sgtdub

15 December 2006, Building Afghanistan. I've noticed that when looking through my archive, that I give the date first and then start typing what's on my mind. There are a couple of posts that I have done that I consider good work. However, since I don't title my posts, it could make it difficult to find it again. So from now on, for me, and for anyone else out there, I am going to do the date followed by a very short title, then I will start typing whatever is on my mind. Today, it's mostly sawdust.

As I mentioned, today I worked with 4 Afghanistan National Police Officers in building two walls with doors for the connexes we donated to them to be used as sub-stations within the district we reside in.

I was fortunate in the fact that two of the officers spoke some English and this helped to speed the process up some what. CPL L took two of them and they got some pencils and paper pads gathered for a future mission coming up to give to the children at a school. We have been very active in our community in building clinics and schools, putting together medical clinics to provide basic medical care for the villagers and donating literally tons of goods shipped from home. There are times it doesn't seem like enough, but it's our little piece of Kabul and we are doing what we can.

While CPL L was doing that, I had the other two with me and we started building the second wall based on the dimensions of the first one. With a couple of hours we had two walls and then started on the doors for both. As I mentioned out there in the yard and as Mrs. Dub can attest, I am handy around the house, but doors and windows are not my forte. Within an hour, I was proving myself right. I had to disassemble the first door twice because I was making it too big for the opening. We broke for lunch and treated the ANP officers to the DFAC. I hope it was a treat for them, I stayed with the corn dogs and onion rings. After lunch, we finished the doors and then took a convoy down to Massoud Circle where one of the connexes was located. Within 30 minutes it was put in place and looked ok. Our plan is to go back and using the spray foam insulation seal the cracks and openings that need it. It was getting close to being dark out so we stopped by the second sub-station and made some measurements and then headed back to camp.

Tomorrow I will hopefully post the rest of the pictures showing us putting them in place. All in all, a fun day,(if LTC Y is reading this, I wasn't having fun, it was hard work, really hard work). Be safe and have a good day.