Riding Around Pol-e-Charki

Tom Pfingsten, from the North County Times, in San Diego, expressed interest in doing a story on the team and what we have been accomplishing. Once he established contact with us, we immediately fed him a lot of information, stories, photos, and the few videos we had. He seemed to be putting together a good story.

Since it is Ramadan, the team is not working out and I did not have any video of the Afghanistan National Water Polo Team. Tom wanted video of the team working out and I could not provide it. It is one of the many things that I should have done when I had a chance. But I am only one person and it would have been too difficult, and weird, if I were trying to run the national team tryouts and videotaping the whole thing at the same time.

Tom asked me if I could give him a lay of the land. He decided it would be best, and asked me if I could go around the base at Pol-e-Charki and take photos and video of what was there. He was trying to make a deadline, and since that deadline was in two days, I thought that I should hurry and get it for him. I jumped on an ATV after work and drove around the base. I made a loop, first I by driving to the pool, then to the 201st Corps area, 3rd Brigade, one of the bone yards, and finally back to the area that I live in.

The many videos are quite interesting and can be seen here: http://www.facebook.com/AfghanistanWaterPolo?v=app_2392950137.



Tom's article came out quite well and is the first major news story on us. He even got it placed on the front page of the paper and has a very nice video online (I wonder where he got the footage from). The North County Time's article can be found here: http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/10/01/news/inland/fallbrook/z05238a4ad97f3a4b882574ce0008fad4.txt.

It is very exciting that we were able to kick off our awareness campaign this way. Scott McCook did a great job getting the North County Times motivated to do a story. We will see what kind of response that we will get from this.