The End.

This song pretty accurately and awesomely sums up how I feel:

This, compared to how I felt when I first got here:

So long, Afghanistan...

 

It's been fun.

Six Month Contractversary

Wow, It flew by! I'm not quite finished - I extended my tour by about three weeks in order to make my travel plans afterwards easier, but it's been whole six months since I started out for Kandahar!

The Continued Tales of Beardle the Beard

Beginning

Middle

End

I've discovered that having a great big bushy beard has at least one completely ridiculous perk aside from inadvertently storing food that I was trying to eat for later and that is it can be used as storage space for writing utensils and other similarly shaped objects.

Twenty total pens and other such objects! And yes, that IS a candy cane!

Another set of before and after pictures:

I have ALLL the permissions!

One of my many accolades for growing an awesome beard:

No, this is a joke from a friend - but can you imagine?

Graffiti
Seemingly, there is no end to the found art splayed across Kandahar Airfield.

It's your patriotic duty.

Being protective concrete wall can be very rewarding.

Poo Pond

Now there's a third major gym on KAF.

Countdown Mode

I'm clearly not the only one excited to leave.

Well, Kandahar, it's been a good run, but now it's nearly time to say goodbye. It's been real. I'll mostly think of you fondly.

Whenever I'm counting down to a big change, I get the song "one day more" from Les Miserables stuck in my head. Enjoy:

Graffiti and Zombies Part II

They're up to something in that church... I know it.

Must be a seance or something. 

I thought I had dealt with all the issues involving graffiti and zombies in the first post, but clearly I was wrong. We still have things that go bump in the night, and I keep on stumbling across works of art splayed out across segments of t-wall. 

Imagine walking home late at night in the dark and suddenly this pops into view from around a corner:

He's a mean one.

It's very startling. Not sure of the history of this seven-foot-high mural of the grinch, but I often see people playing cards around that table he's looking at - so he's not so off-putting that people don't want to hang around him.

Every once in a while I'll come across an odd bit of activist-graffiti:

In 2007 a crack logistics unit was sent to Kandahar Airfield to serve as suppliers for 904 EAW. These soldiers promptly formed as a team and served the detachment to their highest abilities, today still required by the government, survive solely on subways and burger kings. If you have a problem, if no one else can supply it, and you can find them, Maybe you can hire:-

Veterans needing jobs is a very serious issue...

Sometimes it's good to see some old school slapstick to break the tension:

The flag says (phonetically)  "tok" - I assume this is an onomatopoeia like "bang".

Driving by the Army Corps of Engineers' compound one day, I catch a glimpse of the mother-load out of the corner of my eye. It seems in their courtyard they commissioned the Michelangelo of Afghanistan to paint their murals.

The mother-load.

Who is spending their time making these under-appreciated works of art? It's not like the nature of Kandahar Airfield is very conducive to artists for hire. I'm surprised that the odd soldier out there with artistic ability is willing to spend their time working on things like these when they're not busy with their military occupation or disparately clinging to every moment of free time that they get. If you're out there, artists, I appreciate you.