Rain

Last night it rained for the first time since I've been in Afghanistan. And rain it did. The wind, thunder and lightening woke me up at 3am and kept me up all morning. After it stopped, I could not go back to sleep.

When we reported to work, we found out all the damage that occurred. There was pretty much a flash flood across the entire province. Lots of people dead. Lots of damage. Right now I'm working on a critical bridge that was washed out. Completely gone. It was made out of concrete and there was no water flowing underneath the bridge until this morning. Insane.

Ramadan

The election is over and hopefully there won't be a run off. :) Now we're in the season of Ramadan. It's a very spiritual time for Muslims and to be in a Muslim country during Ramadan is a neat experience. Afghans only eat and drink right before sunrise and after sunset. During the day, they fast from food and water. Construction continues, but the contractor will adjust the hours. You can tell the fasting takes a toll on them. I think the hardest part would be fasting from water, because it is over 100 degrees.

Independence Day

Today in Afghanistan is Independence Day. Not independence from the Taliban, the Russians or the mujaheddin. Independence from Britain. This day dates back to 1919, when the British finally left Afghanistan. Usually the Afghans will celebrate, but this year since it is so close to the elections, there is not much celebrating. Everyone is pretty tense about pre-election violence. The turnout, compared to 2004, is expected to be huge. I guess we will just have to wait and see what happens.

In other news, the weather has started to cool down a bit. Yesterday evening it was 92 degrees and it felt very comfortable. I'm going to go back to England and freeze my butt off!

Sitting Duck

On my latest mission I went a little picture crazy. We had quite an ambitious day planned. We were going to check up on four of our road projects, plus have a meeting with some village elders. We didn't accomplish everything we wanted to do, but we still got a lot done and validated an important project. We went to the district of Deh Bala, which is in the southern part of Nangarhar. It was so beautiful out there and I instantly thought that I wouldn't mind living here. The road project is doing well. Some pictures are below. These guys get paid $4 a day.

The Engineering team with one of our contractors.

This guy is building a wall and asked for some cement from the PRT.

Talking on the cell amongst the goats.

On our way to the second road project, one of our MRAPs got stuck in the soft mud. So we backed up a second MRAP to pull it out and the first MRAP only got more stuck and the secon MRAP became stuck. So we backed up a third MRAP and that got stuck too. We were stuck until the bulldozer from the construction site came and pulled out us out. By the time this happened, it was dark outside, and anyone who knows anything about Afghanistan knows you don't want to be outside when it's dark. The villagers where we got stuck were very friendly (one even helped us dig out the MRAP) and said they kicked the Taliban out. The police there said they've taken fire from the surrounding mountains. We were only 20km from the Pakistan border. It's a good story and our MRAPs were going to get stuck sooner or later. I'm just glad we didn't have to spend the night out there.
Our salvation!!