It was easier than e-mail, but Martin Anderson may have underestimated the power of blogging.
The 40-year-old investment advisor with RBC Dominion Securities Inc. in London, Ont., started a blog while serving in Afghanistan in 2005 to keep his wife, family and friends informed about what he was doing. “I started out sending e-mail, but it soon became apparent that a blog was the way to go,” he says.
The site was featured by the Weblog space provider MSN Spaces, and in one week it had more than 150,000 hits. Anderson says it’s important that Canadians read about what troops on the ground in Kabul are doing: rebuilding schools, fixing roads, helping families and children — things that often don’t make the 6 p.m. news. His blog, http://spaces.msn.com/martininafghanistan, shares pictures and his stories of life from the front line in Kabul. It’s a new form of reporting on the world of war.
Here are a few of his postings:
> What He Misses: My wife. My family. Our friends. My dog and cat. Working around the house. Mowing the grass. Grass. Beer (well, more than two at a sitting). Good red wine.
> What He’ll Miss About Afghanistan: The people. Our interpreters. The Wakil (a city council member), who was shot nine times during the Russian occupation and has a wooden leg, but managed to outclimb us up the mountain on Easter Sunday.
> Things He Won’t Miss About Afghanistan: The intestinal distress. The dust. The heat. The division between men and women.