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10/06/2003: "Kandahar Chronicles #24 - 06/10/2003"

The walls are closing in. Movements have been temporarily restricted to Kandahar city. National staff have been given the option of travelling to the IDP camp and all but two continue to do so. One of the staff has resigned as there was no job post we could give him at the base. He explained that his father was killed by gunmen while working for an NGO. He is now the only man in his family with a job and is responsible for providing for his extended family. It is better to be alive and without work for a short while than to risk a similar fate. The rest of the staff travel in a convoy of minivans and make frequent radio checks, few of them sleep en route.

We are now an international staff of three, myself, Bertein and Kathleen. Bertein has only five weeks left in her contract and can put up with the increased security. She has plans for a skiing holiday and a trip to the Caribbean when she gets back. Kathleen has had the rug pulled out from under her, as most of her work was carried out in the camp, and is considering a holiday back home in Ancaster, Ontario. Mattias, our Project Coordinator, is passing through the bedlam of Bombay on his way to a well earned break on the beaches of Goa. His biggest decisions for the next two weeks are what factor sun cream to use and whether or not to risk a Vindaloo curry. I’m at least seven weeks away from a break but already images of diving the reefs of the Seychelles are manifesting themselves in my mind.

In the meantime, the compound already seems like a phone booth with the walls covered in mirrors. I know what a killer whale must feel like stuck in an aquarium, bouncing its calls off the cement pool. It’s only a matter of time until I’ll start acting like them. Somersaults and throwing water on any visitors that trespass through our gate. I’m lucky in the fact that there is always lots of work to do for a loggie. I’ve sorted the generator issue for a while at least and now I have to do further preparations for an additional two minivans coming our way. The office-computer-network fairy has failed to materialize again and the cable and tools still sit in a dusty pile in an upstairs office. Supply issues continue to trouble operations but an experienced Logistic Coordinator is now at the helm at HQ so things will smooth out.

So, from now till the white beaches of the Indian Ocean call, I have to try to keep a level head and keep cabin fever at arms reach. There are some good distractions at some of the other NGO compounds and I may even get around to building a gym I designed. Any distraction is welcome when living in a tense environment where sobering security updates flood our inbox and the town rumour mill has gone into Taliban fuelled overdrive. Sometimes the whole bloody mess makes me want to do nothing more than stay in and wind up the cats. Other times I see the troubles like Pacino saw the drug lords soldiers attacking his compound in the final scenes of Scarface. “Come and get me! Joo think you can take me, huh? F&#* joo mang!”
Here kitty, kitty.

Replies: 1 Comment

Due to your apparant similarities to a killer whale, I imagine your long awaited visit to the Indian Ocean is much appreciated and, by the sound of it, a little overdue. However, the inability of your apparantly sick computer fairy to pop along and help you majik the machines back into compliance should be no excuse for delaying any longer the fulfilment of a much overdue phonecall to certain scallywags of note in far off and ever changing lands. Hark, and take heed kitty, the drugged lords are comming uwrcbleacucb/..

scallywag said @ 10/09/2003 06:11 AM EST