Day 7

Must have Dari phrase for this Coloradoan...tashwish nako. More on that later.

Today we helped with laying foundation on a house in the Barek Aub village. The interesting piece of this project was our goal to have the Afghans teach us their methods for building them. They have a method that has been used since dirt was invented and we wanted more insight. We helped haul rock mostly and it was great to get our hands a bit dirty. I also enjoyed the rounds of Apache helicopters dropping test bombs on the hillside just a mile away. That'll perk you right up any day.

We took time afterwards to sit with the elders of the village to discuss their current struggles and to brainstorm ideas for development. As you might recall from my post in February, we hope to transition our supported communities out of relief mode and into development mode. This is both a long process and also very complex. Generating productive economies in a village so isolated and without infrastructure takes a ton of planning and cooperation. And while the residents of the village are incredibly thankful, we honestly are sensing some frustration begin to take root. We desperately want to begin to develop more ideas which are sustainable for the community to thrive.

We also toured the west end of the village to investigate the massive failure in the water diversion project led by a different organization which resulted in two homes washed away in this year's end of drought and very wet winter/spring. Repairing this issue is going to require significant capital and expert planning and engineering.

The weather today was a lot like Colorado, sunny, calm and 60 degrees all morning and 40 mph winds and a dust storm in the afternoon. Will be cleaning Afghanistan sand from my ears and nose for probably the next two days. Tashwish Nako...no worries.