30 Days Through Afghanistan

PRT Herat | Day 29 - Afghanistan is such a huge topic across the world, it's easy to forget the individual stories here. So many people are grouped together and called Romanians, Croatians, Dutch or Americans, I tend to forget sometimes there are individual people here with their own individual stories and beliefs. Nazifa's story was particularly touching. To me, these stories highlight not only the caring nature of humanity, but the caring nature of nations. Visa processes are very difficult, I know because I'm trying to navigate the maze right now with my wife. So for a nation like Italy to allow Nazifa in for the medical treatment symbolizes something greater, something I believe hearkens to the soul of nations. Somehow during my thoughts, I remembered talking with the Lithuanians at PRT Chagcharan. They told me how they asked their country to knit 500 caps for them to hand out to Afghan children during the winter. They were very proud to say their country not only knit 500, but knit 5,000 caps. I remembered how proud they were to serve in Afghanistan and help bring peace to a country with a population eight times larger than their own.

PRT Herat | Day 26 — Thank you Chris. Your comment and questions to my "Hallelujah in Herat" blog led me on a very interesting journey. To catch everyone up, he basically asked "Why is Herat so nice," and I went out and found some answers. When I woke up this morning, I was thinking about writing about provincial reconstruction teams and what the Italians are doing here. Then I read his comments and decided to do a little Herat investigation. When I heared the answers, my ideas for a blog changed. We went into the city and saw some construction projects and when we got back we ran to get some coffee. I walked into the shop and the shopkeeper is a 23-year-old Afghan from Herat. He speaks English well enough that I asked him Chris’s questions. He told me Herat is so nice because half the people left when the Taliban took over. They moved to Iran and learned how nice life could be and when they returned, brought those dreams with them. He told me one million people used to live here before the Taliban, 500,000 left, and since the Taliban have been run out of town, the population has exploded to more than two million. I did a little fact checking with this, and the population may be quite a bit lower than his number.

PRT Herat | Day 27 — We’re back! We had some problems with internet, which prevented us from uploading on time. I’m really hoping Day 26 doesn’t get lost in the stack, because I’m hoping it spurs some interesting conversation. I can’t stop thinking about the "Lion of Herat" everywhere I go. So today, Ken and I jumped in an Italian provincial reconstruction team convoy and watched as they distributed food and medical supplies to a local Kuchi tribe. The Kuchi tribe is a nomadic tribe so we anticipated a great drive out to the middle of nowhere where we would see vast fields of tents and Sheppard’s. We were wrong and we learned something new. The nomadic Kuchi tribe also has some permanent homes about 15 minutes from here. They live there for a little while before migrating onto other areas. The only problem with today was the complete lack of an interpreter. It’s a pretty strange experience to be embedded with Italians, where only a handful speaks English, while visiting Afghans who don’t speak any English. We walked around with a desire to talk to any of them, but we were unsuccessful. It was still better than Kabul!

PRT Herat | Day 28 — I love my father and the embroiled conversations that erupt between us sometimes. I cherish the moments where we disagree and we go back and forth on various facts and ideals. I haven’t always listened to him, but over the years I’ve learned that we may not always agree, but his opinions are always based on some founding principle. Since being out in the field with Ken, I haven’t had many opportunities to talk with my father. The time we did get to chat he told me how he had to disconnect himself from this project because he felt as though he was getting too involved. I assured him I wanted him to participate as much as possible in this project, but to also learn from what we are learning out here and not to get stuck in the mud. I’ll admit, the one trait that flows through all Gallahans, is being stubborn. We’ve mastered it.

FOB Shank | Day 34 -- There's a very important portion of the Afghanistan story that I feel we haven't told successfully. It's the story of the troops living in holes next to the Afghan National Security Forces while fighting to secure this country.I look back on 30 Days, and the only time we spent with them was at Strong Point Khyber. It was a great day, a great story with great people helping us to tell it, but I feel like we should have done more. Yes, I feel mass media sensationalizes the amount of fighting going on. Yes, I do feel the global view of Afghanistan is skewed towards this place being 100 percent hell hole when it isn't. But there is a lot of fighting going on here and Ken and I did everything we could to get out there to cover the story. Produced by Tech Sgt. Raimondi.