Next stop Afghanistan

"You won't be happy 'til you get your damn fool head blown off!" these were the words of my loving mother when she heard that I had taken a post in Afghanistan. Now my mom is without a doubt one of the smartest people that I know, and I know a lot of smart people, but on this point she is very wrong. I'm actually quite fond of my head. Now admittedly it started out a little disproportionately big for my body as any of my childhood friends will attest to. But after years of eating all of my vegetables and drinking appropriate amounts of milk the rest of me eventually caught up and now my head suits me quite nicely, swimmingly you might say - if you were British - and a little light in the boots. The point being that I like my head and I would hate to see it get dislodged by something as cliche as say an IED, or a car bomb, or even an uncharacteristically fast moving softball.



I like to think that my decision to work in Afghanistan stems from my sense of personal mission to work to make the world a better place coupled with a strong desire to live a life less ordinary, and lots of other poetic sounding crap like that. So here I am with less than 36 hours before I get on a plane to a place affectionately called "The graveyard of the super powers". I go armed with a one year contract, renewable up to three assuming that I don't screw the pooch too badly, to work with Afghan farmers to help them grow just about any and everything other than those crazy poppies that they have grown so fond of. Game on brohiem!