Tuesday Blues

In the morning I still didn't feel quite all right, so I took a Burana 600 to get me going. After breakfast It was time to go on patrol, first to the OCCP, then to meet the ANP training officer in the next building, and then to the district governor's security meeting. The latter had been cancelled, but the Operative Co-ordination Center, Provincial level, was fine (for a change). The chairman, an ANA colonel, has recently been showing signs of actually understanding what he's is supposed to be doing and at the same time has been able to produce some sentences that actually contain information that is relevant to the subject at hand. (Yes, it's that bad.) After all the business of the meeting was done, I handed him a big map of Samangan province, that he had requested yesterday. It was in scale 1:100000 and about two metres wide - a high quality Swedish map, printed in July 2009, unrestricted, releasable to ANSF (Afghan National Security Forces). The reaction of all the locals present was remarkable. They all crowded around the map on the table, wanted to touch it, show where they had been etc. while talking loudly. This went on for several minutes. Me and my colleagues looked at each other and smiled. K was taking pictures.


Here the map is still in my possession.

On our way back we saw something in the street that had really been worth to take a snapshot of, because it's hard to believe without the picture. A man was coming towards us, pushing a wheelbarrow. In the wheelbarrow was a freshly butchered black goat - its thoat was cut and stomach opened and its bloody head was hanging over the side of the wheelbarrow. Nothing extraordinary about that. But with the goat, a baby of perhaps two years of age was travelling in the wheelbarrow, sitting straight in a puddle of blood. The man smiled at us as they passed Lion.

The Americans are here again and it's getting a bit crowded. The welfare room has suddenly become so popular, that the Swedish soldiers don't get to play computer games between dinner and the briefing like they usually do. Wathing movies has right of way over playing computer games, because more people can take part in watching movies. Well, I suppose as long as our problems are of that calibre we're doing quite well.

Someone else is also writing a blog from here, or CNL to be precise. K and C have been trying to figure out who the writer is and have narrowed down the list of possible writers to four persons. I don't agree with everything that the blog says, nor do I like the style very much. But then again he or she would probably say the same thing about this blog. I wonder if there are any more blogs from Finns currently serving here?