My last two weeks have been packed with a seamless string of missions. As ever, many many things to accomplish and never enough time to accomplish them. I will write more later. But for now, a few more albums:
People
To me, the most striking aspects of this part of Afghanistan are its inhabitants
Abode
In many (too many!) places it is possible to find consummate poverty. In others, you can find perfect indigenous architecture
Landscape
For my parents who enjoy terraces
Happy Mother's Day to the best mom in the world!
This crowd surrounded my team today while we were on survey detail. They are so happy because I told them the score of the last VT vs UVA football game. News is slow to reach these parts, so they had not heard the good news and had been on pins-and-needles waiting to hear since last Thanksgiving. Good thing I was able give them all peace of mind. (the little girl in the font left is clearly a wahoo fan…don’t worry, she will grow out of it)
So there is this Himalayan mulberry tree hanging just over the threshold to my office here on the dear ol’ FOB. Up until today, I had not given the tree much thought. I would say to myself: “gosh its nice there is a tree here”, and that was about the extent of my mulberry tree consideration. In fact, it took me a good three weeks just to figure out that it is in fact a mulberry tree, as I had never knowingly seen one before. I thought that it was mulberry bush not mulberry tree. But there is no such thing.
Also up until today, the wind had not blown more than 2 or 3 kilometers per hour. However, this evening, from out of no where, the wind found itself and began asserting itself with authority. In fact, for some unfortunate reason, the wind chose to kick in at exactly the moment that I was walking up to the threshold to my office.
The nexus of myself, suddenly authoritative wind, heavy over-ripe mulberries, and the steps to my office is not a pretty thing. To keep it short: I lost, the mulberries won, and the wind split hit-and-run style.
Seems silly that the most danger I have seen since coming here, has come from a mulberry tree. I wonder if they award medals to survivors of mulberry attacks (?).
dont forget to look at the pics that Rheagan posted in the gallery
And just like that; its already May. Just 11 months to go (hopefully just 11…). So what have I been up to? Here are some of the safe-to-publish highlights:
The first few days since writing I was in hold-on-and-don’t-get-sick-like-every-body-else mode. Yes, it turns out that the milky cucumber drink was a bad idea after all. So much for my macho post…lol. I didn’t get nailed like a bunch of other folks on my team, but it was a near thing. I keep a stash of Imodium on me at all times when I am outside of the wire. Thank God for giving us Imodium! I was three hours from the Forward Operating Base when I first felt a challenge from my digestive machinery. Nothing bad happened, but I sure felt like punk for a while…ultimately ending up on Cipro for a few days.
I was able to make it to some very interesting places in the last couple of weeks and even spent a few nights forward of my forward location. The first night I was away was a cloudless night and the moon was almost fully waned. It was possible to see the stars behind the stars, from horizon to horizon, and in perfect quiet. Observing the sky in this way is something that I had not experienced since I was very small. It made me feel as though I had been in cities for too long. It made me feel like I belonged in the quiet.
I am designing again. Not just the sissy half doodles that I have been lazily pushing around the sketch book for the last several years, but real honest Architecture. The project I am working on has a ridiculous amount of constraints, but I feel that I have my arms around the effort. The last few days of the design work have been great! I even got that super jittery feeling that happens when you feel that you have landed a strong idea. It’s one of the best feelings in the world.
The coolest thing that has happened is that I figured out how to get yahoo messenger working from this tragically slow internet connection: I have been able to see Rheagan, Lucas and Aurora from the far side of the world. And they have been able to see me. Lucas and I make copy cat faces at each other. Rhora shows off by drooling on the web camera, and Rheagan just laughs (this is the best feeling in the world). I may survive this trip after all.
