The Blackhorse Flood

you can see the difference from when there is almost no water to when it was raging

Well if your reading this and you saw the title of this blog your most likely saying to yourself, nick honestly a flood in afghanststan no way you’re in a desert. But yes, i am not kidding i saw it with my own two eyes, the floods of Blackhorse on the warm day in July. it was a normal day here at Blackhorse and i was off shift hitting some golf balls into jbad road when i noticed a very dark cloud coming my way, and i thought to myself no, can’t be can it? Then it happened, lightning! This is not the way i wanted to go out so i hopped off the connex i was on and went inside and looked at our cameras to see something i thought i would never see. dime sized hail coming our way down pouring rain and wind like you have never seen, creating a wall of dust blacking out the whole area. Then the downpour started overhead. And man it was loud! Now we have had a sprinkle or two before that lasted about 30-45 seconds but this lasted a good half hour or so, and then i got the call. "Hey SPC Latino, just to let you know building 409 is flooded we need sandbags now!" i started to laugh and he said this is not a joke so i ran over to the building and before i could get there i noticed a wall of water coming towards me from our perimeter wall. I thought to myself well this could not be good. And at this point I was already soaked so I hopped onto the gator and went to our sand bag pit and started loading up sandbags about 15-20 of them and drove back to the flooded building. I realized shortly thereafter that I did not have nearly enough sand bags for this flood. I grabbed me a local national and we started making sand bag runs until we had somewhat a handle on it (but we really didn’t) so I went up into a guard tower to see just how bad it was and the street outside our base was a river and the waddy to our left was over flowing. Now this waddy never gets used from what I was told but today it was a river that you did not want to be in it was unbelievable.  The pictures can’t even do it justice but you can see a little bit of what it looked like here. So what other things can I fill your brains with? Well I’m starting my leave process in a day so I’ll be home next week or so. The only part I’m not looking forward to is Kuwait, which yesterday was 127 degrees, yup so excited for that. But hey its halfway over I’m pretty excited about that part because the people we deal with on a daily basis are very incompetent. I don’t say that just to say that but when we do pull out of this country, it will not be all butterflies and a new place, it will go back to it was before we got here, plus a few new roads, schools, vehicles, and an army. Now don’t get me wrong I do believe we are doing a good thing here but these people have no desire to liver a western lifestyle and will not be able to stand up without us constantly helping them.  Also on a contractor note, if you want to be a contractor in Afghanistan more power to you because the US Military is here to support the contractors. At least that is the way it seems. Because everything we provide for them is not good enough, oh y aim sorry I forgot all of you are making 90-300,000 a year and we have to cater to your every need and want. And then when were done you can charge the US GVT $560 for changing a lock on a door. Hmm I remember the days you could go to homer d pot and I could pick up a lock for 10-15 bucks, nope not here in afganaland. I also was told that it costs 34 dollars each meal I eat here, well I should be getting a 5 course meal for that but no most of it is cold and not to good. Lastly before I go it is now a requirement by the AFGAN GVT that two days a week we have to have AFGN food for dinner and or lunch. SWEETTTTTTTTTTT!!!!!