Afghanistan

Getting around in Afghanistan is never easy.
This second trip involved travelling with the Army – so lots of carrying and loading stuff yourself, along with not being told very much about the ‘when’, ‘why’, and ‘how’. And all with the added joy of wearing body armour and helmet.

So it was on a C.130 transport plane from Kabul down south to Camp Bastion – borrowed from the Americans? – then after 36 hours travelling and a couple of hours sleep, the white-knuckle ride to Lashkar Gah by helicopter.

Helicopters are nervous animals, especially when they are on the ground – so they tend to land and take off as quickly as possible – giving the ground crews endless possibilities for the torture of the unfortunate passengers – normally shattered looking squaddies carrying impossible loads. The trouble is we had to join in.

So “Right everyone – out to the landing site, with all your kit, at the double”
“Sorry – wrong chopper – everyone back into cover again”
“Oops sorry, it was the right one after all. Back again, everyone”.
And all in that damn body armour, and mid-day heat.
Still, at least when you fly, you really fly.

Trying to avoid the baddies of the region, the pilot flies as fast as he can, whizzing over fields and houses as low as possible while the gunners search anxiously for signs of attack from the ground.

Sitting right at the rear, I watch the tail-gunner leaning far out of the open ramp, nervously swinging the gun from side to side. We are low enough to see women milking their cows, and sheep grazing in the orchards, while children load firewood on a donkey. They look up and wave at us as we zoom overhead. Yet, these are the bad-lands where British troops are fighting and dying, trying to push back the Taleban and give the local people confidence that they will not be abandoned.
And that’s why SPANA is here – trying to help the people and their animals.
There isn’t one single Afghan Vet in the Province.



SECOND DAY.

The Army’s certainly changed since my day. The veterinary equipment we’d despatched from John Street just over a week before, had actually arrived! Unbroken, undamaged, un-pilfered – whatever has happened?

So, we were able to make a start with our training course for the veterinary technicians working for the Ministry of Agriculture in their deeply lovely building in down-town Lashkar Gah (next to the Governor’s Residence, so in a slightly tricky area).

These were all originally built by the Russians when they were there – and there’s been no maintenance or care since. Of course there are the normal problems – no electricity or lavatories, bomb scares – but hey! this is no time to be picky!
The Director is there to open the course – and laughs uproariously at the photos I’d brought of our previous meeting. I thought my body armour and helmet looked rather fine, actually. He obviously hadn’t seen Gordon Brown’s.

Then as the eight ‘trainees’ got involved in the course – listening avidly to the wonders of sheep parasites, and malpresentations in lambing – we were for the first time able to get a little closer to ordinary Afghan people. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they have a strong sense of humour – often of the ‘gallows’ kind – unsurprising considering the challenges, violence and naked fear they face on a daily basis. Without humour I expect one would go mad.



Though it’s not always easy to see the funny side. One morning , I was half-way through a dramatic portrayal of how to cope with a ewe with a lamb’s head presenting (sticking out) and feet back, when anxious sentries burst in to terminate the lesson. We were being measured up by suicide bombers, so it was considered important that we should abandon everything and get out. Not half. Sounds almost as dangerous as teaching in some inner city sink schools.

Poor Keith was unprepared to be asked how a shepherd from Wales could be so fat. Much sniggering – there was probably some deeply rude sexual innuendo. I escaped merely because of my great age and grey hair. Anyone over fifty is treated with real respect. I must remember to point that out to my children.

Anyway – they could all have a laugh at our attempts to write a Farmers’ Husbandry Booklet in Pashtun – everyone thinks every translation is written by some foreigner in Wolverhampton. And the drawings are of Afghan sheep and shepherds! Actually they seemed to quite like it. They’d never owned a real book before.