Wednesday was a great day...non-explosive too!

First I want to talk about an email I received. The email itself is of no consequence, but it was carrying a very interesting quote.  

"If I had a pencil since the age of seven instead of a weapon,  my life would be much different"
     -- Col, Haji Toor Jan 

This is what Col Haji Toor Jan told a Private in the Army when she was working a backpack program for the children of Afghanistan.


For me personally, this quote made me reevaluate who the Afghan people are.  How do we expect them to just integrate into a normal society with a background like that.  They've had a hard life I wouldn't wish on anyone.  It's still hard and dangerous today. They wash clothes by hand at the river with bar soap as well as take their bath...not all do this, but the majority are this poor. They do not have continuous power for refrigeration or TV and have to use a generator to produce it when they want it, which means they must buy fuel.  They are always concerned about attacks from the Taliban; hopefully they are not afraid we'll attack them, but we have had accidents on occasion.

This morning for our 5:30am run it was beautiful.

Here I am with my running partner...I'm wearing their PT gear to spur interest.  I want them to be proud of their uniform and the fact that they're in the Afghan Nat'l Army.

Today I met with the ANA Colonel for the logistics depot. Now that the fence is nearly finished, we needed to see what was in the containers.  Of course, none of my team thought he'd let us into them because he was hiding private stashes of weapons or something he wasn't supposed to have.  I did think we'd find some strange things and was just hoping not to find any bodies or anything too crazy.  The Colonel and I discussed it and he danced around the issue for a while. He wanted to do some of the containers and not all of them, because he said he didn't own all of them. I asked him to call the people that owned them and tell them that we needed them to come over and open the containers so we could see what was in them or we'd cut the locks off.  He made the calls and to my surprise, we had guys showing up in 5 minutes.  He was also telling me that one of his guys that had the keys was on vacation and we'd have to wait to open those containers for a couple weeks...I said I have bolt cutters and replacement locks...so he thought about it.  While he was thinking, I told the Colonel that we do them all today and all at once or we don't do them at all...don't waste my time or yours with a partial look.  He thought it would take forever, but we did all 72 containers in 2 hours and only had to cut 9 locks...only when they said they couldn't find the key.


The strangest thing I found were boxes of live mortars and Rocket-propelled-grenades (RPG). I didn't expect to find them in these containers.  Really don't like finding these things.  Look at how worn they are...what kind of condition are they in?  Looks like someone used them for a hammer.

At least these are new and stored safely in a box. Still not touching them.

82mm mortars like the one we found yesterday.  Didn't want to open the box, but they were full.

There were plenty of them too!

Some old AK-47 and in the next box in the back, some other old weapons.

More old Russian weapons.

Again, more old Russian weapons.

Bayonets for the Russian weapons.

Here was a special one I picked out just for you all to see.  I couldn't pass up a pic of this jingled AK-47.

Here is some fun waiting to happen!!! RPG launchers in brand new condition!

Okay, that's all for today. Now here are the old pics from the 1960s.

Today we visited the Ammo Depot

Thankfully, another quiet night...no sirens.

Today went well. Good conversations with my Afghan Colonel along with a tour of the ammo supply point.

Here are some guys catching shade under a truck...pretty common to see, since it's 104F today.

Here is what some of the soldiers live in. We will work on this.

Here's a shipment of RPGs. It'd be great to fire one these.

This is a guy doing de-mining operations. Not really a team type job, if you know what I mean. There is no I in team, but there is a me.

Here's what they call the museum. It's old RPGs, grenades and other explosives. It's all live and kept in a hot container. Not sure how stable it is, but I'm not hanging out there. I took a pic and split!

It's lunch time and the soldiers are enjoying a meal together.  They're very social.

This is just a cool pic of some helicopters landing.

Here's the update on the new kitchen.  It's operational, but still needs a roof. They're happy with it, but will be happier when we block the sun. We're working on it.