Ah the Sweet Smell of Diesel Fuel, Another Beautiful Day in Kabul

Hello to all of you Kentucky-ians reading the Post blog. I feel the need to introduce myself. My name is Marcus Baney, I am one of the 3 members from Flatirons Church in Colorado on the trip. I was enlisted to write the blog today for the Post team. Apparently they’ve gotten lazy and have started outsourcing their work, so here I am, much obliged. If you’re ever interested as to what I look like you can just watch some Flatirons services online and look for the long haired tattooed guy playing guitar and dancing around on stage like an idiot, and that’s me. We still probably don’t know each other that well, so let me give you a brief rundown on myself. I’m 21, I’ve lived in Denver my whole life, this is my second trip to Afghanistan, and I have an unhealthy obsession with music and zombie movies. There we go, we’re like old pals. Onwards we go.

Here we are at the end of another day in Afghanistan. Today was Friday here in Kabul, which is the holy day for their religion, so not much happens. People have the day off of work, so there's not much to be done usually. We spent most of the day around the guest house just hanging out. We sorted out some school supplies into 700 different bags that we will be distributing at Barek Aub tomorrow. We formulated an assembly line the likes of which (I can only assume) have never been seen in Afghanistan. Like a well oiled machine, we showed those school supplies who the boss was.

We decided to go out and around the town about mid afternoon. We went to Chaila, which is a popular coffee shop here in Kabul, which was awesome. We had some delicious milkshakes and sat under the shade of a bamboo structure. It was ultra deluxe. Then we went to the king's palace, which I've already seen, so I wasn't all that excited about that. But it’s a pretty neat place nonetheless. It’s a gigantic palace where the king used to live, but was destroyed during the civil war here in the early 90’s. It’s riddled with bullet holes and blasts from bombs and grenades and such. Crazy stuff. We came back to the guest house and then went to dinner at Lai Thai, which is a Thai food restaurant here in Kabul. This is one of W_____’s favorite places to eat, which means every team that comes to Kabul goes there. The last time I was here W_______l ended up challenging me to a spice off, which means a challenge to see who could handle the spiciest foods. I won. I count this not as a victory for me, but for America in general. I think the Afghans need someone to keep showing them who's boss, they're getting a little cocky. So at Lai Thai tonight W______ re-challenged me, thinking last time was a fluke. He was incorrect. I took him to town and back. America still owns Afghanistan, worry you not dear friends.

Other than that not terribly much that's exciting has been going on. We spent a good chunk of our time driving around today asking random strangers on the street, "Bu Chay Kaka, Buza hott didy?" which of course means, "Excuse me cousin, have you seen a small goat?" I don't think they get it. Haha. And we spent a good chunk of time helping W_______ update the English phrases he uses, as some of them are horribly outdated. We taught him things like "sick", "off the heezy fo' sheezy", "tight", and "drop it like it's hot." He's doing very well so far. Tomorrow is our first trip to Barek Aub, and I couldn't be more excited. Apparently the foundation for both the school and the clinic are completed, so I'm very excited to see our progress there. As well as doing the distribution, those are always very neat. Other than that things are awesome, my new position at Flatirons as Junior Executive Vice Pastor of Keeping it Real (at least Brad and I decided that's what it should be) has transfered nicely to Afghanistan. Gotta make sure Sozo is keeping it real also if Flatirons is going to keep working with them. Ok that's really it for now. Hope you all enjoyed it, it was very nice to meet you all. I’m sure you’ll be hearing from someone that’s actually on your team soon. Hopefully. Haha.

Marcus Jon Baney