C'mon, people now,...

I hang a map of Afghanistan in my office at home, decorated with small yellow flags indicating the varying locations where I’ve got my boots dusty. In the past fifteen months, I’ve collected close to a score of little yellow flags, this past week adding one more at Kabul. Despite seeing large portions of the eastern side of this country, my tours have been largely by air, and our ride in from the airport was one of very few times that I’ve been over the wire on the ground.

At Sharana, we took an exciting MRAP ride through an adjacent scrub goat pasture to site an airstrip. At Mazar E Sharif, our private security force took us halfway around the perimeter into the proposed base expansion area. At Kunduz, we trekked a few miles through secure grounds to visit a local ANA compound. During that solo week at Kandahar, my twice daily commute was from the ANA Special Forces base into the airfield.

At Kabul, though, we deplaned at the Kabul International Airport, or KIA (irony or sick joke – I can’t be sure), with half a plane load of citizens and other contractors. We used the “new” terminal which looked old, despite having been built since the invasion, and cruised through immigration and customs, before finding some seats on the arrival hall, where we waited for our PSDs to give us a lift to the FOB. It’s not really a FOB. Certainly more FOB than COB, but the Kabul Consolidated Compound (KCC, or sometimes the New Kabul Compound (NKC)) is what we call “enduring” meaning, it’s going to be here for a long, long time.

I won’t. By the time we hit the ground, we were already into single digits before we split. This is a rapid fire, preliminary design effort. Simply drop out of the sky, scoop up as much data as possible, interview anyone who gets in the way, and find the next Kam Air flight out of Dodge. Piece of cake. It’s only Afghanistan, and this is my fifth trip here, so I think I’m getting good at this.

Still, though, bags can get lost. Tim lost his flying in. Rather a PITA, considering he had some tools and measuring devices packed away that were a requirement for the successful completion of his various tasks. Ultimately, he found his black Samsonite rollaway sitting next to the belt, along with all of the other black Samsonite rollaways. Let that be a lesson – or not. If you still have a black Samsonite rollaway, there’s no hope for you and your bag should get lost.

The loss of tools would have been a shame, though, as it would have made the job much more difficult. Despite their utility, these were on the heavy side, and we fully expected to be paying a few hundred dollars to the excess baggage fee fairies. On a lark, I thought I’d ask for “consideration”, literally, and surprisingly received it. I didn’t see a tip jar or anything, just left the agent with my thanks.

To my chagrin, the KAM Air flight from Dubai to Kabul departs at 0240, when the airport, much to my further vexation, was packed to the gills. The flight, though, was at about 60%, leading me to believe that not everyone wants to fly into Kabul, and for good reason, one of which is that the mens’ room floor is surfaced with some open cell, porous material, like a sheet of spun geotextile, instead of the more usual (and infinitely more sanitary) terrazzo. Icky bubba.

Anyway,… the ride to the camp was short and uneventful, despite our route on public roads though not quite teeming hoards of Afghanis. They were busy, of course, with their own lives, uninterested in the ramblings of some gringo engineer.