Khan Neshin and a typical village...

This is a little band 5 FOB called Khan Neshin which also occupies another of Alexander the Great's abandoned Afghan fortresses. I thought it was interesting to see the walls up close. Walls are constructed of brick then plastered over with mud. The whole effect is kind of  Flintstones meets the Crusades - chiseled rock meets molten mud meets crenelation. The dirt here incredibly dense. Water never really soaks into it. Rain that makes it to the ground and doesn't run off immediately leaves puddles in the low spots until it can evaporate. The only reason we have mud at all is that foot and vehicle traffic mixes water with the dirt in a kind of suspended solution which coats shoes and pant legs until the dirt particles filter themselves back to the bottom. There are apparently no earthworms here either or if there are they don't come out out of their holes into the puddles when it rains.
The helicopter's eye view below shows what I see when flying over Afghan villages on my way to and from the various FOBs...walled compounds, the occassional dome and not much else.