‘good, good my friend’

Yesterday during my evening visit to the top of the Al Masaak hill I once again obliged the Afghan soldiers with picture taking.  I had my Tokina 11-16 lens on the camera, which makes much different pictures from my ‘normal’ lens.

You may recognize the soldier in the picture with me as the guy I introduced in one of my first posts from Al Masaak (Pictures of the ANA).  He was the first Soldier to approach me to ask for his picture to be taken and he does everything he can to be in every picture I take.

His English is better than my Pashto, but is limited to three phrases that he repeats often – ‘good, good’, ‘how are you’ and ‘my friend’.  He is always the first to literally run to me when I go up the hill and greets me with ‘How are you, good, good my friend’  After every picture I take I have to show it to him and again he says ‘good, good’ as he gives me the thumbs up.

Last night after he made sure I took pictures of him he indicated he wanted me to be in the picture with him.  It took a minute or so for me to show another Soldier how to use my camera and then I was able to have a shot with my biggest fan on Al Masaak.

It will be like Christmas a really big day for these guys when I give them the prints.

Thanks for looking!

PS – for the next few posts I am going to post the images in gallery & slide show format as it is easy for me & I have heard from some that the slide show works better & others like the ability to look at an individual picture.

Is it better to have the slide show above or below the gallery images or doesn’t it matter?

Click an image to see it full-size:

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