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Things are tense with the referendum a couple days away. This experience is Newtonian in that there is a cosmic equilibrium to maintain. Every moment of tiny triumph is opposed by event of unpleasant and gruesome reality. Much like the snippets of news I catch flipping over the newspaper table situated in the hallway outside the office. Sometimes I go days merely reading headlines. My knowledge of the South Asian earthquake consists of daily recalculations of the death toll. I hear that Penn State is having a winning season. Villages in Guatemala have been swallowed. But if news is the sum total of tragedies and victories that occur in a day, I am not at a loss. I got a strange call from some election workers who couldn’t get in touch with 7 of their co-workers and had I heard anything? And after some investigating I found a report of 5 slain men left in a park. Blindfolded and shot in the back of the head. Wanting to dismiss the report as coincidence I called back; the election people had located 2 of the 7 missing men. We have yet to confirm the identities of the bodies, or determine from the other 2 precisely what happened the other night. But we are left with our unpleasant conjecture. Most of these short-term IECI workers are making some decent money; the one-day referendum workers get two hundred bucks. That’s a lot of money- but then again, it’s not that much. I’ve been out visiting many of the referendum sites. Previously I was going to write about some of the more sophisticated threats we’ve been experiencing lately; most of these have been discussed in major media or on blogs. While much of what I’ve seen has remained in the primitive realm- small arms fire, mortars and rockets and the occasional IED, it is an evolving battlefield. My team had a run-in with an EFP the other day. This is a more advanced type of IED; it’s a road-side bomb that shapes a projectile through its explosive force. They’ve had some success getting through armor. They had some success the other day. There were some injuries. A convoy in the opposite lane was hit just as we were passing them. We shouldn’t have been there at that moment. I can’t explain why- I mean I can’t give the details- but the mission didn’t go like it was supposed to. And I had the premonitions- the reservations- the little warnings were there. I just knew something bad was going to happen. And I know now that there’s not one bit of the supernatural about any of that. It’s merely a manifestation of the mind’s logical analysis of the situation. I knew I was trusting information that I knew could be bad. And I trusted the people that swore it was good even though I knew they could be wrong. In the end, it was my responsibility. We regrouped after securing the area and the casualties were flown out- I gave the call to continue to our back-up destination and ten minutes later we ran into a checkpoint just as a car bomb went off. One fatality. One of the gate guards. US soldier. I cancelled the mission and we returned to base. Spent the afternoon reviewing our plans and our mapping information. My team was lucky, but we were very close to those who were not. I have to make sure we stay lucky. The next day we rolled out again; we got to where we were supposed to go and talked to the people we needed to talk to and made it back safely. That’s the way it’s supposed to work. The referendum workers are prepared for this massive undertaking. There’s still so much to work on – I just got off the phone with one of the officials who’s not entirely sure how 900 workers are going to get to the sites they are supposed to work at – but it looks as if it will come together. The TNA just had a special session to vote on the new amendments to the Constitution; approving these will most likely lead to more Sunni ‘yes’ votes and the probable passage of the referendum. It’s a busy week here. Lots of news.