Pay the Cow, Man -- Substitute Education -- Insurgent Behavior

Scattered around the roadsides in the country hereabouts are signs posted on fences or stuck on front-yard posts or hung on unattended, homemade stalls advertising locally grown veg and, especially, free-range eggs. We get nearly all of our eggs this way and we buy most of our veg from a service that delivers a box of fresh, organic stuff every other Friday. The quality of both is a cut above what we find in the local groceries and at the commissary, and the price is right, too. Sometimes I have to research the odd-looking, dirt-encrusted tuber in order to discover what to make of it, but it usually pays off. Who knew celeriac made such a tasty mash? I chop it up with an equal amount of potatoes, then mash them up with some garlic and butter.

Egg stands are ubiquitous. A carton of six can be had for 1 pound, 20 pence. The cow sells its eggs for 1 pound (about $1.55). Payment is on the honor system. In this case, you deposit your money in the cow, which is really a bank. The Brits don't refrigerate their eggs, even in grocery stores. They just sit out there in the open until the stock is gone. We haven't encountered a bad egg, yet, though, knock on wood.

Ash Week, Epilogue

The Drover needed nearly a full week to decompress from his stint as substitute history teacher during the ordeal that became known as Ash Week. For those of you just joining us, ash from the Icelandic volcano with the unpronounceable name spewed into the sky and floated at high altitudes into European air space around about Thursday of Spring Break (two weeks ago today). For six days, airports were closed across the continent, including those in the UK, stranding thousands of travelers from Bangkok to Birmingham. Among those were hundreds of students and teachers from the Defense Department schools for military dependents.

Battalions of substitutes stepped in to fill the breach until the stranded could return, which in some cases took an entire week. The biggest challenge for the Drover was fashioning a lesson plan from the directions left by the absent teacher. The chapter under discussion covered the 1950s post-war domestic economy and social and cultural changes in the US, things like the GI Bill, Levittown and Elvis Presley.

The next biggest challenge was adopting some kind of tactic to keep control in the classroom. This sounds like a no-brainer until you find yourself facing 25 students, among them a handful of the least motivated and least academically capable in the school. It takes only one to really screw things up. With so many teachers and administration absent (including the principal) that week, it didn't pay to fob your problems off on someone else, like sending the offender to the front office. Often times, nobody was manning the front office to fall back on. So you sucked it up, and did your best.

The lesson plans came together with some overnight research and the presentations in class were generally successful. The discipline problem was kept in check until the final hour of the final class on the final day of the week, when things promptly came loose like a stand of cannonballs kicked loose on a rolling deck.

On one hand, the look in a student's face who is hanging on your every word like it's money is a pretty inspiring sight. I have a fraction of understanding now what motivates teachers. The same face that's experiencing frustration and disgust at the antics of a classmate who's interfering with the experience is the flip side of that coin. It becomes a personal mission for the Drover to shield one from the other. Unfortunately, it's often a losing battle. Ardor for teaching, I think, sometimes runs up on the rocks. The underlying mission in classrooms is behavior modification. It doesn't pay to run a high school history class like a graduate seminar. They're just not there yet.

Not a Routine Day in Gardez
 
A convoy out of FOB Gardez was targeted yesterday by mortar and small arms fire. No casualties -- killed or wounded -- were suffered. The convoy returned fire and the insurgents were driven off. The wife was not involved in the operation; such events are not routine, she assures me.

This represented a minor incident in a war zone. No one beyond those involved took note of it. No press account was filed. The big story is elsewhere, in Kandahar or Marja or Kabul. Unless, of course, you know somebody who was there, or who might have been, but for the accident of scheduling. In that case, you say thanks, or feel relieved.

Ash Monday: Makin' Hay While the Sun Shines

The setting sun, photographed Saturday from a front window here at home, attempted to burn its way through the gunk that volcano in Iceland continues to spew into the atmosphere. All aircraft here are grounded, even the fighters, tankers and cargo craft in and out of RAF Lakenheath and Mildenhall. Which, if you work on Lakenheath, especially, is a blessing. You get used to the flights of four roaring overhead, but never really.

Among the thousands stranded by the ash cloud in airports in Europe and at home in the U.S. are hundreds of teachers employed by the U.S. Defense Department to teach in its schools for dependents across Europe. They were caught by the flight ban away from their homes on Spring Break. And hooray for that. A battalion of subs was summoned to fill the breach this morning and looks like they'll be making hay for the remainder of the week, if not longer.

I pitched in for a math teacher during the day's first period. She's in Slovenia and heading home by train. She's due back Thursday. The remainder of the day I spent as a teacher of U.S. History. I don't know where that teacher went, but she can't return before Saturday. That's a full week of work for yours truly. Some of the kids were on a church trip to Poland on an aid project. They endured a 27-hour bus trip to get home in time for school first thing this morning. Some were too tired after the ordeal to make it to class. The principal is out, too, until Friday.

My one concern is that the volcano will continue boiling into May and disrupt my plans to fly to Sarajevo. More on that in another post.

Three Bugs Full

The weekend bug hunting was rewarding. This insolent specimen lives just down the street. I caught him just outside Bug Alley.

This layabout was just yards away. As you can see, the street is teeming with these animals.

Look carefully at this frame and test your powers of bugspottery. This was a scene from a country lane along a string of farms known as Padney, just south of Ely. Yeah, he's in there. Look closer.

Finally, this lunker was grazing outside Witnesham in Suffolk County about an hour east of here.


That's right, it's not a cat at all. It's a llama. So sue me.





All Quiet on the Eastern Front

Attacks in Kandahar and Kabul rocked the news recently, and I confess that hearing TV talking heads announce, "Breaking news from Afghanistan" twice in one week caused a momentary pause in the usual cardiac rhythm. But Gardez was quiet and the wife reported no sorties beyond the wire, as it were. So no news to report from that quarter.

See & Be Seen: Market Day in Gardez

Kelley delivered a trove of photographs from her day off the FOB Monday and into Gardez proper to visit the local market. The PRT has not been to the market in quite a while, she writes. Part of the mission involved in going there is to see and be seen by the locals. Her party was armed, of course, and she recounts seeing some folks she assumes were "bad guys," but the trip went without incident.

That's here along with her boss, Lt. Col. Douglass in the back and another member of the team on her right. This photo was taken by Dan Shakal, a freelance photographer embedded with PRT Paktya.

Kelley took photos of her own, including this one of a group of kids on the street. Notice the lad on the right wearing mascara again. She writes that the practice, which I mentioned in an earlier post, is meant to deter insects, something she learned since photographing a bunch of tribal kids in an earlier trip to the country.

Here are a group of young Afghan guys who have apparently never seen a blue-eyed, blond woman, namely the Air Force airman from Wisconsin, who accompanied the group to the market that day. American women in uniform are apparently still a novelty to the local population. Third guy from the left apparently doesn't get out much.

This photo was taken by Dan Shakal, as well. Notice the close adherence to hygienic practice by this local butcher.

Here's a merchant who deals in arms and accouterments. No doubt the three-day waiting period is not observed in this country.


Kelley took that photograph, and this one, of a blacksmith.

Here's a shot down a side street taken by Kelley, as well.







Here's a final photo.

Wearing Out Shoe Leather Along Hadrian's Wall

It was the first sunny spring weekend in all of England and therefore a good time to take a long walk. Apparently there's no better place to stretch your legs than the path along Hadrian's Wall about 4 1/2 hours north of here. Scores of people were out doing just that, and filling the campgrounds and pubs along the way.

The spot pictured above, judging by what you can find in documentary videos, books available at the visitor's center and hanging on the walls of local pubs, is the most photographed stretch of the entire wall. This is my attempt, with a little help from Photoshop Elements to correct for what was a very hazy Sunday.

Seventy-three miles long and as high as 15 feet in its day, the wall is still pretty impressive. Today, it's at most six feet high and about eight wide in some places. It snakes across lonesome country populated by various livestock species and still gives a lesson on defensive use of the terrain. Some stretches are reduced to nothing more than rock piles demarcating one pasture from another. Dressed stones are visible the countryside over in homes, churches, fences, whatever. Once the Romans decamped, the locals formed up salvage parties. But even 2,000 intervening years weren't enough to totally dismantle the thing.

The wall took less than 10 years to build, which staggers the imagination. Forget the wall itself, which traverses some pretty rough terrain -- across the top of steep crags and along ridge tops, dipping and climbing in and out of gaps in isolated country. At every mile were stone gateways 13-feet high inside stone towers, called milecastles, to permit access. Between each milecastle were two small watch towers, or turrets. On the north front of the wall is a ditch, at one time 12-feet deep, and behind the wall another ditch with an accompanying earth rampart, called the Vallum. A military road, route B6318 today, runs about a mile south of the wall and parallel to it. Don't forget the 16 Roman army camps, like Vindolanda and Housesteads, that served as garrisons for the auxiliary troops that manned the thing. When you consider all that, it's a pretty impressive engineering feat.

These are volunteers excavating Vindolanda, about a 1 1/2 miles south of the wall itself.

A path runs along the wall for most of its length. The stretch I visited in Northumberland County, between Housesteads and Cawfields, is one of the best preserved bits of the wall. It runs through pasture land, and encounters with sheep or dairy cows are common. It's lambing season and so pairs of lambs trotting along behind mom or asleep in the fields are a frequent sight. Many of the farmers in the area operate campground sites for RVs (called caravans hereabouts) and/or tent campers. The park where I stayed, Hadrian's Wall Campground, had electric hookups and other amenities, plus a cabin with a heated, wood-planked interior with showers and such. The place advertised a full English breakfast but when I arrived I discovered the practice was discontinued. Disappointing, that.

Hikers and walkers jostled along the trail, some in jeans and running shoes, some in tour groups duded up in leather hiking boots and pant-legs tucked into their socks. It's possible to actually backpack the length of the wall, staying at private campgrounds along the way; nonetheless, I counted only two or three pairs of those folks. Some parts of the wall cross Northumberland National Park. The Brit notion of a national park differs from the US version in that their parks encompass lots of private property, as well as public land, and it may be under cultivation or in pasture. The public has some access rights by agreement, but public access to private property here is a thing unlike the States. Public footpaths crisscross the entire nation and are pretty well posted, as well.

The landscape is sick with sweeping, postcard vistas. Any moron with a camera can make a masterpiece. The one handicap is the weather. Sunday the long view was hazy. Monday the air cleared but that was a travel day. The view above at left, taken Sunday, is a place called Crag Lough, looking westward. On the crag itself at the left side of the photo I found a trio of local guys scaling the cliff, about 300-feet high. They were training for an ascent of Mount Blanc in Switzerland. That's Stephan on belay and Andy climbing.

It didn't escape me that while I was playing tourist along an antique military frontier, quaffing boutique ales in roadside pubs to restore my vigor, Kelley was manning a real life military frontier for a different kind of empire, in terrain equally forbidding but much less welcoming. The more things change...

Bug Hunt! Episode 4: Tables Turned!

"Bug Hunt! The Tireless Quest to Digitally Capture Neighborhood Felines in Action," went on the road to Lough Farm, on the shores of Crag Lough. Hoofing across a particularly swampy section of the trail along Hadrian's Wall, the Drover was paying mind to where he placed his boots and failed to check the surrounding area for predators. This lapse was to prove his undoing, for nearby lurked a bug.

The animal moved swiftly, and in a flash was on me. Bringing up my camera arm to ward off the attack, I must have pressed the button by instinct and in so doing caught this image of the beast as it closed. Farm cats, the most terrible bugs of all.

Painted Afghan Babies: It's a Country Thing

The sun rose in clear skies for the third day in a row here, which so far in 2010 is some kind of record. The photo is actually the moon at about 5:15 a.m. from the bedroom window. The camera exposure makes the sky seem brighter than it appears to the naked eye.

The Drover prepares today for a weekend excursion to the north of England, Hadrian's Wall, specifically. The goal is to pitch a tent in a campground about a half mile from the wall and photograph the landscape for a couple of days, then meander home. Hopefully there will be photographs to post here come Monday or Tuesday. Stay tuned.

Toddlers in Mascara
 
As previously mentioned, Kelley is working in an area of Afghanistan inhabited by the Kuchi tribe, whose members are ethnically Pashtun. Unlike most other Pashtun, however, the Kuchi are nomads who until recently, at least, lived in the here and now, with little knowledge of events in the wider world, as this 2002 article from the Christian Science Monitor suggests. They are much more familiar now with Americans, judging from this 2008 blog post from a US military physician, who apparently worked on a PRT just as Kelley is, and who recounts his attendance at a Kuchi assembly.

Kelley at her last outing noticed that the Kuchi like to paint their children with cosmetics. She writes:

"I was pretty weirded out by how many children I saw with heavy makeup on at the village medical outreach the other day.

 "This one brood came in, led by a boy no older than 9 or so. He and his younger sister -- maybe 7 or so -- were the oldest of this group of six kids, and they had no parents with them. The older girl held the baby in the photo here. Four of them had the heavy makeup. I asked a translator about it later, and he said it's sort of a hillbilly thing. The 'country people and Kuchis' are the ones who tend to do that.

"This little girl's hair was dyed that crazy red, and she had the makeup on, too."

Here's redhead's baby brother.












That's Good Bug

This edition of "Bug Hunt! The Obsessive Quest to Photographic Every Stinking Feline on the Block" goes international! Gaze upon this orange tabby living in the compound at FOB Gardez.

Kelley relates that the animal has been dubbed "Morris." He is curious, demanding and has but one friend, Abdullah, the man who feeds him. Morris otherwise is not a friendly cat.

Closer to home, "Bug Hunt!" scored a couple of choice shots of an animal who lives down the street. She was captured as the Drover passed on a bike ride. The animal boldly trotted into the street and into a neighbor's shrubbery to do its dirty business. Unfortunately, its compromising position left the feline prey to the "Bug Hunt!" camera.

Behold.







In Other News...

Back in February Kelley passed through Manas, a base in Kyrgyzstan. The US lease on that facility is now in question, due to a revolution there that has ousted the unpopular president. The Washington Post reports it here. This another of those situations where we appear to appease the kind of people -- anti-democratic strongmen -- we're at odds with elsewhere.

'Til next time, keep the outhouse door secure.

Question Time: Real-Time Blogged

The House of Commons is holding Prime Minister's Question Time for the last time in this session of Parliament. If you haven't heard, Parliament has been dissolved and new elections called for May 6. Imagine that. The Brits have to endure less than a month of the campaign season that in the US goes on interminably.

Question Time is a give-and-take between the members of all three parties -- the ruling Labour Party, the Conservatives and the the minor party, the Liberal Democrats -- and the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.  The PM is basically grilled. But he gives as good as he gets. This may be Brown's last Question Time and is also a kind of stage on which he, Conservative's David Cameron and the Lib Dem's Nick Clegg may bark and strut a little as the campaign season begins. QT is usually marked by a kind of faint praise before the blow kind of remark, the kind that is sorely lacking in the US national legislature.

I'll write quickly a summary of what's happening as a kind of rough draft transcript, simply to give the flavor of the event. I'll leave out the "Mr. Speaker" with which every speaker begins, as by the rules of order, the question is directed to the speaker of the house, not the PM or his opposite directly.

It's noon. Gordon Brown has entered and taken his seat in the first row of benches on the Labour side.

Gordon Brown begins with a tribute to two servicemen killed this week in Afghanistan.

And to two firemen who died fighting a high-rise fire in Southhampton.

Labour softball: Will the minister guarantee not taking 6 billion pounds from the economy (referring to a controversial Labour proposal to raise the National Insurance tax, a kind of Social Security tax that funds public services. Conservatives say it will remove money from the economy at a time of recovery).

We can't cut our way to recovery, says Brown.

Cameron: Reiterates the tributes to servicemen. Remember all sacrifices, acknowledge our debt.

Last chance for this PM to show he's accountable for decisions he's made. Were troops sent to Helmand without helicopters and resources they needed?

Brown: Commanding officers always state they've been properly equipped for the job. I take full responsibility but I take the advice of our commanding officers.

Cameron: That answer sums up this PMship, takes no responsibility and blames everyone else!
CO of 3 Para says repeated requests for more choppers fell on deaf ears.

Presumably PM will tell us all these folks were just deceived.

Brown: Should recognize Chinooks and other choppers adapted for use in Afghanistan. 5 million pounds spent in Afghanistan on choppers each year.

Order! Gov't back benchers should calm down!

Cameron: In last 13 years he has robbed pension funds of billions of pounds. Will the PM admit robbing pension funds was the wrong decision for Britain.

Pointing and gesticulating. Heating up now. Here, here!

Brown: We've taken two million pensioners with a pension tax credit and given them dignity in retirement!

Cameron: That's sort of decisions we're going to rebut in the next election! More chatter. Lots more.

Right honorable members are shouting themselves hoarse. We must calm down.

Cameron: Is the PM telling us he knows more about job creation than business leaders?

Brown: Lists accomplishments -- bailouts of banks, small business, homeowners that Conservatives opposed. Talks up National Insurance tax hike, to benefit schools hospitals and schools.

Cameron: Wasting money and putting a tax on every job in country! National Insurance tax will stifle recovery.

So it goes....

Brown: Tory public policy puts public services at risk.

Cameron: Citing reports that Brown says biz leaders been decieved on National Insurance, Labour supporters then but probably Conservatives now. Tax on every business in country would wreck the recovery.

Brown: The same old Conservative party!

Order Order! Members must calm themselves.

Brown: ... More students in schools, more pensioners out of poverty, we have plans for the future, they have nothing, only a Labour government can do it!

Little of civility and polite swipes you sometimes hear.

Clegg: Adds sympathy and condolences.

He and he (Brown and Cameron) are trying to fool people that they're serious about political reform. Yet last week more proof this is not true. Cross party meeting on campaign funding. Why should anyone trust a single word they have to say about political reform.

Order, order! The house must calm down!

Clegg: The two parties are colluding together to block reform. Just like the way they came together to block our proposal to block lobbying. Look at them now Look at then now You failed! It's time to go!

Brown: Liberal and Labour agreed to reform, Conservatives pulled out on advice of Lord Ashcroft!

Another Labour softball on health care. Brown: A guarantee that every patient to see a doctor within 18 weeks. A guarantee to cancer patients to see a specialist in two weeks. The opposite party will not support it. People will see in whose hands the health service is safe.

Hammond (Conservative MP): Does the PM plan to spend the entire campaign visiting safe houses?

OK more selective now.

Brown: Every other country is saying we've got to confirm the recovery, only Conservatives would not (by removing the 6 billion pounds in the proposed National Insurance tax).

More on the helicopters. More helicopters, more helicopter hours in Afghanistan now.

Brown likes to bring up Ashcroft, who wrangled a tax exemption, presumably in return for funding the Conservatives.

Liverpool Independent asks for return to direct, not indirect taxation in order to redistribute wealth to poorest.

Whew! Looks like there's a "10-minute rule" motion, whatever that is, and the House is clearing out save a handful of members. Sorry I'm not familiar with this process. the time out apparently allows the House to (technically) hear a bill read by its sponsor.

You get the idea.

Good, Bad & Ugly: Disturbing Events in Military Affairs

Jim Wright is a cantankerous veteran who lives up in the Mat-Su, making fine wooden bowls in an awesome workshop while simultaneously meditating on the state of affairs worldwide. When he disgorges his opinion on his blog, Stonekettle Station, it's always a exercise in thought provocation.  Be forewarned, the man is former Navy, a fact discernible in his choice of words. His discourse on the case involving the Westboro Baptist Church and its members' protests at the funeral of a fallen Marine is not what you'd expect from a source such as he. I post it here because he says it better than I can, and he said it first.

Thought provoking falls short of the impact this video has had, or should have, on anyone who's seen it. Be forewarned, again, that it's not for the squeamish. This is the video shot by an Apache helicopter crew in Iraq in 2007 that shows them mowing down a crowd of suspected insurgents. Unfortunately a Reuters photographer and driver were on scene and killed. The photographer's camera, slung over his shoulder, was mistaken for a weapon and he was targeted specifically.

Commentary on this disclosure ranges from outrage to so what. I'd he interested in what Jim Wright has to say about it, in fact. In this corner, however, don't expect a judgment. As a former Marine (who never saw combat) and a former journalist (who never covered a war) and as a citizen, watching this thing play out raised a number of questions. First among them: What are the rules of engagement? The most troubling thing about this, for me, is the final minutes, in which the gunship targets a wounded man and then a van that pulls up and attempts to remove that man and other bodies from the scene.

What is really taking place here? Are we witnessing a simple bit of coldblooded warfare of the variety that's taken place nearly every day on behalf of Americans for the past nine years? Business as usual? Or is this an aberration? Should we expect someone to be held to account? Or offer our sympathy and attribute the collateral to the fog of war?

As a journalist, I'd want to know the before and afters, the rules guiding conduct and to hear from the parties involved before I put out a story. Unfortunately, lots of that information would not be made available without a long, protracted and expensive legal fight of the type newspapers and other media are not much inclined to fight these days. Wikileaks takes up that role. It bills itself as an advocacy organization first and a journalistic enterprise second, but at least it's up front with you.

It's puzzling, in a way. Monday night Sky TV over here premiered "The Pacific," the World War II-based drama about the Pacific Theater produced by the same bunch that brought us "Band of Brothers." Steven Spielberg, one of the series producers, of course also delivered "Saving Private Ryan" and "Schindler's List." All of these dramas hit the audience in the gut with raw, unvarnished depictions of combat and the Holocaust. They showed it just like it was, supposedly; they unlocked the box where the Greatest Generation kept all its silent suffering. This supposedly is a revelation, a peek behind the curtain that patriotism draws to obscure the fact that warfare is bloody business.

What's the reaction when we're suddenly confronted with the real thing? Are we as reverent, horrified, deliberative? Do we gone on about our busy day without a thought to the events that take place half a world away? Or do we fall to squabbling, name calling and legalistic parsing in order to either condemn or justify it according to our particular predilections. I'll bet that Apache crew thinks about that day often enough, but not in any way anyone else is doing today.

 

An Afghan Shura and a Night Ride Home

Happy Easter and good morning.

The weather in East Anglia is overcast and raw. The weatherman promised sunny skies but he lies. The best news so far today is an account from Kelley of her day yesterday attending a shura in a place called Jaji some distance from her post in Afghanistan. A shura is a council of chief men at which collective decisions are made for the community, generally speaking. Or, as in the way she describes here, the kind of forum where pleasantries are exchanged, pro forma.

Above is a picture of the event.

 Here's another.

The US group accompanied the deputy provincial governor, a stand-up guy and hard charger, on a tour of the area, the wife reports. Her boss, another commander and the civilian reps from the State Department and ag development team, among others, represented the US. The terrain was surprisingly like northern New Mexico, again, this time even more reminiscent of the Land of Enchantment than the territory around Gardez, she explains, right down to the aroma of pinon in the air. They could have been standing behind the Santa Fe Opera at Tesuque and taking in the view over the hills to the west.

At the shura, 11 local top men rose to give their prepared speeches, then in a ceremony afterward presented their important guests, including the Americans, with gifts, namely elaborate, ceremonial turbans of better quality than the usual daily wear for the men and what she described as a chador of like quality for the women. Here's a photo.

The entire assembly then retired to the dining area, where a banquet was served Afghan style. A plastic tablecloth was spread on the floor and the various dishes heaped onto it. Diners seated themselves on the floor around the plastic, served themselves and ate with their hands. No utensils were provided. "I wasn't really sure how to eat a thing of rice," she said, then watched as the Afghans simply grabbed a handful and balled it up loosely.

An Afghan man next to her grabbed two chunks of fatty meat and plonked them down in front of her with the admonition, "Eat! Eat!" Pretty appetizing.

Bad weather had descended and so their airlift away from the place was delayed until early in the morning. The Blackhawk that took them away cruised through darkness, not necessarily hugging the terrain but not flying high either. Sawtooth mountain peaks were silhouetted against the night sky and moonlight illuminated rivers below into luminescent ribbons.

The whole experience was "just about the coolest 24 hours I've ever had," she said by phone this morning. I expect photos soon.

Bug Hunt!

Welcome to another installment of "Bug Hunt! The Unyielding Quest to Photograph All the Neighborhood House Cats." Saturday's search yielded two animals, a nice take for an hour's work. A street another block from here I've dubbed Bug Alley because two or three of the animals live in the area. This one I found on the way through there on my way to the Saturday market. She was huddled in the corner of a small yard, the same yard where I found another animal an hour later.

I call this one Ditch Cat because he's sometimes hanging out in a small draining ditch that runs along the property lines. Turns out he's kind of old and crotchety, but he's a fine looking animal. He actually lives at this property, from what I can tell.

At the time I shot this photo, someone's 2-year-old son had wandered away from the parents up the street and was standing in the neighboring driveway. He was dressed in a yellow child's plastic fireman's helmet and a red cape. He was holding a plastic Star Wars light saber and with it was poking and prodding another cat, one I call Young Gray, whom I know from the neighborhood. I would have taken a photo of that, but what kind of creep photographs kids on the street?

More Locals

Add to the list already covered the yin and yang of central Ely watering holes, The Lamb and The Minster. The Lamb is actually a hotel and dining room with a small pub on the ground floor corner, with windows from which to watch the passersby. The Lamb is an ancient place and befitting its place not just in history but on the town's high street, its atmosphere is more polite and serene than its earthy neighbor across the street.

The Lamb is like the faculty lounge of local pubs. Tidy folks meet there to have quiet conversations over a pint or to dine. I've taken the Sunday paper in there and pored over it, for example.

The Minster, on the other hand, is probably one of the busiest and popular pubs in town. It's centrally located between the bank and the cathedral, so foot traffic is high, just as it is for The Lamb. Only The Minster is a much more relaxed, I hesitate to say seedy, but ordinary place. I once overheard a matron in The Lamb decry the sort of folks who habituate The Minster.

A TV is always on in The Minster, and big football matches (soccer to you Yanks) always draw a crowd. Same for rugby. The fare at The Minster is tolerable; I'll vouch for the fish and chips there, which are second only to the Petrou Bros. up the street on the market square. Sunday most pubs offer only a menu of roasts -- beef, pork or lamb -- along with steamed veg and potatoes. It's kind of a Sunday tradition and from what I can see it's not unusual to stop off after church for dinner at the pub.

The clouds have parted enough for a bike ride, so I'm outta here.

Ruination of East Anglia; Gardez News; Friday Round-up

Every year on Good Friday pilgrims make their way on foot to Chimayo, a town in northern New Mexico. Walking the 10, 30 or 100 miles is a form of penance and spiritual renewal. It's also a very social event. It's a religious thing, obviously, but a cultural phenomenon, as well.

Something akin to the Chimayo pilgrimage occurs in Walsingham in Norfolk County, except it traces its origins back 10 centuries. The Reformation put the brakes on it in the 1500s. The tradition, after all, began as a Catholic practice. It was revived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries for both the Catholics and the Anglicans. The Anglicans troop to a shrine in the village; the Catholics converge on the Slipper Chapel just down the road in a bucolic setting near North Barsham.

The photo above is a country lane near Walsingham, close to a village called Great Snoring. Great name, huh? Makes you think there's lots to do there.

Seems like anywhere you go in Norfolk County, there once existed a priory, convent, monastery, church or cathedral that stands no more, or only their stony shells remain. All this is due in large part to Henry VIII and the Reformation. In England, the dismantling of religious communities in the 16th century is called the Dissolution. Henry didn't just dissolve the organizations and scatter its membership, he also literally tore down the buildings, some of them already hundreds of years old in his day. The landscape is signposted with these skeletal forms, like the one pictured at right, the priory at Castle Acre. This priory, however, had already declined in importance by Henry VIII's reign.

Gardez News

Speaking of bucolic settings, Kelley writes of a mission, one of the few she's had in the actual community beyond the confines of her forward operating base. She writes:

"Went to a school where another unit did a VMO (village medical outreach). The ANA (Afghan National Army) medics/docs actually did the medical care, but the Air Force medics/docs (their "mentors") came along, as did our medic, so I tagged along, too. They saw lots of patients. Lots of kids and grown-ups and saw lots of goats, donkeys and camels! The Kuchis are on the roads a lot this time of year, as they are moving to their summer grazing grounds, so we saw lots of them driving their little goat/donkey/sheep/camel herds. Saw their tents along the way, too. So cool. The potty there was like the
one in Slumdog Millionaire. EW!!"

I have not seen Slumdog Millionaire, so I'm not familiar with the reference, but given the circumstances one might hazard a guess as to the state of affairs in that particular latrine. The Kuchis, by the way, are one of the tribal people one hears so much about in accounts from Afghanistan but for which detailed information is often lacking. Here's a glimpse of the aformentioned flocks, courtesy PRT Paktya.

She also tells of an exchange between one of her female colleagues and a local woman. The husband brought the woman, his wife, to the medical outreach. The AF female medic dealt with the local women because the Afghan Army docs are all men, with whom Afghan women may not communicate unless they're related.

Even faced with a female medic, the husband in this case would not allow his wife to communicate directly with her, a foreigner. Instead, the medic dealt with the husband, who related his wife's physical problems and conversed with the medic as if she wasn't even present.

For more info on PRT Paktya, follow this link to the previous version of this blog, where I was able to post a copy of the PRT newsletter.

Speaking of Afghanistan...

The news the past week was full of news and commentary on events in Afghanistan, from President Obama's surprise visit to Afghan President Hamid Karzai's stacking of the country's electoral commission ahead of the coming September parliamentary elections there.

The Afghan parliament appears to have grown a pair and rejected Karzai's bid to dominate the electoral board. It's one piece of good news in what otherwise has been Karzai thumbing his nose at allies and ignoring his own people's disgust at his corrupt administration.

NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman noodled President Karzai in terms of what motivates the guy and what the long term prospects for the US relationship with that country will be. A cursory look at Afghan history shows Karzai acting in a way consistent with his forbears. Which is to say, acting in his own interest, not ours. Afghan leaders of the 19th century played British support against the Russians, and the Russians against the Brits. When it suited them, Afghan kings installed or underwritten by the Brits turned on them, as well, seeking the support of conservative tribal and religious leaders in order to solidify their base.

After all, which is more important? The indigenous honchos that will keep you in power, or the foreign overlords who put you there? It's no wonder Karzai has gone his own way, no matter how injurious to his country's future; it's one lesson in history that's glaringly obvious.

What does this mean for efforts like those undertaken from FOB Gardez? The locals may respond positively to our efforts to make their lives more secure, to offer them a modicum of health care and build a few roads and schools. That work may pay off in the long run by producing a society that is more fair and just and less violent than the one left to Afghans following their victory over the Soviets. It won't guarantee us any friends there, on the other hand.