Once more into the fray

Exciting travel opportunity is a pretty common problem these days, but one not altogether unexpected, unwarranted or unwanted. Once you get on the Company’s “List”, it’s tough to get off of it so, as projects develop, and a particular skill set is required, the call is received. For most jobs, the skill set enlarges during the tour, so there’s more to sell the next time. This is the natural progression of professional experience, and a requirement for any type of corporate advancement. For me, it’s a personal requirement – work had better get more interesting all of the time or [Robocop Voice] there will be trouble.

Of course, I could always say, “no”. And I do, on probably two out of three requests. Sometimes the timing is completely wrong, there could actually be something going on in my assigned office, or the compensation doesn’t align with the perceived risk. Sometimes it’s just the wrong time and place to go somewhere.


But, considering all of the above, Pakistan for a few weeks in January doesn’t sound all that bad. By and large, the new pieces are the location and the client, although Pakistan is next door to Afghanistan (just another I-stan), and I’m currently working for the Navy, with plenty of Army experience, so how much different can the Air Force be? We’ll see.

For now, I’m just a little bored here.

Since we (you,,.. us,… them) aren’t leaving this patch of desert any time soon, there is a call to transition this camp from Expeditionary to Enduring. Essentially, this will change the focus of construction from less expensive, austere, relatively temporary methodologies (stick built, plywood sided buildings, tents and containerized housing units) to more costly, harder, and permanent facilities (concrete and block buildings, paved streets, and more landscaping).

With this change to Enduring, there will also be a change in the way service-people are assigned here, from the four to six month rotations common throughout this side of the world to the two and three year postings that you’d experience while serving in Western Europe, Korea, or in CONUS. Considering the present Spartan facilities here, most everyone would be hard pressed to survive two or three years on this site without some major changes in the way the camp is configured.

One of the first steps is to develop a comprehensive master plan, outlining the progression from metal CHU’s to large bachelor dormitories, from the stick and plywood DFAC to a steel and glass dining hall (with reusable trays and silverware and everything), from a gym in a foam covered tensile fabric structure to an air conditioned pre-engineered metal building. The master plan was approved last week, which makes me think that Congress will approve AFRICOM’s request to endure this Camp.

The next step will be to change the name of this place to something less French.

The third process is to develop what they call an Installation Appearance Plan, which will govern the look and feel of future improvements. On any well defined campus, you might note that the architecture is complementary. Colors and styles work together. Landscaping is comprehensive and well thought out. Signage is consistent and useful. The overall look and feel and the arrangement of things are coordinated. Long and short term visitors can navigate without undue heartburn and easily arrive at a harmonized sense of place.

This is the report that we’re writing. It will provide a template for future improvements here with regards to styles, colors, materials, shapes, plants, signage, and what have yous.

Unfortunately, there’s not a huge Civil/Transportation/Hydraulics component to this effort, so the bulk of my input has been merely kibitzing with the landscape and regular architects. It’s not completely wasted time, just not full time. Worse though, is that there will be little follow on effort to take home with me so, instead of spending the next month at the office completing my portion of this assignment, I’ll be instead scrounging for chargeable tasks – not my favorite of circumstances.

And it’s in this light that I’ve agreed to head back out in a month or two. Of course, I’m hoping that each time I do one of these, I get closer to another extended assignment on some pleasant tropical island.

It’s a nice thought, regardless.

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Djiboutitown

Driving down the streets and thoroughfares of Djibouti City, and my primary thought was, “I’ve seen all of this before”. I’ve never been in this particular filthy municipality before, but I have been to markedly similar places. Drive down a dusty track in the Third World, and you’ll see bare footed men and women. Some working, some walking, some just hanging out in whatever shade is available. Nobody’s moving too quickly. Along the road, enterprising people vend their wares from carts or ramshackle shacks located against the tall, concrete, broken glass topped walls of the more land-rich locals.

Aging whitewash is the dominant color, with accents of sky blue paint on the walls or doors. Peeling, hand painted signs advertise each small business. The men are in t-shirts – some with slacks, others in sarongs. The women are the most colorful things on the street, wrapped top to ankle in bright prints of all colors – huge flowers, manic patterns – almost a strain on the eyes.


We turn briefly towards and adjacent to the local market. Greg supposes it’s the flea market. I suppose that there’re plenty of fleas, but that it’s just a market. We pass by big piles of various fruits in crates and pyramidal displays under the ubiquitous blue tarps. From the perimeter, you can smell the rest of the market, a mix of humanity, their waste, and rotting food. This place looks much nicer than it smells.

Most of the streets are paved, and main streets are in much better shape than side roads and backroads. Downtown, building construction is mostly concrete framed with block infill, plastered and painted. Large arches are common, as are shaded, inset balconies. Otherwise, there’s little architectural consistency, unless Colonial/French/Mediterranean/Arabic/African is a consistent architectural style. It looks like maintenance activities stopped upon building occupation, and I can only imagine the broken tiles and fixtures within.

Mature and chaotic street trees line some of the roads downtown, providing more vital shade. Downtown is deserted at this time of day, the siesta period between noon and two or three or so, so we don’t struggle too much with the traffic.

Three dashed white lines, spaced at three or four meters, run the length of most of the major roads. Under light traffic, opposing traffic straddles the outside lines (like 1:1 scale slot cars), saving the inside line for overtaking. When traffic picks up, all bets are off, and you drive anywhere you want.

So we wanted to drive to the Kempinski Hotel, ostensibly to check out their superior landscaping, but mostly to have a cold beer. Even though I’d never been there before, I’d been there before, as the Kempinski is that secure, luxurious Western hotel that locals cannot near afford that exists in most every backwater capital city. Uniformed staff met us at the gate, then later at the door to guide us through their security procedures and we soon found some shaded seats near their infinity pool to suck down a couple of well cold, eight dollar Heinekens.

What’s not to love about this place?

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Liberty is Secured

The base Commanding Officer yelled at us yesterday.

We’ve been drinking to excess. We’ve been going to neighborhoods where the bad guys hang out. We’ve been visiting brothels, and tattoo parlors and nightclubs that have been specified as off limits. We’ve been violating curfew, exceeding our three beers a day drinking limit, and not maintaining a designated driver.

Liberty has been secured.


Honest, it wasn’t me, and most of these problems occurred before we even landed in Africa. However, these several lapses in situational awareness and operational security caused a mandatory training response for all personnel from the camp command element. It opened with the skipper giving a rather stern lecture, then another fifty minutes of slides and further lecture by a collection of chiefs and lieutenants.

Typically, I don’t listen too hard to lieutenants, but this is a Navy facility, so their lieutenants look a lot like captains everywhere else. In fact, the captain looked a lot like a Colonel, so most folks sat up straight when addressed, even if it was for a dressing down. The trouble is that, in the Navy, they have their own set of ranks, but for some reason use the same insignia as the rest of our armed forces. So when you see two bars, you’d think to call him, “Captain”, but that would only be unnecessarily promoting a Lieutenant. Majors are really Lieutenant Commanders. Second Lieutenants are really Ensigns. Brigadier Generals are Rear Admirals, Bottom Half. Of course, when they’re in their dress whites, the insignia change. As a result, they’re all “sir”.

Moving right along.

The bulk of the lecture was an AntiTerrorism refresher. While there’re not active hostilities against the United States in Djibouti, there are plenty of folks here who would prefer that we’d be somewhere else. As such, every excursion off base must be performed with a heightened situational awareness (like driving through Topeka at night). The lecture outlined what current local risks could be expected and how to position oneself to avoid, mitigate, or survive the encounter. Once everyone sits through the training, Liberty may be unsecured.

However, since we were now thoroughly trained, and on Camp business, we commandeered an SUV and interpreter and headed into town on a data collection mission. Although it progressed without incident, there was a great deal of trepidation from one of ours as to the likelihood of us coming back unscathed.

I knew he’d be a sketchy component of the team from the start, having never traveled outside of the States and constantly referring to all the guys with guns. Sure, there are weapons at the gate, but (essentially) no one within the camp is armed, just a bunch of folks, some in civilian clothes, some in camouflage. I suppose it is a matter of exposure, exposure of which I seem to be gathering more and more of in recent years. If you’re not used to seeing them, they stand out. If you’re used to seeing them, the lack can be interesting, but only as a reference point as to the day’s security posture. And here, it’s not that intense, as evidenced by the fact that there’s Liberty at all, even if it’s been recently curtailed.

To most, deepest darkest Africa is still a total unknown. Obviously, the unknown is scary and should be avoided. But what do we know? If you glance at a world map, you’d find this place a mere seventeen miles from Yemen, which is right next to Saudia Arabia, the country (not famous enough as) home to the WTC bombers. That means the Middle East, which means continual car bombs and ululating madmen. Less than ten miles south is Somalia, haven for pirates, training center for terrorist groups, and home of few things really pleasant.

The key is that we’re located at the strait separating the Red Sea from the Gulf of Aden, on the major sea route from the Suez Canal to our oil in the Middle East. Even though we may not have ships at this Navy facility (or even our own port), we’re here, for good or ill, which means anyone who wants to control this strait can only do so through us. We won’t be leaving any time soon.

=====

And for the curious. Hip Kitty was awful. Unless you like that sort of awful thing. Their sort of thing was pretty standard bar band cover fare. Overamped and sloppy. The drums overpowered most of the band. The rockstar pose the guitarist preferred was phallic – body at the crotch, neck mostly vertical, taken from the worst of heavy metal videos. The bassist hid at the edge of the drum kit for the two songs I sat through. Then there’s Kitty – not a great voice, but enthusiastic, although not enthusiastic enough to persuade anyone to thrash, slam, or get much further from furtive head bobbing (and you’d think opening with “Breaking the Law” would get the crowd rocking). I left as they massacred some Soundgarden.

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Hip Kitty

Briefly (since the connection here is just as good as Afghanistan), I'm back at Eleven Degrees North (close enough to the latitude), Tusker in hand, awaiting the start of the Armed Forces Entertainment sponsored band - Hip Kitty.

Can't wait. Arctic Monkeys' latest on the juke machine, so it's, like, musical mammal night at Camp Lemonnier.

Probably *can* wait, but can't be anywhere else on base with beer.
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All Hollow

It’s Halloween in Djibouti, and there’re a few costumes of note. Plenty of folks dressed as sailors and army men and marines, and quite a few dressed as the overseas deployment of some Japanese Defense Force. Of course, there’s the last minute a toga or two, an inspired six foot tall whoopee cushion and, being so close to Somalia, there’re a few pirate costumes. I came as a consultant – t-shirt, cargo pants, and combat boots – my usual desert attire.

I haven’t been in Africa for decades. [Egypt really doesn’t count – just ask any Egyptian.] The place hasn’t changed. Djibouti City is classically Third World, still using up what’s left of the colonial infrastructure while hundreds of thousands live in poverty. Although it looked like some money was spent on the airport after the declaration of the GWOT, the improvements have not been maintained. The reception hall is too small for a 220 person passenger complement, stiflingly hot, with little moving air, exposed electrical reconnections, and scores of missing ceiling tiles and doors that just won’t close.


As expected, what also remains from the French occupation is a bureaucratic entry system, with stacks of ledgers and (count ‘em) *five* individual rubber stamps and one of the adhesive types associated with my sixty dollar entry visa. Bags in hand, I had to work on keeping my bags in hand, as a half dozen “porters” attempted to grab it away from me and haul it the fifty meters to the camp shuttle. Others weren’t so lucky in the shakedown, although the lesson itself had some value. Other, still, were shook down on the bus itself, as a couple of the porters entered the bus and worked over the already seated passengers.

It’s poor here. The main city streets from airfield to camp are barely above dirt, and mostly empty shops compete for the limited pedestrian traffic. Turning off the main road closer to the camp, we drove down a rutted, once asphalt road lined for a time with the hardscrabble zinc and scrap lumber construction that defines this type of economy. A little further, and the verges were paved with discarded plastic bottles and lada bags.

It’s poor here, and I’m hoping that there’s some semblance of an economy somewhere else in town. It’s large, and we haven’t seen much yet. We will, as our work here, among other tasks, is to try and coordinate future projects at the camp with the local, traditional architecture in the area. That probably doesn’t mean that we’ll build the next AfriCom HQ out of pallets and plastic sheeting, but perhaps it will be more reflective of how the rich people live here.

Anyway, it’s Halloween, and at the all persons club, (Eleven Degrees North (which is about our latitude (I think))) was hosting a few games and social events. They also had beer, which was nice.

And the DFAC has bacon at every meal, which is also nice.

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Frogtown

Ambulating up the left bank of the Seine, I approached an elderly woman walking from the opposite direction. At about three or four meters distance, she stopped suddenly, stooped to the sidewalk, and arose with a shiny gold ring in her hand.

What luck for her! She appeared amazed and immediately wanted to show it to me. Wow. Very shiny. I couldn’t understand the next part, even if part of it was sort of in French. She might have been smilingly deriding Amerika, or she might have been offering to give me the ring, just to share her good fortune.

I expressed that I already had a gold ring, and that she should keep the found object (she didn’t look particularly well off, at that). But she insisted, and wrapped my fingers around it as she appeared to bless both of our good fortunes.

Strange enough, I thought as I walked away.


Then I heard her again, calling me back, and asking, apparently, if I just might be able to spare a Euro or two for a cup of coffee. My luck was obviously with me, so it would be nice if I were to spread it around a bit. At that point, but probably a little before, I realized that the gold shiny thing was a bit too light to be gold, and that this was likely a scam. I thanked her again and returned the ring, certain now that she had the thing palmed when she first reached to the ground, and only pretended to pick it up off of the ground.

Ah, Paris in the late autumn. Cold. Dreary. Bleak. Complete with scamming gypsies. And cold. Did I say cold already? Maybe not that awfully cold. Not as bad as last time, but totally overcast, which doesn’t provide the best of light for image collection.

The Government wants me in Djibouti, and there’s few ways to get there. The non-preferred route runs through Chicago, Frankfort and Addis Ababa. Not that Ethiopia would be bad, but it is an extra leg (i.e. and extra take off and landing) and on the Ethiopian national airline, and it’s this last part that I would like to avoid. Hence, Route A, through Chicago, Paris, and straight in to the Djibouti International Airport, but with a large layover in Paris.

So, with about 16 hours in country, what to do? First, waste an hour on a delayed arrival, then find a dayroom at the Hilton to dump the bags, find a map and directions to the Metro, and hit the town about 1100. Since it was a *day* room, checkout is 1800, less about two hours on the train to and from downtown, doesn’t give much time for the whole grand tour thing, but let me tell you, five or six hours is an ample enough dose of France.

All I wanted to see was a Gauguin painting at the Musee D’Orsey. One of my associates wanted to see an arch at the Louvre. The other wanted to see a couple of the public gardens. The third was delayed leaving CONUS, and gets to fly through Addis Ababa.

As these were all downtown, we got off of the Metro at Notre Dame, took a few pictures, crossed off of the island and headed downstream. Sometime after we saw the requested arch, I found a cheap sandwich, then the gypsy.

Later, while approaching the Eiffel tower through that big park that’s there, I approached a tall black youth walking from the opposite direction. At about three or four meters distance, he stopped suddenly, stooped to the sidewalk, and arose with a shiny gold ring in his hand.

What luck for him! He appeared amazed and immediately wanted to show it to me. Wow. Very shiny,...

Wait a minute. I think I know this one. Sorry, I told the man, but I already know this scam. He smiled and continued on, thoroughly non-nonplussed.

Shortly thereafter, while assisting a newlywed couple with a photograph, they asked if I, too, had been “conned by the Gypsy” (that’s how I knew they were Gypsies). Sadly, no, but I couldn’t commiserate.

Shortly thereafter that, I assisted a young woman with her photograph, having seen her with a Polaroid held at arm’s length and trying to simultaneously focus and frame the shot. Holding the photograph, I was a bit surprised to see that it was of a poodle. She got the shot she wanted though, of the Eiffel Tower, the Polaroid poodle, and the helpful tourist who held the photograph for her. I would have taken the same shot.

Seemingly endless miles later, while returning to the Metro station, I approached an elderly woman walking from the opposite direction. At about three or four meters distance, she stopped suddenly, stooped to the sidewalk, and arose with a shiny gold ring in her hand.

What luck for her! She appeared amazed and immediately wanted to show it to me. Wow. Very shiny.

Hey, I laughed, you’re the same woman as on the other side of the river! She laughed, too, and continued on her gypsy way. We found our train and returned to the airport.

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Sigh of the Times

Our hopes ran high until the initial personal foul sometime late in the first quarter. Backed up against their own goal line, the opponents quarterback was scrambling to the outside, fading further back towards the endzone, subject to the ongoing rush of crimson and gold. Without the penalty, perhaps the play would have ended with the bad guys at fourth down and long on their own one yard line. Without the penalty, perhaps the play would have ended with the interception that resulted from the Hawkeye’s errant toss downrange, thrown only to avoid an untenable situation with their backs against the wall.

Instead, the quarterback was forced out of bounds as his pass was intercepted, opposing fingers deep in his facemask. The bad guys benefitted – yardage and an automatic first down – and we watched the hopes of another season fade even before the first conference game. The Cyclones (aye, Sigh-clones), rarely fail to fail.

In recent years, I’ve found myself in Iowa City for the annual intrastate scrimmage. In fact, I’ve only seen the game once in Ames, about a thousand years ago during my second senior year there. But heck, when a friend leaves a cryptic email less than 48 hours prior to kickoff stating that you should be at some Dogtown bar the following evening and that there’s really no plan except to try and scalp some tickets,… What the hell. We had nothing scheduled for the weekend, anyway. A road trip seemed just the thing.

Fortunately, we found a hotel room to reserve, and the local inns were full. Ahead of us at the counter was some guy who had arrived just moments before us, unloading his bedraggled family from their Jaguar SUV. He was assuring the hotelier that he had talked to someone earlier and had given her his credit card number “and everything”. No, he couldn’t remember her name. No, there wasn’t a confirmation number. No, there wasn’t a room for them. However, we did have a confirmation number, and I now have a few more points on my preferred sleeper account.

Ames looks nothing like Iowa City prior to the Big Game. Kinnick Stadium is in the middle of town, which pushes the tailgating into more widely spread parking lots. Cyclone Stadium (and Jack Trice Field) is situated in the middle of the Skunk River flood plain, with dedicated parking in the lots and fields to all sides. It’s a veritable sea of parked cars and pickups and vans and campers and tents and awnings and drunks college students. Most don’t even have tickets, they just enjoy getting loaded out of doors amidst a huge crowd and few toilets.

We parked somewhere near Veterinary Medicine about three hours before the game and hadn’t been walking ten minutes when we saw Story County’s finest escorting an obviously inebriated citizen from the grounds. As we didn’t have tickets yet, we thought of asking for his (since he wouldn’t be using it), but decided against it, thinking that he’d only have a single seat, and we not wanting to sit in the student section.

The first scalper we found was wearing a sign saying “tickets” standing not fifty feet from a guy with a sign saying “tickets wanted”. I thought it only neighborly to introduce the two but, surprisingly, they already knew each other. This guy wanted a hundred a half a piece for adjoining tickets he said were near the 20 yard line, about half way up. He dropped his price to one thirty-five as we walked away. I was almost ready to pay the man, but wanted to look a little further, especially since we really needed four tickets to accommodate our cryptic friends.

We continued our walk around the stadium, found that the ticket booth was only selling SRO (i.e. those awful bits of grass at the south corners), and continued walking. About three quarters of the way around, we found another scalper asking one twenty-five each for a pair, strangely so, near the 20 yard line, about half way up. I weighed the cost against driving 450 miles to drink in a parking lot, and gave the man a wad of cash before heading the rest of the way around the facility to meet some friends with beer in a convenient field. These friends already had tickets from our usual source (a mutual friend at the University), but we planned this trip way too late to take advantage of the free seats. We weren’t exactly sure where their free seats were, but we assumed they were near the 20 year line, about half way up.

Friends found, we found that they had collared some youth who was unloading his family’s season tickets for beer money. Since cheap beer in Ames is still pretty cheap, I gave him forty dollars for the set, speculating that our ticketless friends would eventually answer their phones and let us know if they were successful in finding seats on their own accord. At worst case, I could likely unload the worst of the tickets (likely near the 20 yard line, about half way up) and recoup some of our costs.

When they finally answered their page, we connected and split the total cost, reducing our ticket price to seventy-two fifty each – not too bad for a ninety dollar face value ticket. Appropriately intoxicated (adult appropriate, not student appropriate), we headed to the game, finding that the four tickets I purchased, from two different people a half mile apart, were in the same section, in the same row, and only two seats apart, in the center of the end zone, and nowhere near the 20 yard line. Not bad seats, really. Luck was with us that day. How could she not smile on the team as well,…

I forget sometimes. Forget that Lady Luck is fickle, and usually defers to her ugly stepsisters of Fate. As the Fates would have it, the home squad had twice the yardage in penalties, one lost fumble and threw four interceptions. On a surprising note, the 35-03 final score wasn’t their most embarrassing finish to this series, but it certainly wasn’t pretty.
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That was quick,...

It was almost short enough not to notice, except of course for the whole Afghanistan thing happening all around me. Still it was (or will turn out to be) eleven days away from home, almost too short to even bother with.

But bother I do, because that's where the job sends me, and I tend to like the job, despite some less than desirable situations.

The biggest difference between this and the other trips here was that there's a cute puppydog sleeping at my feet, a gift to the Contractor from the local Afghan Nation Army commander. [How could he say no? She's cute. The commander has hundred of armed tropps,...] I'm not sure if Socks has selected my desk because she likes me, or because it's 30 degrees cooler in the office than outside.

This time, my direct report is the Contractor, who has a somewhat varied motivation when compared to my usual client, now the contractor's client, and still your government. Ultimately, I'm committed to the old health, safety, and welfare thing, but my current employer has a rather specific contract and, despite some obvious changes that could save the taxpayer some sheckles or better coordinate the work with a number of future projects in the area, I really can't add to or modify the project (i.e., the contract).

Mostly because changes at this point in the game all have time consequences and, as they say, time is money. We could develop the best project ever, but if it comes in two months later, how will the intended missions be supported? The change in attitude is just about wearing a different hat, and my suitcase is full of hats. Right now, hats and clothes and tools and personal protective gear and everything else that I brought over here, in anticipation of my flight out in a little over three hours.

What gets left behind this time is a Kandahar that's even larger and more congested than before, as more and more personnel, materiel and materials get deposited here every day. Two new PX's opened since I was here in May, to cater to the larger populations. There's the Kandahar Hotel where, for a mere $160 a night, you can get a ten foot square space in a C-can with a shared bath. There's a three month waiting list for this level of luxury.

In case you don't need to sleep, the local Green Bean now serves what they call the MOAC (Mother of all Coffees), four shots of espresso topped off with their house blend. For now, I'm sticking with the Latte. Tim Hortons continues to do a brisk business, and I usually brought back some tasty Canook donuts to the crew each morning, doing what I could to move the process forward.

I enjoyed the relative luxury of the Contractor's camp for this last week. The private room. The better quality DFAC. My assigned vehicle. The shady piazza. Sadly, they just cleaned and filled the pool last night, so I won't have a chance to go for a dip before I leave. I'll save that for Dubai, where I'll crash at a downtown hotel for the ten hours I have between flights.

I stumbled across a Helen Keller quote the other day (get it? "stumbled across"? she's blind? I swear,...) that seems apt, "Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."

Homebound now, and looking forward to the next one.
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And then there was two

Got an email the other day, asking if I'd consider 6-12 months in Bahrain. My first reaction was instant rejection. It's 115 degrees in the shade here - how bad would it be closer to both the equator and the sea? Of course, it would be an assignment on a tropical island, and I do seem to like those.

Ultimately, I resolved to maintain my initial reaction, and hold out for a better tropical island assignment. Bahrain would certainly be interesting, but stifling could describe it as well.

Definitely stifling here today, but a full five degrees cooler than yesterday. Having little to accomplish, I headed out to the project site, and watch the surveyors host a goat rope, then observed some 12" slump (self leveling) concrete get placed as a foundation slab, and a wheeled excavator trench through a half meter of moon dust.

By then, it was barely 1000, and I had the rest of the day to fill. How I actually made it to the end is still somewhat of a mystery, but I think I can attribuite it to the selective amnesia from which some trauma patients are known to suffer. Tomorrow,... more of the same.


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Ho Hum

Friday, now, I'm pretty sure. If there's any change to the days here, it's Friday, when local labor takes the day off, some outfits take a half day, and the bazaar's in town. I slept in, somewhat intentionally.

My plan was simply to sleep until I got up, and to throw off the last of the nine and a half hours of jet lag that followed me here. Simple enough, but at 0330, some joker in the war department decided that a half hour of outbound artillery would be a nice diversion, and it took a little while for me to recognize the specific boom of rounds leaving the KAF.

At that point, I could again drift off, and stayed drifted until 0900. Not really sleeping until noon, but the best I could muster. Perhaps I'll do better tomorrow, although I likely won't benefit from the late night of socializing I enjoyed on Thursday.

Another benefit of my current situation is that, on many Thursdays [They say "many", but I shouldn't be here except for the one.], nice bar-be-ques are convened at a couple of rotating locations. The menu's simple - meat on the barby - served on some of the local flatbread. The guest list was more varied, including logistics contractors, service contractors, education and training contractors, heavy contractors, and a couple of high ranking officers of the Afghan National Army Special Forces brigade, which is situated right next door.

I'd like to mention that there were a couple of cold beers, but I won't be mentioning that (the slushy Tiger Lagers), because we don't drink here,... especially the high ranking officers of the Afghan National Army Special Forces brigade, which is situated right next door.

Regardless, I got to sleep in, accomplishing another goal, then processed the emails that came in overnight (turning down six months to a year in Bahrain), typed a memo, and tried to get the local phone to work. This afternoon, I'll head to a brief meeting, then to the bazaar to look around, then to the PX for a cigar.

Big plans.
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Afghanland III

I thought "Afghanland 3 - The Redemption" would be a cool title for this one but, as it turns out, there's still little that is actually redeeming at Kandahar. Sort of like "Terminator 3: Redemption" or "Kickboxer 5: The Redemption", but probably more like "Rock Bottom - From Hell to Redemption", where Jason Mewes tries to kick Heroin.

Why can't I quit this place? 'Cuz it's fun. "It's a blast", sings Jello Biafra. Actually, he sings "Tomorrow you're homeless. Tonight it's a blast!" But who's picking nits.

Big changes here in the past three months. For one, is about a thousand degrees hotter than when I left here in May. Every day is above 100 (er,... 1000), and the air conditioners have a most difficult time keeping up with it. Construction continues apace throughout the base, with new shelters and housing and stuff all getting built at once.

They've even added short block walls to the interiors of each of the DFACs, to subdivide the space and increase PAX blast protection.

The biggest change is that this time, I'm working for one of the many contractors here, coordinating the design of some big thing between him and the design team back in the States. As it turns out, one minute after I stepped off of the plane here, I became the Companyman with the most experience in country. Hopefully, it won't turn into anything more than a fleeting honor, as I'd much rather be known as the Companyman who has the most time on a tropical island.

The hugest change is in the accommodations. This time, I've got a 40 foot C-can (we used to call them "CONEX Boxes", but that is *so* last quarter) to myself - bedroom, private bath, lounge. There's another bedroom, but noone lives there this week. This place is comparably sized to Miss Liberty, my trailer on Lincoln Swing, although my current blue and white vinyl walls and ceiling still pale in comparison to her green shag, floor-to-wall-to-ceiling carpeting.

And I got a vehicle assigned. A right drive Toyota. Not that I need to drive anywhere, but I've got one, just in case. Of course, I could drive to a more distant DFAC if I wanted to, or use it to haul donuts to the office. Probably use it to tool around aimlessly, as my legendary efficiency has resulted in me being about done with my assigned tasks, just one day into a one week gig.

I brought some books, figuring this would be the case.
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Mileposts

Terminal 1 at Dubai is a spectacular place. Fifty foot ceilings and fake palm trees. Food court and hotel. Acres of seating. Shopping and more shopping. One hundred more minutes, and I’ll be done with it and another step closer to home.


At Warrior, the FOB from a couple of days ago, I figured I was as far from home as I was going to get, as it would take another helo ride to get back to Sharana, then a fixed wing to Bagram Friday, then four more flights to get home over forty hours starting Sunday morning. All told, we’ll have had nineteen separate flights over the past three weeks or so. Now I’m down to my last three.

Once I’m on this next one, though, most of the potential trouble will be behind me, as, fourteen and a half hours after departure, I’ll be at Dulles, and I can walk home from there. Finding another way home from the Middle East is a bit harder. Not as hard as finding another flight from Bagram to Dubai, though, which is ultimately easier than finding another way from FOB Warrior to Sharana. There’s really no way to walk that route – no *safe* way to walk that route.

Each leg brings me closer, and while each leg gets progressively easier, the desire to accelerate my travel increases, and the waiting is getting more difficult. Another hour or so, and we’ll process through security once more, wait a bit, then board. If I’m fortunate, the food will arrive early, and sleep soon thereafter. I doubt I’ll be able to sleep for the entire flight, but any time unconscious on a transatlantic hop is time well spent.

For now, there’s reflection on another successful assignment, and wonder as to what will follow.

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Four and a Wake-up

Well, after the General briefing yesterday, we’re done here, except for that part about leaving, getting on a helicopter and four airplanes and making it back to the Midwest. If the number of flights were any indication of the depth of this shithole,…

When I say “done”, I mean that there’s no more work required to satisfy the contract requirements. Eye Eeee, how does one waste a few days in the middle of the high desert of eastern Afghanland? Besides wailing and ululating.


I started by sleeping in as long as I could, then showered and called the wife. Lay on the bed for a couple of hours, reading my fifth book (Political thriller, farce, two shoot ‘em’ ups, and now a murder mystery). I may delve into the local DVD collections this afternoon, and maybe a snooze on the dayroom couch. I did laundry yesterday, so I’m probably done with that for this trip.

We have one more excursion planned for tomorrow, but not a task included in the scope of work. The Polish airfield that we couldn’t get to earlier has a particular and peculiar drainage problem that I’ve been asked to take a look at while I’m here with nothing better to do. Somehow (who knows), air transportation became available, better late than never, so, although any information gathered won’t help our planning efforts, why waste the experience of a few engineers while they’re here. All they really had to do was say “helicopter ride” and, like the family dog with prospects of a car ride, I’d have my vest and helmet in hand and be headed towards the door. A chance to solve a problem is gravy.

As well, it’s an excuse to get off the FOB. The last thing I want is to be known as a Fobbit – a very derogatory term used to describe the various desk jockeys and support personnel, military or otherwise, who do whatever it takes to maintain the garrison lifestyle. I can’t see the appeal of traveling 8,000 miles just to hang around a large military base, but to others, there’s no consideration of an existence that doesn’t include a well stocked PX, hard sided DFAC, cable TV, and a Dairy Queen/Orange Julius franchise.

Might as well stay home.

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Over the Wire

Since I landed in country, there’ve been a mess of helicopter flights to various bases in the eastern quarter of Afghanistan, but I never got out of the FOBs themselves. Peering through the chainlink, or even standing atop the Hesco barriers that line the perimeter occasionally, I could clearly see Afghanistan. It’s awfully mountainous there, outside the wire, and there are few places on any of the bases where you can’t see some very rugged terrain in the distance, well beyond the boundaries of any camp.

But I had yet to set foot outside the wire and into Afghanland proper, until this morning. My work in Iraq was reconstruction, not military, and required over seventy missions outside the comforts and security of the Green Zone. Here, by and large, the work I’m planning is already within the safety and confines of existing base real estate, except for a few runways.


The proposed runway at one of the Polish bases was just outside the wire, and we could see the total flatness of the site from high atop a couple of guard towers. Flat ground, by the way, is a pretty good condition for new runways. From my perch behind the sandbags next to the machine gun, I could make an educated guess as to the rough order of magnitude of work required to construct the thing. Not the best of field investigations, but better than others.

At the second Polish base, project timing and security issues kept us from getting close to the FOB, so we needed to rely on firsthand accounts of site conditions from a Master Sergeant who had been there on another mission last week, and tried his best to recall the local environment. Even this was better than much of what we had in Kandahar – or didn’t have in Kandahar, as most of the time we couldn’t speak with anyone who had anything close to a detailed understanding of local site conditions.

Today, though, my Electrical and I donned our helmets and vests and mounted a few MRAPs to get boots on the ground at our new runway site at Sharana. For this mission, we were accompanied by a dozen heavily armed soldiers and their three armored vehicles providing security. It was a simple reconnoiter, really. Exit the FOB, and then encircle the base a mile or two off of the fence until we could identify the upwind end of what had previously been identified as the correct alignment. Take a few snaps, then work the two miles up the ridge to the other end of where the runway could end up.

Simple, though, lasted half a day. There were a few equipment and communications problems that required resolution before we could take off, as well as the requisite pre-mission briefing. Also with our contingent was another consultant, who was interested in seeing a different piece of land that his group is eyeing for something or other. Since this other property was closer to the gate, we went there first and, since we’d already dismounted to look it over, the LTC figured we could just walk the rest of the way. So we did, spread out over a hundred meters or so, our shooters nearby, and the three MRAPs running mostly parallel to us on the bad guy side.

I’m pretty sure now that “Afghanistan” is local for “Land of Rocks and Thistles”. At least, this part of the country is. Lots of black, heavily fractured, fist sized metamorphic rocks, bedded in sand. The scrubby little plants were all thorny or thistly, and seemed to be doing their best to keep from being eaten. I spied a couple of small, very quick footed lizards, and quite a few locusts, but that was it for indigenous life.

Onward we trudged through this landscape, trying to identify from the satellite image we had which rolling ridge was the one we were supposed to be observing. About two miles later, we think we had the downwind terminus identified. The intervening distance was more rocks and thistles, rolling over minor ridges and through dry wadis and drainageways, with 15 to 20 meters differences between the tops and bottoms.

As the sun rose higher towards midday, the forty pounds of Kevlar and ceramic plates I was wearing were starting to remind me of their mass, and the thin air at this elevation was jabbing me in the chest. I looked around at my shooters, wearing not only gear similar to mine, but a weapon or two, 180 additional rounds for their M-4s, at least two spare magazines for their M-9s, plus radios, knives, first aid, and whatever other kit gets strapped to their vests or crammed into cargo pockets, plus the additional burden of making sure I didn’t get whacked. I felt lighter already.

Across one broad valley were a half dozen Bedouin tents – large, white, multi-poled structures right out of history. From the scat and evidence of very selective browsing, I wasn’t surprised when we encountered one of the Bedouin goatherds, pushing a few score of mostly black, long haired animals through his historic grazing lands – lands that will be fully within the FOB perimeter within a couple of years. The LT gave the goatherd a bottle of water and the two groups passed without a word.

Eventually, we identified our ridge, using physical features compared to an older satellite image we carried with us. Unfortunately, the site’s not flat (as it looks from space and later on a piece of paper), but continues the rolling terrain predominant through our hike so far. This condition will undoubtedly increase project costs, but probably not beyond a point where we wouldn’t build the facility.
Whenever we’d stop to confer on the map or conditions, the group would naturally clump much closer together. Standing still in a large group on top of a ridge made us an obvious target for anyone who might have less than honorable intentions, so we tried to minimize our time in this configuration and weren’t particularly surprised when we heard the rocket attack.

However, if they were aiming at us, fully exposed on open ground, their aim still sucks, as the plume came from well inside the base, and we were – safely – outside. Regardless, we hustled back to the relative shelter of the MRAPs as the second and third rockets hit, then waited for the all clear from base operations, not occurring until after the local battery let loose a small flurry of artillery to squelch the local impertinence.

Back in the MRAPs, the air conditioning was cranked and, since the past three or four miles looked the same, our assumption was that the remaining mile would look the same, and our boots were no longer required on the ground. We drove back via the last mile of potential runway, then back to the base for more hydration.

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Approaching the Wire

Big submittal tomorrow. Our estimated costs are due for the mess of projects that we’re working on. Not that there’s that much pressure on us, except for the occasional early request for cost data on the fuel systems. [They’re high, by the way, as expected.] It’s all been rather lax since the start, and I’m pretty sure my electrical is feeling a little guilty collecting the paycheck.

I’m pretty good with it, actually.


I mean, we are sent into harm’s way, to do everything we’ve been contracted to do while we’re here. That we are more efficient that the government imagined is their problem as far as the budget goes. That we have little to keep us occupied is my problem, or will be my problem for the next week.

I suppose I can walk the perimeter a couple of times – it’s a popular running loop for the masochistically inclined, some three miles around with three or four hundred feet of vertical. I’m already trying the sleeping in thing, and can now make it all the way to 0530. I’m on my fourth book, and ninth missive. I’ve updated my resume, planned a couple of rides, and have reorganized iTunes. I’ve shopped at the PX, eaten at the DFAC, and visited the KBR barber. There’s little left once the work is done.

Last night, I joined our three Air Force minders in some cribbage, which they now play continuously, having even less to do than we do. The First Lieutenant just learned the game, but shows promise. The Captain is good, but out of practice. The Major is a bit of a numbscull.

Once the work is done,… boredom. Waiting to fly.

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Crossing Guard

My rack at Airborne was a military spec cot, essentially a single sheet of fabric stretched super taut across a metal frame. It’s like sleeping on a board, except a board will eventually warm up. The thin material of the cot tends to suck the heat right out of you and, since nighttime temperatures in our 20 man tent at 7,000 feet drop to below fifty, sleep was bad and the back is really responding poorly.


Thankfully, our helicopter arrived on time, so there was no excess waiting in the sun. We loaded quickly, having gotten used to the process, and headed to FOB Shank, where we spent a hour or so standing at the top of a hill looking out at where our project would eventually be constructed. We would have liked to be looking at exactly where the project would eventually be constructed, but we landed on the wrong side of the road, and we would have needed plenty of guns and armor to cross the street.

Looking both ways isn’t sufficient any more, it seems, nor is simply flying our helicopter to the other side of the street. Ah well. After takeoff, we made a slow loop around the project area, and I took another few score of images and a video capture or three. We’ll leave the details to the next outfit.

We shook Shank and made our way back to Sharana, where we’ll stay for the next week or so, before heading back to Bagram and redeploying CONUS. Moments ago, we learned that we’ll have another two days here, and two days less in Bagram, because there’s no room for us in Bagram. Workwise, it should be no problem, as we have better working accommodations here (and my eight step commute can’t be beat).

Interestwise, it’ll suck, as there is little to nothing going on here, and just little going on at BAF.

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What's What

Forty minutes by air from Ghazni, and back up to 7,500 feet is Forward Operating Base Airborne. With barely 400 residents, it is by far the smallest FOB we’ve been on this tour. Tucked into a mountain valley, it’s the most scenic as well.


If Congress says it’s okeydokey, we’ll plant a four place helipad here in FY 2011, and spend around a million and a half Yankee Dollars in the process. Elsewhere, we’re planning a number of C-17 capable runways, which may be downgraded to C-130 capable runways in the future (not that a C-130 runway is any shorter (generally) than a C-17 runway, just that we really don’t have that many C-17’s in theatre). It could be, as well, that we really don’t need that many C-130 runways either, but I’m sure Congress has a handle on that issue.

For this tour, the Team is looking at nine projects totaling just over $110 M. When we responded to the request for qualification, we expected 25 projects, which dropped to 15 by the time we signed a contract, which further dropped to eight by the time we got here, but then we added one more during the first couple of days. For nine. This is just a tenth of what is planned for this very specific pot of money in FY 2011 in the eastern and southern sections of Afghanistan. Naturally, there are all sorts of pots of money, each to be spent on various types of construction, men, and materiel. War ain’t cheap.

Along with the scope reduction was a corresponding schedule change, carving a week off of our stay here. The requirement for a post-tour report was also dropped, so two weeks effort in CONUS has disappeared. So, what would have been productive effort through the middle of next month has now been cut to another week and a half in country, then home. Worst, though, is that the actual deadline for the effort we’re doing is a week before we ship out.

Bottom line: Our last week here will be maddeningly boring.

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Another Day, Another FOB

I expected at least a couple of Polish dishes at Ghazni, but the closest they came were various sausages (patties or links). Perhaps they save the Kielbasas, Pierogis, and other home delicacies for Friday nights, when the other FOBs are serving surf and turf.

Our billet was austere, one quarter of an old brick and mortar structure. Perhaps it was an office or supply area when initially constructed, perhaps by the Soviets. It was subdivided more recently into eight smaller areas with two by fours and plywood, although the walls fail to reach the ceiling by a couple of feet. Just as well, this saved the subdividers from reworking the lighting, so the previously installed (and existing) fluorescent fixtures shine into all of the rooms. Of course, there’s just one light switch that controls them all.


In other multi-man billets it’s the same problem. How can you tell if you’re the last one needing light? Ultimately, I’ve found that the solution is to read as long as possible, and then listen carefully for loud bitching when I flip the switch off. The best part of this plan is that I get as much light as I need. However, when I get up at 0500, it would be considered quite rude to light up the hooch all at once, so I’m usually gathering essentials in the dark or by flashlight and off to the showers at first light when the crowds aren’t so bad.

The bed itself was a ratty metal bunk (sleep on the bottom, gear on the top). The mattress was actually a well used box spring, that wouldn’t quite fit the frame due to some of the supporting metal. At least it wasn’t too creaky, so I didn’t worry about waking up the rest of the building, when I got up at 0500 to start my day.
At Ghanzi, the showers were adequate. Good pressure. Plenty of hot water. Galvanized walls and slatted wooden floor. Nothing remarkable, really (besides those last remarks). No, the toilets were remarkable. As you shall soon find out.
Immediately inside the shower curtain door of the stall is the first step.

Seriously. Users have to step up to approach the toilet. It’s not a big step. Actually, it’s on the narrow side, much less than the length of a foot, and difficult to maneuver while scrambling up the second stair. On this raised platform then, atop the second stair, sits the throne, the front edge aligned with the edge of the step so that, when seated, forward legs would find themselves eight inches below a normal floor elevation. However, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from disgraced former U.S. Senator Larry Craig, it’s the Wide Stance. Only now do I understand why he would need such a posture.

Except for the gay bathroom sex thing.


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Short Trips

About forty minutes from Sharana and 400 feet lower lies Forward Operating Base Ghazni. I’d like to buy a t-shirt to commemorate this place, but it’s so small, there’s not even a PX, just a very small Hadji Mart where I could buy another toothbrush if I was so inclined and, since I brought a spare and also got a nice one from the bathroom of the hotel in Dubai, I won’t be indulging.


Small to be sure, and totally Polish. Well, more than half Polish, with a squadron of attack helicopters and a good sized fleet of Strykers. The balance is American, with a lot of kids from various locations in Illinois, presumably with a shared Polish heritage. We’re here to give them a huge new runway to land coalition C-130’s although, with most of the projects the team is working on, the work is so far in the future. Peace could break out before we break ground.

You’d like to hope so. I’d like to hope so, but the activity former known as the Global War on Terror (now: Overseas Contingency Operations) is in full swing here, evidenced by the boneyards of broken, bashed and blasted Strykers that fill a large storage yard here, as well as hundreds of mangled Humvees, MRAPs, Bradleys and whatever else we put on Afghanistans roads in our effort to do whatever it is we Mission Accomplished how many years ago?

This afternoon, while the Polish Command Master Sergeant was showing us a couple of acronyms around the base perimeter, a large and distant boom could be heard to the north, towards the town. Apparently, some martyr thought it was time to see Allah, and blew up a market, killing who knows how many countrymen, maiming and wounding others beyond repair.

Some time later, while outside an adjacent building with my electrical tracking down some aerial data, a half dozen casualties arrived for treatment at the base medical facilities, blowed into smaller pieces than they were when they started the day. Surprisingly little blood on those that made it this far, and more burns and dangly bits than I would have initially expected.
Strangely disturbing.

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… but you wouldn’t want to live here

There’s a certain something about the Forward Operating Base at Sharana worth mentioning. It’s nearly 7,500 feet above the level of the sea. “Big whoop”, you might opine. Then again, you might have spent your entire life under 1,100 feet, in which case you might state, “I’m nauseous, my large muscles and joints hurt like the bajesus, and my headache is one for the record books.”

Fortunately, the adverse effects fade after a day or two, just in time to head to some base at a lower altitude. After two days, the head only hurts a little bit, but I’m still easily winded.


The Company submitted a proposal recently (upon which I refused to be a part) that would have embedded a multidiscipline design team here for three to (more likely) fifteen months. Fortunately, because I know most of the team as friends, we did not get the work. FOB Sharana is perched on a swath of high ground outside of the city/town/goat cluster of Sharana, a locality where we have failed to win hearts and minds very badly – hence our need to maintain a military presence here.

The surrounding landscape is rugged, and reminds me of parts of Wyoming. At this altitude, it’s barren, nicely devoid of humidity, but of most everything else as well. What remains is brown and rocky, except the dust, which is brown and dusty, or the people, who are just dusty. The PX is understocked, the MWR tent is tiny, there’s little to no connectivity, and the chow isn’t the best. I imagine free time during a long assignment here would be spent in a CONEX hooch watching video, reading everything in sight, and hanging out at the gym. I’d image the best approach would be to work incessantly, as I makes the days pass much faster.

There’s an airfield here that we’re working to improve, provided you consider landing C-17’s on a steep uphill slope an improvement, but most of the personnel (and missions) seem to be directed with the MRAPs. There’re 25 kilopound monsters that patrol this part of the country in packs. Sort of impressive in their hugeness, but really aggressive looking.

If you were to be assigned here for a year or so, it’s likely that you’d get more than a few rides in one, as they’re probably the safest way to visit the countryside.
Other than that bit-o-fun, an extended tour here would require something from deep inside, and a lot more cash than they were offering.

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If man were meant to fly he’d have wings

When we aren’t walking, we move around by helicopter. That we actually have dedicated air services is of immense relief, in that we now do not have to fly stand by, or first available, or not fly at all, which was the case in Kandahar. Having transportation allows the team to get our boots on the ground at the various forward operating bases and project sites. Hopefully, getting a first hand view of the varied locations will allow for better planning and better outcomes.

We’ll see.


For now, I’m just enjoying the rides. We been using a Russian bird (an MI-8), belonging to the Columbian Air Force, lease by a U.S. company, with security provided by the Australians. It’s a bit confusing, but not so much considering the coalition/contractor approach to the OEF. All one really needs to remember is to bring your ear plugs. These helos are very loud.

They aren’t particularly uncomfortable, provided there’re not too many people or too much stuff on the flight. Base crew is three up front, doing piloty stuff, then a crew chief and load master in the large cargo area doubling as shooters. For us, we’re just more cargo, although we do unload ourselves. If there were only passengers on board, maybe a dozen and half would fit. Fold down benches line the fuselage, and it’s really not clear where the individual seats are delineated, you just toss your gear down the center of the floor and look for a couple of interconnecting seat belt ends.

These types of helicopter flights in theatre are unpressurized, and the doors are cracked and windows opened, allowing a nice breeze to flow through the cabin. At flight altitude, it’s nicely cool, in stark contrast to the ground.

Our flight from Jalalabad to Sharana was to have picked us up at the undeveloped end of the airfield at 0740, but didn’t hit the ground until almost 1130, then needing refueling which took another half hour before we could board. We spent the intervening time standing on a gravel landing zone, under the single scragglyass tree, as temperatures lifted easily into the triple digits. Needless to write, we were all on the dehydrated side by the time we landed which is, I’m sure, in the most middle of nothing place I’ve ever been to.

We’ll move around a bit more before we’re done with this work, and a couple of us are hoping for Blackhawk rides instead of these more sedate commuter flights. Time will tell.

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Exit the Haze

After several days of dense haze and high winds, the morning light brought clear skies. Through them, I’ve finally noticed that there are mountains in Afghanland. Go figure. Through the haze, largely dust and humidity, all I could glimpse was a shadow, perhaps miles away, perhaps just outside the wire.


With the change in weather came the change in perspective. Bagram Airfield is located on a high plain surrounded by mountains. They’re probably 10 to 20 miles away, and the height is indeterminant. There’s snow on them, though, even in the middle of a hot July. There are numerous ranges as well, two or three lining up behind the closest rocks.

The snow looks nice and cool, a drastic change from the triple digit highs and uber-humidity that hit here every afternoon. Our poor split unit air conditioner cranks all day, but can’t get the room down to the requested 21 degrees during the day. Sometime in the middle of the night, though, it finally catches up, gradually freezing we B-hut inhabitants by morning, only to fall behind the cooling ball early the next day. You’d like to feel sorry for the poor, overworked split unit, but try to remember that it’s just a machine, and they have yet to take over the planet.

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'Leepy

Staring at the bottom of the rack above me, I pondered the numerous other beds I’ve taken over the years. From many of them, I’ve stared into the space above, working on thinking about nothing, which usually immediately precedes the eye closing and the sleeping – except when I’m nine and a half time zones away from home and I can’t sleep, then I spend some time thinking about other beds, or at least I did last night.


There was the 200 person RSOI tent at Kandahar this last spring, where the creaking of a hundred shaky cots caused by the unstable repose of my roommates and the roar of the adjacent runway made sleep neigh unto impossible. Fortunately, it was just for one night. A little smaller was the One Hundred Man Hallway at Saddam’s palace in the Green Zone. There, 95 of the residents could have qualified for a Triple A snoring squad, and the marble floors, walls, and ceiling did nothing to diminish the sound. I suppose I spent nearly two months in those conditions.

After the noisy hallway, we moved to the Six Man Closet, which reverted to a closet again once we got kicked out of it and kicked into our four man hooches. I think the heavy old canvas tents we used at Norway Lake all those summers ago were also four man, or four Scout, not particularly large or comfortable, but providing some shelter from the Upper Peninsular weather.

For a three person space, my first dorm in Friley Hall, where Bryan and I processed new roommates with ever decreasing duration. Our place on Kellogg worked for three as well. For two, there was the second dorm room in Friley, the one we spent a semester getting kicked out of, and Miss Liberty, the trailer I shared on Lincoln Swing.

Of course, the houses and apartments in Iowa, Jamaica, and Minnesota were (and are) all very pleasantly two person, and much more generously sized. Rooms sized for one include more hotel and motel rooms than I could shake a stick made out of rewards points at, from four stars and above to one star and below. I’ll always prefer a tent in the woods somewhere to a hotel in some faceless city.

For now, home is a B-Hut sized for twelve, although only six live there now, using the top bunks for gear. Imagine living in a garden shed located between the highway and the airport, and you’ll have some idea what it’s like. Uninsulated two by fours and plywood construction, one big room with a single door towards the street. There might have been a window at some point, but I think it’s been boarded over.

Besides, time spent there is best spent sleeping, so the less light, the better. We’re going to be moving through a number of bases over the next few weeks and my guess is that our B-Hut will seem luxurious compared to some of the future accommodations.

There were more, I’m sure. Other shared hotel rooms, the cabin at various times of the year, family and friends houses, crammed onto an aircraft, sleeping on the dirt. Fifteen thousand nights had to be spent somewhere. The next twenty get spent in Afghanistan.

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Trading and traders

Sitting in my Spartan room at the Dubai Traders Hotel, watching the clock spin towards midnight and knowing that the 0500 wake up call will call regardless of if I've had enough sleep. Why should the phone care, really? I've questioned if I should set a supplemental alarm as back-up, and probably will, but hesitate to do so because I haven't used an alarm since I got back from here the last time. Usually, I just wake up.

But then, unlike now, there was no plane to catch that would drop me into Bagram Airfield, and I really can't miss thast flight, as there won't be another for three or four days. Why there aren't hourly flights is beyond me. Really, doesn;t everyone want to go to the beach in the summertime?

I suppose having the sea near by is a plus for all of the other beaches. Not for me though. This will be another whirlwind tour of continuous 12 hour days (half time, if I haven't mentioned it before). By the end of it, we'll have scoped another few hundred million dollars of military support facilities. I guess we must be pretty good at it, or they wouldn't keep asking us back.

For now, it's a new hotel with a plethora of new plumbing fixtures and light switches and outlet configurations. At least I got the network cable figured out. With that success, I'll call it a day.
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Soap Box

Oh Five Hundred and watching the jets depart and getting more confident and anxious all the time that I'll soon be gone.

And the clock ticks - tick tick tick tick tick tick.


Mom writes (in part): "late last night I finished "Three Cups of Tea", where Greg Mortenson just agreed to bring his schools plus projects into Afghanastan. I urge you all to read this book if you haven't already. Next to Michner's "Caravan", this is probably one of the best books to describe this area of the world.

And continues: "How truly awful it is that governments reneg on promises to the people for such basics as schools, pencils and paper and most of all, developing a trust and yet spend willy nilly on constructions of agrandizement. This is not to say that housing, mess halls and aid stations are not critical if we have troops in place. But all the US promises of aid for the citizens have never materialized -- nor have the local governments' promises.

That is truly the largest difference I've seen here in my comparatively brief stay. My work here is completely military in nature, improvements to either support the mission or to support the troops. I haven't seen any of the more humanitarian projects that I'd seen in Southwest Asia. Perhaps they're there. What is somewhat likely is that there is no organized national infrastructure to reconstruct here, so the people projects are smaller in nature and located in the thousands of tiny villages scattered throughout the country.

Or perhaps all of our funding is going to support the war machine - a fine example of our government reneging on promises to us. Even in Iraq, where we spent $50 Billion on Reconstruction, we still spent a Trillion on the war. With that money, we could have moved every Iraqi into a nice foreclosure somewhere in Southern California. We could do the same thing here - place every Afghani on the U.S. Government dole and call it a day.

Then go home.
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Room for the next guy

Down to the hours, now, and not a moment too soon. The Marines are here, you see, and there’s not much room for anyone else. Since the second night, we’ve been in this pre-engineered metal building towards the center of things. It a simple building, with fourteen rooms in a row and latrines on each end. Much nicer than a tent.

The first week we were in it, “they” started to tear out the bedroom furniture in one of the rooms down the hall. Much banging and dust later, they had installed desks and fiber and copper and coaxial cabling and turned it into an office. After one was complete, they move to the next, then the next, then the next, to the point where the last stick of furniture was removed from the third to last room this morning, leaving our two hooches as the only ones left to be assimilated.


This afternoon, we got the “get the hell out” note slipped under our door. I suppose they waited long enough. We’re just hoping our flight leave as planned, as we’d have to bunk back in the RSOI tent if things don’t go as planned.

And they might. Who knows? A British Harrier aborted a landing the other day and fell onto the runway, apparently causing a bit of a mess of mechanical parts and metal pieces and a few unexploded bombs and missiles. The pilot escaped minimally scathed. Unfortunate result, though, was that runway was closed for a while and the other half of our minders, the soon to retire Light Colonel, was forced to stick around another day.

What was cool was that they took all the damaged boomy stuff out to the desert and blew it up, which makes a huge cloud and big noise you could see and hear from most any place. By late yesterday, air operations seemed to normalize, so we’re somewhat confident that planes will depart from Kandahar tomorrow. I even sent one of my boys to the flight office this afternoon to make sure, and emailed the folks in charge of the airline.

My intent is to leave, get to Dubai, and have about ten hours of beer. A simple plan, really, but hinging on circumstances beyond my control.

For instance, the force posture changed this afternoon, there were detailed tests of the Big Voice, and folks started dragging out their vests and helmets. I found a Major we know near the Dutch Café who verified the situation and suggested that we get out of town as soon as possible.

Well, of course, we’ll get out of town as soon as possible, just as soon as the plane gets off of the ground.

In the mean time, I’m thinking it’s all a drill. Yesterday we had a Lieutenant General in the non-office hooch across the parking lot. He could have been staying in the same hooch as Toby Keith, Ann Curry, or Tommy LaSorda did when they were in town last month – not to imply that Toby Keith, Ann Curry, and Tommy LaSorda stayed in the same room, but this is the internet, so it must be true.

Our neighbours, it seems, are commonly VIPs, since these are the VIP digs at Kandahar (those that aren’t offices). The SECDEF was here last week, too, on his way (perhaps) to fire the general who used to run the show here. This Three Star wasn’t the new Afghanistan Commander, but he (LTG Sam Helland), is the Commander of U.S. Marine Corps Forces in the Central Command and the Commanding General of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force (I looked it up). That seems pretty huge. Yet there he sat, on a picnic table at the KAF, thinking commanding thoughts no doubt.

I was headed to the laundry, thinking laundry thoughts.

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Turn to the Left

Again, down to a mere handful of days before redeployment. Probably a good time to stop and reflect, but I’m still working twelves and free time isn’t so plentiful. There’s snippets here and there, including the few minutes after an email session between when I’m done with my business and my coworkers are ready to head to chow, just like this one.

For this twice daily task, we’ve ensconced ourselves this evening in the Dutch Café, mostly because it’s freaking one freaking hund-freak-red and freaking four degre-freaking-es outside, and we just walked forty minutes from our office/conference room. Secondarily, because they serve very cold fake beer here and, like much of Kandahar, it reminds me of something much better at some other time in a much better place.



This is my Happy Place exercise. For instance, the other night, the Superior roast beast was a little on the dry and uninteresting side, yet it reminded me of some very tasty pot roasts of my youth. One more? The Chilled Tea we get some nights is overly lemoned and rapidly sweetened, but it reminds me of rides through the South and one particular little barbeque shack in the shade. Again?

Well, it’s really just a food thing. The dust and rocks and smell of the sewage mistreatment pond don’t remind me of better rocks and dust and shit. The rows and rows of military hardware don’t remind me of softer and happier wars. And the thousands of armed men and women trooping about don’t remind me of the happy Midwesterners I left behind,… or do they?

In Iraq, it was pretty easy to know what side folks were on. Soldiers in uniforms carried weapons, civilians did not (at least, not openly). Here, U.S. servicemen and servicewomen are always in uniform (even the Physical Training, or PT, togs are uniform), and they always carry their weapons. However, the KAF is a NATO base, which means that there’s Canadian and Britons and Bulgarians and Romanians and Germans and a few more and the damned Dutch, and they are all pretty lax when it comes to uniformity.

On duty, NATO forces don their uniforms and weapons. Off duty, though, there seem to be no such requirements, so it’s not uncommon to see a group of dudes in board shorts and logo T’s sporting assault rifles and packing 9’s in thigh holsters. It’s like going to the gun range on amateur night, and a little disconcerting.

When in street clothes, there oftentimes appears the need to let one’s true identity come out. There’s some rebellion against the uniform in place. Hence the surfing gear, or brightly colored blouses, or Hawaiian shirts. They should just find holsters to match their madras.

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Twitter

I’ve moved my morning campsite recently, north a hundred meters from where I used to spend the predawn hour and the hour that follows, in an attempt to get a better connection. I’ve given up on the free WiFi altogether, as I’ve experienced nothing but frustration with it of late. I’m pretty sure it’s as a direct result of Nu Surge ™, as hundreds of troops are arriving daily and all of them need to update their Facebooks and video Skype their loved ones.

Further down the boardwalk puts me closer to the source of DutchNet, away from the crowds at Tim Hortons, and separated from those who feel obligated to ask when Tim Hortons opens. Every day, though, and it was starting to get annoying – the continued requests for opening hours, plus the queries into how I seem to have a connection while they are struggling with FreedomTel.

This is better. There’s half of a picnic table (someone sawed off the other bench and nailed what’s left to the interior Boardwalk handrail) and barely adequate light coming from one of the few working solar street lamps and the security lights from the Subway.

Ra makes his appearance from across the square, so I get a fresh sunrise every day. With all of the dust, you’d think they’d be more colorful, but you’d be mistaken. As the gloom departs, more of the little local birds start their day, picking up the orts and pieces of whatever that the humans deposit through their own cycle. I wouldn’t peck at the ground for these morsels, but the birds seem to enjoy it.

This morning, it’s mostly little sparrows, with mottled brown and tan feathers, light tan breasts, underbellies, and collars. They flock when there’s a particularly large cache of food, but they’re mostly loaners. There’s a few light brown doves this morning as well, and a couple of small, blue headed dudes who stay clear of the loudly typing human. Here and there are other species that look like black and white Jays, some smaller stilts, some high flying swallows and a few more that are hard to distinguish. In a brown desert, most of the birds are brown, and there’s not that many of them.

In the early dark, the songbirds hang in the few trees that survive at the KAF and make a ruckus. A nice ruckus, really, and besides my footfalls, the only sound I hear for my first long walk of the day.

In a meeting the other day, some blowhard consultant embedded into the Air Force instructed us very adamantly that we would need to enclose our solid waste tipping/sorting floor. Apparently, God himself spoke though him, and we would provide doors around the entire facility to control bird populations. He believed that huge flocks of little birds would flock to our recycling area, followed by vast numbers of crows, which would then draw raptors to feed upon this tremendous bird population. The raptors, in turn, would fly two miles from their new food source and get sucked through jet engines.

Maybe. It just occurred to me that perhaps the small number of birds already scavenging off of our largely unexposed dumpsters at every DFAC at the KAF would somehow be indicative of the current trend in bird populations, and that it really wouldn’t be much of a problem. At least, not much more of a problem than we currently have, which is on the slightly more than zero side.

So the other night, at a briefing about our proposed airfield work, I asked the Colonel who operates the US side of the airfield if he felt that this bird thing was going to be an issue. He laughed, which apparently did not sit well with the Major apologist to the blowhard consultant. He later huffed, “there’s lots of opinions out there.”

I thought of telling him that the only bird problem he had was sitting on the colonel’s lapel, but thought better of it. The Major still owes me some data and, although he may end up giving me the Heisman, I’ll try to behave for another day or two in hopes that he comes through.

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Twitter

I’ve moved my morning campsite recently, north a hundred meters from where I used to spend the predawn hour and the hour that follows, in an attempt to get a better connection. I’ve given up on the free WiFi altogether, as I’ve experienced nothing but frustration with it of late. I’m pretty sure it’s as a direct result of Nu Surge ™, as hundreds of troops are arriving daily and all of them need to update their Facebooks and video Skype their loved ones.

Further down the boardwalk puts me closer to the source of DutchNet, away from the crowds at Tim Hortons, and separated from those who feel obligated to ask when Tim Hortons opens. Every day, though, and it was starting to get annoying – the continued requests for opening hours, plus the queries into how I seem to have a connection while they are struggling with FreedomTel.


This is better. There’s half of a picnic table (someone sawed off the other bench and nailed what’s left to the interior Boardwalk handrail) and barely adequate light coming from one of the few working solar street lamps and the security lights from the Subway.

Ra makes his appearance from across the square, so I get a fresh sunrise every day. With all of the dust, you’d think they’d be more colorful, but you’d be mistaken. As the gloom departs, more of the little local birds start their day, picking up the orts and pieces of whatever that the humans deposit through their own cycle. I wouldn’t peck at the ground for these morsels, but the birds seem to enjoy it.

This morning, it’s mostly little sparrows, with mottled brown and tan feathers, light tan breasts, underbellies, and collars. They flock when there’s a particularly large cache of food, but they’re mostly loaners. There’s a few light brown doves this morning as well, and a couple of small, blue headed dudes who stay clear of the loudly typing human. Here and there are other species that look like black and white Jays, some smaller stilts, some high flying swallows and a few more that are hard to distinguish. In a brown desert, most of the birds are brown, and there’s not that many of them.

In the early dark, the songbirds hang in the few trees that survive at the KAF and make a ruckus. A nice ruckus, really, and besides my footfalls, the only sound I hear for my first long walk of the day.

In a meeting the other day, some blowhard consultant embedded into the Air Force instructed us very adamantly that we would need to enclose our solid waste tipping/sorting floor. Apparently, God himself spoke though him, and we would provide doors around the entire facility to control bird populations. He believed that huge flocks of little birds would flock to our recycling area, followed by vast numbers of crows, which would then draw raptors to feed upon this tremendous bird population. The raptors, in turn, would fly two miles from their new food source and get sucked through jet engines.

Maybe. It just occurred to me that perhaps the small number of birds already scavenging off of our largely unexposed dumpsters at every DFAC at the KAF would somehow be indicative of the current trend in bird populations, and that it really wouldn’t be much of a problem. At least, not much more of a problem than we currently have, which is on the slightly more than zero side.

So the other night, at a briefing about our proposed airfield work, I asked the Colonel who operates the US side of the airfield if he felt that this bird thing was going to be an issue. He laughed, which apparently did not sit well with the Major apologist to the blowhard consultant. He later huffed, “there’s lots of opinions out there.”

I thought of telling him that the only bird problem he had was sitting on the colonel’s lapel, but thought better of it. The Major still owes me some data and, although he may end up giving me the Heisman, I’ll try to behave for another day or two in hopes that he comes through.

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View to a Hill

I never did make it out to a FOB. Two of my boys did, but just barely, then they got stranded there overnight while negotiating a return flight. And the rest of the team? Caught in Detention (our term of endearment for our austere wooden conference room at the edge of the base). I’d still like to see something outside of our camp here, but duties call, so my only exterior view will be through the perimeter fence.

If I want the view, all I need to do is walk up to the fence and look out. There’s no sniper screening on most of it. There’s only one layer of fence. There’s electronics associated with the fence, of course, but it seems like such a fragile thing, this single chain link fence, that separates me from the rest of Afghanistan.


Kandahar Airfield is a dust bowl, with more rocks than you can shake a gazillion sticks at. Much of the outside, though, when you don’t look south towards the desert, is irrigated and green. There’s water here, but it’s all underground, and takes some effort to bring it to the land. There’s mountains out there, too, but they are miles away and only on the rare clear days can you see much detail with the naked eye.

The biggest one, or perhaps just the closest one, lies to the northwest. You can see it from most anywhere on the camp. Likewise, someone on the mountain can probably see most of the camp. With such a vantage point, it seems a shame not to launch a few missiles from there.

So they do. Two or three times a week. After they hit, the Giant Voice activates, and we go back to sleep. I suppose that should be “after *it* hits”, as there’s never more than one projectile, and the attack is over before the Big Voice even clears its throat. As I’ve seen before, the Bad Guy’s aim is pretty bad. They use cobbled systems, and Gerry rigged timers to send a lot of duds this way. The ones that actually blow up impact randomly across the camp.

So, assuming 2,000 square meters of destruction (about a 50 meter circle), about 14 square kilometers of base and 2.5 attacks per week (one of which actually blows up), my odds of being in the wrong place at the wrong time is about 1 in 50,000 on any particular day. Probably worse than getting whacked in a car crash, but less likely than being bored by something surfed through randomly on commercial televasion.

That’s not the point, just a digression. The point was that I can walk up to the single chain link fence (with associated electronics) and look at Afghanistan. I can drive across the tarmac at numerous locations (if they’d let me borrow the car) with only a “Mandatory FOD Check” sign to keep me in line. I can walk deep into operations buildings without anyone checking to see who I am. In fact, the only time I’ve ever needed to show my identification since I arrived is to enter the local trinket bazaar the base hosts every Saturday morning.

Surreal as ever.

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Canook Chinook

Suspended over Afghanland on six fragile rotor blades, I thought the rotors seems miscoordinated, then felt a new shimmy, and noticed hydraulic fluid flowing through the padded ceiling at the back of the aircraft, despoiling the uniformed men and material who were crammed into the cramped cabin beneath.

Remember the training, I thought to myself. It was brief, as the bird was damned loud. Besides, the flight crew would take care of any bad guys (there was nothing an unarmed civilian could do anyway, besides spew curses). “Keep your feet flat on the floor in front of you,” they said, “and not bent under the seat. In case we come in for a hard landing, you don’t want to break your legs.”


On paper, it all sounds easy enough – get off a plane in Kandahar, get inundated with information by stakeholders who need additional facilities, develop a comprehensive solution, and write a big report. This has been our experience on past missions, so how hard could it possibly be?

Where do I start?

Probably shortly after the moment we touched down, when we discovered that our ride was no where to be found and we ended up billeted in the RSOI tent. From that point, it’s been continuous to some degree up to and including this morning.

You see, our work here will plan facilities for not only the Kandahar Air Field, but also for five of what are called Forward Operating Bases, or FOBs. These FOBs are scattered across Afghanland. You can reach them by ground transportation, but they say it’s better to fly, mostly because it’s safer to fly and, in theory at least, it takes less time. Maybe hypothesis is a better term, as I’m not sure if the “Faster Transportation through Air Travel Theory” has ever been proven.

Setting foot on these other bases is on the important side of our mission here. With boots on the ground, we can discover much more about any site than we can in a briefing, or in someone else’s report on a place. To our detriment, we have had neither briefing or report on these FOBs, so the *only* way we were going to collect data was to go there and collect it ourselves. If we were successful, we would learn site and base specific information such as the placement and capacity of local utilities, the amount of stuff that has to be moved or demolished to use the site, and how our proposed usage coexists with the neighbors.

We’d take some pictures, of course, to show to the folks at KAF and slap into the report. [Reports love pictures. In fact, I’m pretty sure we can boost our grade from a B+ to an A- just by inserting a few good pictures. Then, after we load the charts and graphs,… Extra Credit, Baby!]

So, armed with an Electrical and a Wet Civil, I waited patiently outside of the hooch in the early morning light for our ride to the Whiskey Ramp, where we’d find our helicopter. Our Colonel did the driving, and only had to turn around twice, exuding confidence in his passengers. Our Captain, who arranged for this flight and would be joining us, only had the slightest clue as to where we were headed. There was plenty of exuding by the time we got dropped of at the wrong tent. It’s a good thing I insisted that we leave early.

What we thought was the “correct” tent, was actually another wrong tent and, after spending a half hour or so doing nothing, we boarded a Coaster Bus and headed to Whiskey Ramp, me wondering the entire time where we might have actually been all the while we thought we were at Whiskey Ramp. Likely at some other named alphabetical location, like Charlie or Foxtrot, or Has the Captain a Clue? I mean, he coordinated this bird ride. Shouldn’t he know where we’re supposed to be?

The bus soon dropped us off at another ramp, where there were a half dozen Chinooks and a few hundred PAX (as we passengers are called) standing by. There we stood, and stood, all the time the day heating up. All the time wearing our Kevlar hats and ballistic vests, waiting for our orders to gear up and load the helo. Finally, this order came, and we trooped single file onto the expeditionary level apron and up the ramp, past the machine gun, and into the back of our transport. There, we sat along the fuselage, shoulder to shoulder, perhaps forty of us, with our gear piled up to eye level on the floor between the two rows.

Spirits were high as we began the taxi. We were already late in our scheduled departure and still needed to make two somewhat hot stops on our way to our destination. Once my team got there, we’d have about two hours to kick rocks and root around before we had to be checked in for the return flight. There was plenty of air rushing through the cabin between the open gunnery doors to the front and the back door, which remained open during the taxi. We smiled and took a few pictures.

You could hear the motor and rotors whine as they picked up speed and started to lift us up above the airfield. Then the attitude change, then the shimmy, then the fluids, and we dropped about a meter back onto the tarmac with our broken helicopter, limping down the apron to a slow stop. Thus endeth the mission.

We could have taken the spare Chinook, but felt that, due to all of the delays on the departure side, we’d have no time to actually leave the helipad at our destination. We’d collect no data, so why bother? We bummed a ride back to camp from a couple Canadians, then headed to the Dutch Café for lunch and some work.

Tomorrow, we’ll try again.

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Damned Dutch

If asked to judge my favorite shitholes, Kandahar would rank right up there. And it not just the southern breezes from over the sewage lagoon that lead me to that conclusion. No, it’s much more. It’s crappy and sterile all at once. Disciplined yet filled with indiscipline. Great fun one moment and abject boredom the next. Schizophrenic in the mornings and bipolar in the afternoons.

And to make things more interesting, NuSurge ™ will plant another ten to fifteen thousand persons here within the next year, doubling the local population and putting such a strain on the airfield infrastructure that it could collapse at any moment except that the momentum of the mission here just won’t allow it.


The job, then, the challenge, is to keep one step ahead of the imminent failure of this site such that the sites mission, to support the GWOT, is not compromised. It’s all very fast, as the troops are coming, very soon, and they’d better have roads, fuel, housing, dining facilities, waste management, and airfield improvements in place when they get here - and can it be completed yesterday? All told, our mission will provide preliminary designs for worth well over $500 Million at Kandahar Air Field (the KAF) and a few Forward Operating Bases (the FOBs) in the southern region of Afghanland.

This half billion, though, is not alone in its spendiness. The housing projects don’t include the actual housing units, as those are already being manufactured in Italy somewhere. The vehicle maintenance facility doesn’t include any of the tools or equipment. The hospital is a mostly bare shell. Equipping these various structures and sites can easily cost another $200 Million.

And then there’re the NATO and Coalition improvements to the base, as they try to treat the huge volumes of liquid waste that we generate here every day, or successfully route both 50 and 60 Hertz power to the old sections of the base, or to pave a few kilometers of dusty roads (the American Dream).

The result is constant change. Stuff is always being built here. Things are always being moved around to make room for other things. Facilities are enlarged. New facilities are torn out to make room for even newer facilities. It’s necessary, because more people are shipped in by a couple of planeloads each day and it’s not going to stop until we’ve successfully invaded Iran.

Or captured Bin Ladin.

Or something like that.

The rate of change is really impressive, though. Even outside of our Red Horse office, their construction yard morphs every day. In the two or three weeks since we hit the ground, they have encircled their 20 acre site with concertina wire (later adding sniper screening), erected a dozen office tents, drilled a well, completed this building, started another, and filled and refilled the lot with materiel. Every time I take a look outside, I see something different.

On the walk home it’s the same change everywhere, from housing to buildings, to new shops on the Boardwalk and a new NATO gymnasium, to 1,000 more CONEX boxes or another 5,000 feet of T-wall.

Keeping track of the changes isn’t as problematic as describing landmarks affected by it, as the references are in a constant state of flux. “Do you know where the American PX used to be? Well, it’s right behind that.”

The planning types here are in a constant state of war with the war making types, whose blind focus on expediency is the probable cause of a number of these problems. With the base growing so fast, command has never justified the time required to plan, and facilities just spring from the earth wherever makes sense at the moment. Planners get steamed, and then they stop caring, and master plans never get developed nor updated

It’s one of our frustrations, and another we can blame on the Dutch. I’m not particularly sure why they get the blame, but they do, so what the heck.

I’m sure the dust is their fault, too.

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Fly Killas

In our last episode, our hero was stymied by the client’s decision to sent one of our group CONUS. Despite the reasons that he may have done this, or the reasons the Company may have allowed it, it turns out that this member was our in-country Project Manager.

Hence, we’re leaderless. The proverbial ship without a tiller, rack without the pinion, state without the head, evening news without the anchor, shoes without the laces, snickered without the doodle, and somewhat annoyed and analogyless.


Some might ask, “what the fuck?” but I’m trying not to curse so much.

In the interest of avoiding my own conniption fit, I’ll skip the fetid meat of the matter and skip towards the bottom line. That being we needed a leader and nobody volunteered.

We have a few qualified candidates here – project managers, folks who know the type of report we’re writing, those with military construction and service experience – but each had enough experience with our client, and just in the first few days, to not want to be his primary POC, and ultimately be responsible for this flaming turd.

As for me, I was really hoping to play second oud on this job, but expediency finally convinced me to step to the fore and accept the role of “Project Leading”. Some day, the Company may assign the “Lead” role to me, but until then, I’m just leading.

I guess it’s something to do and, short of work, there’s little of interest at the KAF. Of course, I get haircuts whenever I can, mostly to enbjoy the smallest measure of human contact, even if that contact is by a gold toothed Slav who prattles on and on and on with her workmates, but those are just once a week. I read some, and walk about, and visit the British Gym most nights, where the guy on the bike next to me last night, if dressed in vinyl clothes would have looked just like “the only gay in the village.” I was amused, but that’s how I roll.

At work, we're in this stick constructed plywood box out in what they call "South Park", an exurb to the KAF. When we first got here, the unit who owns the place (Air Force's Red Horse) was still working on it, so open doors and windows brought in a ton of flies. As such, we keep busy with the two swatters in close reach on the conference room table to whack the buggers, sometimes killing three score or more in a day. With our eradication process advancing, construction complete and the air conditioner finally working, we're only killing a dozen or so each day these days, but were still at it.

Fly killing is our calling. Fly killers is who we are. Fly Killas is how we roll.

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