Honorary Afghanis

"Said Wali"

We showed our picture to the local national engineers in the office and they thought it was very nice. In fact, they gave us honorary Afghani names. My name is "Said Wali", I asked them what it meant, but I could not understand their translation. So, I turned to Answers.com -

"Said" means happy and "Wali" means friend, client, kinsman, or patron, or Muslim Saint/Holy Person. The others names, left to right in the picture above are - Ibrhim, Naseem, Gul Zawan, Wali Jan, Jamal, and Said Wali (me). Frank, the third from left took some exception to the names, he thought he looked more like a "Jamal" than Justus does.

Since the posting of these pictures, I've had some interest in my pink flip flops. Amazingly, in 5 1/2 months, I've only had two people brave enough to say something about the flip flops. The first was the Senior Master Sergeant in the group and all he could say the first time he saw me wearing them was - "Tell me those aren't pink". The other individual was a little more subtle - I was brushing my teeth at the sink and he asked me if the flip flops used to be red? I was clueless as to what he was getting at, so my response was no. He replied back, "I was hoping you would say yes and that you have had them so long they have faded to pink."

The real story - when I got to Combat Skills Training at Ft. Lewis, WA way back in November, I realized shortly after getting there I did not have any shower shoes/flip flops. I had some meetings to go to, so I asked someone that was headed to the BX/PX (military version of Target) to pick up a pair of flip flops for me. When he came back, he had the pink flip flops for me. He claims that's all they had in my size. They served me so well in training, and I'm too cheap to go buy another pair of a more suitable color, I decided to bring them with me to Afghanistan.

Yes, these are my feet, you've already seen my legs.

Another 5k fun run tomorrow - the good news, it's the last one I'll be running in Afghanistan.