The early morning air is crisp, the harbinger of a cold winter. The vibration produced by a Hercules military helicopter 200 feet overhead shakes the ground, deafening anyone trying to talk or even think. It looks like the American Embassy is again ferrying its staff directly to the airport, avoiding the heavily trafficked Great Massoud Road, named for the late martyred hero of the Northern Alliance battle against the Taliban. Our clinic and school sits just 50 meters from this congested motorway, filled with yellow Toyota Corolla taxis, horse-drawn carts, and smoke-belching trucks. Our project manager hands me a piece of twisted metal that landed on the clinic's roof from a car that exploded next door. Our laboratory technician showed me where part of the car bomber had landed as well.
I am in Afghanistan again, building a new clinic from discarded shipping containers. I'll be installing the electrical and plumbing systems, cabinetry, and equipment in a new dental clinic that will, hopefully, provide self-funding for the project. This is vitally important for me, since typically I pay from $5,000-$10,000 a month to employ the Afghan clinic staff to operate the free clinic for poor Afghans, as well as the teachers for the dental technician school. My shipment of 50,000 pounds of equipment and supplies has arrived from Santa Barbara, and my 14 helpers and I unload it all, sorting it into huge piles next to the 45-foot Mother Ship that brought it there.
For the next three weeks, I am not a dentist but a construction supervisor. The clinic is closed, so all 14 of the Afghan dentists, assistants, hygienists, lab technicians, cook, housekeeper, mechanic, and guards are helping me. Problem is, only one, the mechanic, has any construction experience, and only two speak English. I have trained them all to practice dentistry like Western dentists, but I certainly did not train them to do construction. My little notebook rapidly fills with how-to drawings.
