at 8 a.m. when everyone else isn’t in the office, it’s blissfully quiet.  Even the few people who showed up this morning about 10:00 seemed to respect the serenity. 

I’d forgotten what it was like to work in a calm, quiet environment.  Much of the day there are two televisions playing (about 15 feet from my desk.) One is usually BBC, CNN or Al Jazeera and the other is local broadcasting. 

For those of you who think American soap operas are bad I challenge you to endure anything created in Bollywood. In addition to the TVs there are many people in one large room with endless cross conversations, a Sergeant who plays the guitar at his desk (which I enjoy, good thing too; he sits next to me) a few Me Monsters who have to join and subsequently one-up every conversation, numerous phone lines and a few sets of desk top speakers.  Somehow it all makes sense and a tremendous amount of work gets accomplished but my oh my the noise.

So this morning I took advantage of the quiet, brewed a wicked strong cup (ok, I brewed a pot) of Café Bustelo (thanks, Jim and Tammy) caught up on personal correspondence and finished a project.

If the e-mail weather reports are correct, I’m having better weather here in Kabul than my friends on both Coasts.  We had a bit of snow a few weeks ago and I took advantage of the chance to break out my galoshes.  They were, well, um, let’s just say no one saw that coming.  Here’s a shot of me tromping back from the gym. 

That's right, I brought galoshes to Afghanistan. This whole 'blog' thing has forced me to be in FRONT of the camera more than usual.

<insert a monologue about what we DO here> 

Wednesday afternoon chaos seemed to break out in our work space as one of the female Soldiers ran down the hall screaming for the Doc.  Once things calmed down it was revealed one of the Soldiers fainted.  It seems he was reviewing a video from a few years back (open source though I won’t elaborate or include the link) and he actually passed out as a result of the horrific images.

While some of the other guys ribbed him for being ‘weak’ it struck me differently.  I’m glad, in today’s environment, with all they’ve been exposed to before they’re 21, these men and women still have a semblance of compassion.  If the video hadn’t impacted him, I might have been concerned.

Speaking of video, there was an attack in J’bad recently.  The bad guys (I intentionally left the name out of the blog; prefer I don’t show up when someone Googles that) dressed as good guys and massacred people (who happened to be uniformed service members of a local variety) in a bank while they were there to collect their paycheck.  Death toll was 40+ and 70 or so more people were injured. 

The thing that struck me, yet again, was the ambivalence.  Perhaps that’s the wrong word, and maybe apathy doesn’t apply either, but the shooting lasted a long time and no one stopped it.  People walked past him, and ran past him, but no one ran AT him. It was preplaced IEDs that finally ended the shooting.  I still don’t understand

I spoke to a Soldier last night who was reviewing the footage. I overheard a coworker chastise her for having an emotional response to the imagery. He told her to “not take it personally and not be a girl.” I reminded her if she wasn’t impacted by the imagery something was wrong. I implored her not to be ashamed of her response but to let the emotion fuel her in her tasks so she might make a difference in this grand scheme of things.

And so.  Sorry for the gloomy post.  Afghanistan is, after all, at war.

It isn’t all bad though, and I feel fortunate to be here contributing in my own small way.

I think I mentioned the Ghurkas who stand post at our gate. They're awesome. Always motivated even when it's 10 at night and snowing. "Namaste, Ma'am." I give them treats from my care packages. Yes, Duarte, I'm wearing a Freebirds t-shirt.

Yesterday was great, by the way.  Thanks for that.

Proverbs 1:33

~jh~