Life on the frontier

I have said all along that, here in Afghanistan, we are living in the days of the Old West, hence the nickname of our team—High Plains Drifters—and the name of my blog. The last few days, here in the province, prove that fact.

I continue to live at our forward base, where it is quieter than at headquarters, but still somewhat difficult to get much accomplished. We have one computer for business, that those of us up here share, and one phone. We attend meetings where everything is spoken in French but, thankfully, the PowerPoint slides are in English. And we attempt to do laundry in little machines that take two hours for a complete wash-dry cycle.

The worst thing? Communication home. I can e-mail but I had gotten very used to talking to my family daily and, sometimes, even twice a day. Now, I can only use Skype or buy phone credits, but I didn't bring my credit card, so that's impossible right now. Technology is conspiring against me. I can't get Skype to send my password—it seems I asked twice in 24 hours and thus violated some security system. How? I don't know. I never got a password reset, so have no clue.

The benefit? There is clean air, although it's still very dusty, and a very accommodating French medical team. While I walked around yesterday looking at our future accommodations, my medic had the chance to help with their daily Afghan sick call. And tomorrow, if all goes well, we will work together on some additional projects.

That is all from here. I return soon to headquarters where there will be decent facilities and a reliable way to phone home, but my ability to post will again decline. Such is the odd juxtaposition between these two places.