I finally went on another trip after more than a month at Bagram. I was getting cabin fever and one of my other trips got pushed back to March. I know all my friends and family must think I’m crazy to want to travel around Afghanistan but how am I supposed to really understand this place if I don’t get out and see it and meet people?
This trip took me to Bastion airfield, Camp Leatherneck and Kandahar. If you’ve read my blogs before then you know I don’t like Kandahar. Well Kandahar moved up the list after going to Leatherneck. Wow!!! This place is desolate. One guy I talked to said he loves it there and he’d like it even more desolate. I think he was stealing meds from medical or something to have an outlook like that. LOL!!!
Leatherneck is a Marine Corps base and is all business. Everything is spread way out and it’s a bit of a hike to get anywhere. Our hosts had to make room for me and I could tell they weren’t all that happy about it but they were accommodating anyway. I was there to do some Soldier in the Spotlight stuff and my travel partner was doing legal stuff. It took us about an hour to knock out what we had to do and the rest of the time I looked around at the place for any sign of fun or a portal to another world.
They had no personal internet service, my cell phone didn’t work and I had to ask for a moment on the legal sergeants computer to send a quick email out. I was drowning in boredom. I couldn’t go anywhere without a battle buddy. It’s a shame when you have to be as concerned about your safety on a base as you do off of it. Seriously.
To keep myself busy I talked to the medical guys, one is a Navy commander, about what they do day in and day out. I listened to stories by the smoke pit. You know I’m bored if I’m standing by a smoke pit for entertainment. I hate cigarette smoke but the stories were too good to miss while I was standing around in the dark waiting to go to the living quarters. I cleaned Mad Max and he needed it. He’s very happy now. I worried about my friends back at Bagram not being able to reach me on my phone and thinking I blew up or something, ergo the quick email assuring them and my family I hadn’t.
For some odd reason I was famished during this trip. I wanted to eat all the time. Boredom really does equal shoving food needlessly down your throat I guess. I’ll get to that later.
So I get the bad news that the flight out of Marine Corps hell was not until 8 pm on day two. I started to wonder what I could get myself into during those long hot hours. Maybe I could count the burnt faces I was seeing everywhere. That was too funny. There are like 30 bottles of sunscreen sitting right there in the front of medical yet so many of the guys had two-tone heads. I wonder how many cancer cases are going to come out of that. I believe in skin protection but I am a women and it isn’t just about cancer, its about maintaining youthful beauty until gravity and age have their way, then its time to visit a doctor.
Luckily my travel buddy is pretty savvy about figuring out the flights and got us on a much earlier C-130. We still waited at the PAX terminal for a while but that was a drop in the bucket compared to the next day’s travels. While I was lying there on a cot and listening to some Marines and Brits talk about their weapons and how badass they are, my phone started working out of the blue. I’ll never complain about two things ever again, ATT and U.S. airports. Never. Make that three things because I’m going to add Kandahar to that list now that I have a little perspective.
So we make it out on our flight and get to Kandahar. I end up staying in the crappy overstuffed tents that they put us in the first time I came here but something was different. Something was missing. Hmmmm….let me think. Oh yeah, the smell. I didn’t smell anything remotely reeking of human waste. They must have fixed the cesspool issue. What a relief that was.
So the legal guy and I make our rounds visiting the units and I got to finally meet my headquarters PA counterparts. The Lieutenant Colonel was very nice and we talked about some good PA plans and stuff. I’m glad I could finally come down to Kandahar without fear of being kept there by them.
The person I was looking forward to seeing, my Navy buddy who moved down to Kandahar to work, I only got to see long enough to solidify our dinner plans and then I stood him up. Not intentionally. The legal guy got caught up in some stuff and we were running late. I felt terrible for it. I like talking to him. He’s a smart guy that I think will go far in this world. Now he thinks I’m a heel or something so I’m going to try and make it up to him. I can’t have my friends thinking I don’t care. That’s impossible for me.
I ended up having dinner with legal guy at TGIF. Yup, they got a TGIF there in Kandahar and it looks a lot like the ones back home. The biggest difference is the staff. They are all Indian I think and don’t know what waiting on someone really means but they were nice and helpful when asked.
I ordered a pasta dish and an appetizer. It gave me an upset stomach but luckily it only lasted for a little while.
The next morning we got to the air terminal at 630 for a 930am flight that ended up being a 930pm flight. Yes, my day was spent at a military airport but not all was lost.
The first time we thought we were going to be leaving on our flight we were standing inside the terminal waiting and we ended up talking to this hardcore Psy-Ops guy. Psy-Ops stands for psychological operations. These guys try to influence the population in our favor to help fight the insurgency. If we have the populations support, we can better fight the Taliban. Its about building trust with the people but there’s some manipulation involved, if you will.
Any way, this guy is an ass right off the bat. He finds out I’m public affairs and immediately starts to insult me. If anyone knows me, I bite back when someone comes at me this way. We went at it and then he explained that it wasn’t me he had a problem with but an Army PA specialist who wasn’t doing her job properly and was making him and his team, look bad. I told him that she obviously doesn’t know what her role is as a PA specialist because our job is to make our services and its people look their best. We are not the public media and we don’t serve the same purpose, thank god.
We ended up striking a rapport but with a few joking insults thrown in for fun. He is multi-lingual so I told him he was an asshole in four languages and he thought that was funny. Then he said I was heartless and mean for saying such things but that he is an asshole and I told him it’s a defense mechanism. He pretended not to know what that meant but if you know four languages then you’re obviously smart so I’m sure he knew what I meant. He called my rank insignia a seagull and I of course kept stressing that it was an eagle. He ended up giving me his combat patches because I was eyeing them since they were Afghan and I gave him my Navy “Don’t tread on me patch.” Sort of a peace-keeping deal.
For me that was an encounter between two professionals in different career fields not easily understood by the other reaching a mutual respect and understanding for the other plus I think he had a thing for me but I am not fond of assholes anymore no matter how good looking they are even if I think I know how to handle them.
I met two other very interesting people as well. One was an older Afghan linguist who works as an interpreter and the other is an ex-Navy/Army electrician. Both had very engaging stories to tell. The electrician had done something almost too unbelievable while he was in the Navy. He supposedly disabled an aircraft carrier at sea causing it to go dead in the water (DIW).
As he’s telling me this the cogs in my head are turning and I ask him how the hell do you do that to a nuclear powered aircraft carrier with four engine rooms and four screws? It’s apparently not something he’s proud of and he paid dearly for it but as he’s explaining it to me it becomes clear this guy is very smart. Maybe too smart.
He was a nuclear electrician and he somehow disabled each propeller one by one until the ship was sitting there DIW to prove a point to his chain of command. It was an unbelievable story but no less entertaining.
My new Afghan friend liked talking about god and how Christianity and the Muslim religion have a lot of similarities and that its not the religions that cause so much disharmony in the world but the disagreements between man that are the root cause of the hatred felt and the wars fought. I’m not deeply religious but I agreed with him. Believing in something that helps people be good and caring toward each other is a great thing no matter its foundation. I love learning about all religions and I have a healthy respect for the Muslim religion because in its truest form its about peace and prosperity for everyone. As a women though I cannot abide by the restrictions those that practice the religion place on women. I like having a choice and I wish more women had the same.
He gave me his phone number so I could call him and we could meet up to talk some more. He also taught me that one of my favorite Dari sayings has two meanings. “Khush timora!” means your killing me as in “You are getting on my nerves or striking a cord with me,” but as a joke usually and it is also used to express ones feelings for a beautiful woman as in if a man see’s a woman so beautiful that he is taken by her beauty he might say, “You are like nothing I have seen before, khush timora!” I thought that was so beautiful.
I have been making an effort to seek out people I can learn from and its paying off. I also made another friend not that long ago, an interpreter as well and he offered to tell me his stories about Afghanistan. I love that. Despite what they have been through watching their people and country suffer so much that they are still willing to share it with me so I can share it with you. That is the best.
Before I end this long blog I have to talk about my hunger. I don’t know if it’s the stress of traveling or what but I was so hungry during this trip. In the morning at the Kandahar airport I got tea, coffee and donuts for me and the legal guy for breakfast. I figured we’d be gone by lunch. Lunch came and went and we’re still sitting there at the terminal. By two o’clock I’m starving and the spy-ops guy gets some kabob (cooked meat with naan bread). I’m trying not to stare at him and his food but I can’t help it.
I practically beg the legal guy to call someone to bring us some food, which he does but in the mean time I’m scrounging around for snacks or something. Finally the spy-ops guy hands me his food and says I can have it. I don’t even ask him if he’s sure, which is something I do a lot but at this point I was a dog staring at him while licking my mouth just waiting for him to drop something on the ground so I could eat it. LOL!!!
Finally after I ate that and a slice of pizza that finally arrived shortly thereafter, the legal guy looks at me and asks if that’s going to keep me over for a while. I laughed because it was almost as if he was insinuating I eat too much. Whatever.
My next trip should be very interesting, as I will be working with the Afghan Army again.
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