It's never a walk in the park

We took the NBC crew out again on Saturday. This time was to the familiar villages of Lamteungoh and Gurah, places were I've been many times. I even considered about leaving my camera at home because the battery was low and I figured it would just be a regular visit.

Lamteungoh was the first stop. We got to the village around 830 and as our luck should have it, two fishing boats were just on their way in from an evening of being out on the sea. NBC was able to get some good footage of fishermen emptying out their nets and I got to play with the crab and lobsters that were caught. After some more interviews with the villagers and with the rep from USAID, we moved on to Gurah, where we promised to show the NBC folks villagers building a 3-mile fence and men making and playing traditional drums.

In order to get to the place where the villagers were fencing, we had to follow this muddy road and then walk about 10 minutes. Our pick-up truck followed a larger truck on this one-lane muddy road, and the truck in front of us got stuck in the thick mud. Everyone got out to help push this truck, but with no luck. We decided to walk from where we were to the fencing site and then walk back to the village. It wasn't just any old walk in the park. The field was a rice paddy before the tsunami and it has been sort of cleaned and now overgrown with 2-ft tall grass. It had rained a whole lot the previous night so the entire field was pretty damn muddy. One of our guys kept on saying he thought snakes lived in the paddy. After walking about 20 minutes we arrive at the fencing site, NBC did a bunch of filming and interviewing and then after another 15 minutes or so, we end up back at the village. There better be people building that damn fence on the news!

I later found out that the NBC news correspondent who's out here with us was abducted and held captive in Iraq for about 3 days earlier this year. This gig is a walk in the park for him.