Relocation

The vehicle from the Agricultural Department came in the morning to refuel, and set of for Mazar-e Sharif to pick up the gentlemen from Gadister. He said that they would be back at 1300, which I took as an optimistic estimation. So, I was surprised to see the vehicle and with 5 Afghan gentlemen at our gate at 1430. We drove off to the land area that we had measured just a couple of days earlier. The men listened patiently when I explained the borders of the area that we were planning to use. Then they looked at their hand-drawn maps and consulted their hand-written catalogues for about 30 minutes in the roasting heat of the desert. The final verdict was that the land that we were interested in is privately owned. It's owner is currently in Pakistan, and cannot be contacted. His brothers are in Iran.

I then asked the delegation wheter they were able to point out any land area that would meet our demands which is in public ownership. That they could, and we drove off. The new location was not nearly as good as the old one, but at this point I was willing to try it, as this was the first location in which the local authorities seemed to know (and agree upon) the owner of the land. Me and the second in command walked the perimeter of the area with a GPS reciever, and recorded the grids. No need to go to the gym tonight, then. We sent the grids to the safe house and there the signals officer T immediately started preparing a sketch of the area on the computer. By the time the patrol had returned to the safe house he had already printed copies of maps with the borders of the area. We sat down to sign the declaration of land ownership, but the chief of the Agricultural Department would not sign it and told us to call him in the morning.

The people from Khwaja Sang Bur village came to take a look at what we had for them: A water tank, 500 metres of water pipe, two troughs for the animals, and accessories. They said that they would come back for the material with a truck tomorrow afternoon. They were seemingly very happy. But before they left, one of the men could not hold his tongue, and burst out saying: "You must help us more in the future!"