Hey brother can you spare 6.7 metric tons of rice

We are getting ready to distribute food as part of the health component of the program. This food distribution is the most tangible part of the entire effort. Between the meetings, planning, coordinating, synergizing, negotiating, and signings, there is a lot that has to be done before anything actually gets done. These distributions are the first real thing that we can hang our hat on and say that we’ve done.

We will distribute a basket of commodities to children under five years of age, and pregnant and lactating women. The commodity basket includes rice, wheat flour, yellow peas, and vegetable oil. After making the long trip from America’s heartland, the first of our commodities is starting to arrive. After much haggling, pleading, cursing and cajoling of the Afghanistan Ministry of Finance we finally received 500 metric tons of rice into our warehouse in Herat. The rice was then to be trucked from Herat to our warehouse here in Chaghcaran where it will be distributed to beneficiaries, this is where it gets interesting. On the road from Herat to Chaghcaran our trucks were stopped by armed men who belong to one of the local militias. The gunmen actually didn’t take all of the rice which I thought was quite sporting of them, but they did lighten our load a bit before letting the trucks pass. We are now in discussions with the national police to see if we can get an armed escort for future convoys – at our expense of course. The old idealistic aid worker in me was briefly full of moral outrage about how every ounce of rice that was stolen was taken out of the mouth of a vulnerable woman or child, the realistic aid worker that has lived through people getting gunned down and shit getting blown up on a nearly daily basis thinks that losing 6.7 metric tons of rice out of a 23 truck convoy carrying 500 metric tons is a pretty good day at the office.