Question: what is the most exciting thing that has ever happened in your work ?

Ken Gibbs answered on 15 Mar 2012:

Difficult one to answer as I have had so many excitements.

One that stands out in my mind was that I earned (?) a free trip to northern Afghanistan while the war with the Russians was still in progress simply because I had the right skills (water engineer) and spoke some Pharsi so was likely to be able to communicate in Dari, one of the local languages. Only, they forgot to tell me that they wouldn’t be supplying any transport, so we had to walk. The first nice little surprise was that we had to walk straight through a minefield but the Mujahedeen had thoughtfully driven a flock of sheep through it before we came, and had had to eat quite a lot of lamb kebabs as a result. I could write a book about the visit but suffice it to say that we walked as far as Nuristan carrying all our needs (including food), and when finally I got back to the border with Pakistan, I was so crippled, I couldn’t walk properly for about two weeks.

The things we saw and the few people we met left a lasting impression on me. Our hosts miscalculated how long it would take to walk to one of the villages one day and we had to return very late at night. We arrived at a check post manned by the local Mujahedeen who were fascinated to meet up with these foreigners who could speak some Pharsi. They had absolutely nothing except tea and a very small amount of “naan” which they insisted we share. When one of my colleagues was given his tea, he quietly said thank you in very formal Pharsi (“dast-e-shoma”) which stopped all conversation immediately. He was asked where he’d learned to speak Pharsi and when he told them, they couldn’t stop talking they were so impressed. It got even better, my colleague asked the Mujahedeen if they could remember the last five kings of Afghanistan ? They couldn’t, so my colleague listed them and gave all the salient facts about them. They didn’t want us to leave.

Glimpses like this of people in extreme conditions who are willing to give complete strangers their last tea and bread, tells you something about true humanity, for sure.