Wrong Way to Give

Today our main focus was on getting the new water purification system up and running. All at the PO helped T the mechanic with the installation of tanks, pipes, pumps and wires. The OCCP mentoring team were out on patrol two times. In the afternoon there was a delegation of five gentlemen at our gate. They were from the village that we visited yesterday, Khvaja Sang Bur. They said that they were the senior representatives of that village (only one of them looked familiar from yesterday), and that if we are ever going to give anything to the village, we should give it to them and they would distribute whatever we were giving to those people who need it most. One of them was not from the village, but from a construction material company that "handles construction material business in that village". If we were ever to build anything in that village, we should call him first. I said to the interpreter that this smells really badly like corruption and that these people should go to hell - but told him not to interpret that. Instead I cordially acknowledged their message and received their phone numbers, only to throw them away once I was inside the gate.

In the evening MOT D and MOT E came in from their patrol. They had seen many snakes and spiders. In one area there had been so much grasshoppers that the ground was covered with them. Their cars had left thick tracks of squashed grasshoppers behind them!