Afghan Village Trip

I made my first "real" trip info Afghanistan today and it was really incredible. The army does all sorts of public works projects to help out local villages etc. They were doing one for the village of Tangi Kalay which is about 6 miles from us here at Blackhorse. They asked if we wanted to tag along because we had been asking about going to a school. We were thrilled to be able to go, because honestly, its probably the most rewarding thing we will do here.

The village itself is pretty stardard. All dirt walls and inside are decent little small houses. We actually met the village elder in a small courtyard that the previous army units had built them. Its basically a community center. Some of the pictures (located at my picasa page, or just click the link on the word pictures)I have are from the courtyard and a couple are from one of the little rooms they have setup inside as a classroom for the girls to learn English. We had tea (of course) with them and some cookies and then we were off. The army was building a power facility for a village across the street, different name, but the elders knew each other. All of my other pictures are from that other village. Much poorer, but honestly, the house we went into for this elder wasnt too bad. They scoped out the spot to build while we played around with the kids. What a great experience that was. They are incredible. The real little ones especially the girls are just adorable. The girls are SERIOUSLY camera shy....as soon as one comes out, they bolt. I was only able to get pictures of them from a distance. They are all pretty polite, but definately curious. They want to come up and touch you and are very curious about our uniforms and things hanging from them. They want ANYTHING you will give them. They LOVE, LOVE, pens....and water bottles whether they have water in them or not. We know better for next time to bring a whole bunch of water bottles....I guess even if they arent full they make toys out of them. The elders were extremely hospitable and sat us down a couple different times to feed us watermelon and some other melon, and give us tea. It was also very interesting to see the kids scatter when he yelled. They would start crowding us, and he would tell them to back up and they would take off. The concept of respect for the elder is alive and well in Afghanistan. It was fun to be out with them, as they smiled the entire time...but it was also sorta sad to see so many of them with nothing. Again, the girls get the short end of the stick because anything you give them, a bigger boy will go take it from her. Not much we can do about that. Either way, it was just incredible to be in a real village with real Afghans and feel like you can make a difference.

Don't get me wrong, I won't be spending all of my free time there....we still were out in the open and I'm not a huge fan of being in harms way for hours at a time, but for the time we were there it was very enjoyable.

I know many of you have expressed an interest in sending school supplies etc. and the good news is that now we have an outlet for all of it, and I can tell you from first hand experience that it will go to very good use.

Gary