Christmas at Home, New Year, Back to Uruzgan, Snow !! and New Challenges

Its been over a month now since I left Tarin Kowt to head back home for Christmas Holidays back home in Ireland, Its been a hectic time.

After the Irish Times piece, I had fantastic feedback from colleagues back home which was great, and then followed an invitation to appear on the Late Later Show just before Christmas which was a great experience, but unrivalled by meeting my wife and 2 sons at Shannon Airport, little did I know that the local newspaper had captured it as they were so impressed with the Welcome Home Dad banner that Daithí & Oisín had made for me- a special moment !

Christmas was fantastic, along with the trip to RTE, was Ailwee Cave in Ballyvaughan to meet Santa, the excitement of Santa on Christmas morning, Munster at Thomond Park with some great friends, Panto at University of Limerick and a fantastic local theatre production of ‘The Sound of Clonlara’ , a live performance of ‘The Rubberbandits’ and even a friend’s wedding, pretty busy time home –

But of course the time came to return to Afghanistan, and it doesn’t get easier, leaving home and heading for Shannon for another 12 week stint, into the Afghan winter, but onwards we go.....

It is tough leaving and takes time to adjust again to life over here, I miss home, Laura and the boys and of course it would be great if I didn’t have to travel this far to work, however its better than struggling at home in the current economic climate and at least this way, I can provide for us all much better than struggling back home.....

The trip back was fraught with delays, including a 2 day layover in Dubai, I finally got back to Tarin Kowt and caught up with the Team again....

Well the big change coming for me in 2012 is that I will be moving from Tarin Kowt next month to Camp Bastion in Helmand Province, to take up our operation there, I will miss the team in Tarin Kowt as they are a great bunch of guys and we have a great team up here, but I guess the challenge now is to build a new team in Camp Bastion which I have already started to do here this week...

Camp Bastion is located in the middle of the Southern Afghan Desert and Base for the British Army, It is a Camp built literally in the middle of the desert and nowhere near a major city, it is home to some 50,000 troops and contractors and has an Airport that is technically Britains 5^th largest that has something like 600 aircraft movements a day, a bit of a change from the Village in the Mountains that is Tarin Kowt.

So,  as I write this at Kandahar Airfield, I have been trying to fly back to Tarin Kowt for the past 3 days but heavy snows have closed the runway at Tarin Kowt as the heaviest snowfalls on record has fallen in the past few days, we have the stark contrast of -9 degree cold from the 52 degree heat that I arrived to in July last year, some of the team here have never actually experienced snow and as you can see are enjoying the experience....

Mountains of Uruzgan - January 23rd 2012