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We awoke this morning to a tremendous amount of snow. It never stopped falling during the mission. It was quite cold and wet.
The trucks are parked at the village donation site. We have to cordon off the area and provide security or the people will simply rush the trucks. We let one representative from each family through the cordon to receive their packages.
A boy receives a bag of clothes for his family.
Here the village mayor marks off the families that are about to go through the distribution, to make sure no one takes more than their allotment.
A girl waiting in line.
The mayor making a point while a girl waits for her hand to be marked.
A boy dashing for the trucks.
A woman getting checked off the list.
This woman is wearing a traditional burkha. This conceals everything but her hands and feet. I was struck by the contrasting cultures shown in this picture. The woman from Afghanistan wears a burkha, while the female American soldier on the left wears full body armor.
Note that the soldier is wearing her blood type ("A Pos") on her helmet in case she is wounded.
Some families brought wheelbarrows. The bags were quite heavy.
Families here starting to barter with one another for the contents of their clothing bags. Because the village was so large, we could not tailor a bag for each family. At first, this was frustrating to me. I thought that we should be able to do that. But with a village this large, we simply didn't have the manpower to survey each family and size everyone up. We talked to the village leaders beforehand and thoroughly explained that they would have to work together to exchange clothes among themselves.
In the past, we've tried having each individual come through a line where we try to size each of them up with what they need. This actually got to be dangerous, because the people swarmed and rushed the clothing. You can't expect otherwise. What would you do if your children had no clothes or no food? That's why we used today's system.
Children scrambling for some candy. This can be the most dangerous task of all. The children never get that sort of thing and understandably fight over it. The women in the village have to try and keep order while it's passed out. They weren't successful. This was a chaotic scene.
My plan is to find a smaller village for the next mission. I hope to be able to meet with each family and determine their individual needs. Then we can pack a bag tailor made for each family. In other words, get the right sizes, genders, etc. for each family. That will be interesting. Maybe I'll take a sample bag of clothes and use it to determine the size of each person. Unfortunately, I can't just ask them for their size or show them to the changing room.
I am also thinking about a different system to make sure no one goes through the line more than once. This is a problem. But can you blame them?
Although I am happy that we helped some people, I still came away a little frustrated. I'm sure that some people didn't get enough or they got nothing at all. Maybe focusing on a smaller village will give us a better result. In the end, however, I probably never will feel completely satisfied.
I have to remember that helping some is better than doing nothing at all.