1-16-10

Work is still pretty slow we are working on MWRAPs mostly. Getting them ready for the soldiers.

After work I started watching the rest of Sons of Anarchy. I am about half way through the first season, I like watching it because for a little while I get to feel like I’m not in Afghanistan. Plus there are a ton of movies to watch over here. All the guys who have been contracting for a while bring portable hard drives full of movies stolen off the internet. And then it’s just a bunch of sharing of movies with thumb drives. You just kind of carry them with you and if you talking to somebody about a movie and they say they have it, then you give them your drive and the next day you have a new movie.

I got a box from my mom and another box from Amazon. A bunch of snacks and some nice coffee which was so great. Still no alcohol, that’s what I ask for every time she asks, still dry. The box from Amazon is a bible, no alcohol just Jesus for me.

1-15-10

Moving Day!

We didn’t move management here is full of shit. They don’t know what’s going on, and they don’t care. We live in a shanty town and the entire night shift guys aren’t getting any sleep because the guys on day shift are coming in here being loud in the middle of the day. I don’t get it; I don’t go in the tent in the middle of the night on my lunch just to bullshit with my friends and be loud. And management doesn’t care; they don’t live down here with us.

I got a box from Amazon today and one from my Wife. The one from Amazon was a book I have been wanting to read “Tokyo Vice” and in the box was coffee and a French press and treats. It was like Christmas, I got a little misty eyed it was so great.

1-14-10

When we went to work tonight one of the senior mechanics on day shift told me and Georgia that we needed to go steal some parts off of trucks at South Park. I said I wasn’t going to spend any time in the brig. He said word came down from DOD that we could take parts off the blown up rows. He said we should tell the MP’s that we were told by him to do it. So we waited until late to go and get them because even with permission we don’t actually have paperwork and I have no desire to be held by the MP’s while they sort it out.

Tonight my x-wife has been giving the wifey hell about the schedule. She is threatening to take this to court. It is so frustrating; she thinks that I didn’t research this to find out if I could legally do this. At best I would have to spend a bunch of money on court/lawyer costs and at worst I would have to come home early, but nothing will change. I was complaining to the guys about it and Joe told me I should go talk to JAG (judge advocate general). The guys who have been doing this a while said yeah they are free legal advice.

So after work I asked around and found out where there office is and walked down. The guys at JAG were nice but they said that because I am not military and not a DOD contractor, I am not officially eligible for their help. But we sat and talked for about 30 min about my situation, in the end he said all I can really do is wait and see if she files anything. But they did get me a power of Attorney and even gave me an oversized envelope. They were really nice.

1-13-10

The shit hit the fan with those bolts today. A few minutes after we got to work we were told there was going to be a meeting in the break room at 8:00. We got yelled at for about 20 min, and then we all had to sign a thing saying we had all received a verbal warning and that we understood it as a verbal warning. There seem to be a lot of threats of firings here; I don’t really like that so much. It feels a bit adversarial.

1-12-10

We were working on the turrets that go on top of the military trucks tonight. A couple of guys totally fucked up and cross threaded bolts. Usually not a huge deal but instead of backing them out they took an impact gun and tried to force them in. Which snapped off the heads, once is shitty but they just kept going and broke all four in one kit. Oh it was bad. Mostly because the bolts were cross threaded because the kit wasn’t lined up on the top of the truck. It would have been a pain in the ass but they needed to get the crane to lift the turret up to line it up better.

I had another package from mom again this morning. It had coffee in it which is great. Still no alcohol! I have asked everybody and there cousin for booze and nothing. My wife rocks! She sent me some but it’s not here yet. It’s not like I want to depend on the charity of others for booze but what the hell, I’m in the worlds litter box. At the very least 1500 miles from a liquor store, if I could I would go buy my own! The only time I have wanted a drink more than right now was when I had to go to AA meetings.

1-11-10

The company I work for… pays less than their competition, doesn’t provide housing for us (they rely on the military to do that, when other contractors who pay more provide trailers to live in) and also they don’t buy the parts that we will obviously need ahead of time. The speculation is that they will be losing the contract so they are trying to squeeze every last penny. I mean they refused to give the Indians there annual three percent pay increase. This was the final straw for the two really good Indian mechanics in our shop at night. They wanted me to come with them literal a quarter mile down the road and apply. I didn’t do it because if I am going to jump of this contract, I want to get the hell out of Afghanistan. But the other company is offering a little over 2700 a month to TCN’s (better than double what they make here).

Well the down side to the company not buying parts is that you can have a truck that only needs a bolt but can’t “sell” it. And management doesn’t care that it’s their fault there’s not enough parts here, the only thing they care about is us getting our 21 trucks per week sold. So the other night our boss (Red) told me and Georgia we could go out and procure parts from holding yard in South Park. He said if we were going to do it make sure we don’t take them off a truck that has already been inspected and passed, get them off a truck that’s waiting to go in the shop. Joe heard us talking and said “Make sure you don’t get caught!” and Red said “you don’t have to go, it’s up to you” but really being bored at the shop or going on a mission. We chose the mission. I drove because Georgia has such a poor since of direction. I took us to the rows of blown up or rolled over MWRAP’s and we got the parts we needed and came back. Later on Joe told me it’s a felony to take parts off of one truck and put on another. He said you can do it but you need paperwork from the DOD for a controlled substitution. I asked why he didn’t tell me before I went out there; he said he tried to warn me. He said if anybody tells you to go get a part make sure other people hear it. So that you can tell anyone who asks you were told by your boss to do it.

1-10-10

There has been a lot of time at work lately for standing around and bullshitting. It is fun to get to know these guys, I like them. We probably never would have been friends in the outside world. The four guys who are turning into pretty good buddies are Georgia, Joe, Brian and Red. So the way our nights have been going is that we get about 95% of our work done by 2:00am and then we stand around and drink coffee with tools in our hand (or at least nearby) so when anybody comes in you can start turning a wrench on something. Then at 6am when the day shift supervisor gets there, we start stretching out the last five percent until 6:50 then we get cleaned up for the 7:00 am safety meeting, which has yet to be informative.

This morning at the safety meeting I saw the guy who hurt his back at work. I thought for sure that guy was headed for Germany. He is close to retirement age, way too old to be taking a pummeling like that. And I didn’t ask him if they took X Rays, I doubt they did.

1-9-10

I woke up today and had a couple of boxes from my mom. One had gone to Bahgrahm and had to be rerouted down here and the other had come straight here. I LOVE getting packages! The guy who does the mail is a friend, Dallas, who came down here in the same group of mechanics. His mother in law is kind of a big deal in HR here, which I am pretty sure is why he got the job assignment he did. Not that it’s particularly great, it’s just really light on actual responsibilities and oversight by the dozen or so bosses we all have.

After I opened them Josh got up, it was about 2:30. We decided we would walk down to the bizarre and check it out. The bizarre happens once a week; it’s where they let the locals on base to pedal their wares. Well Josh and I went walking down there and we walked all over and finally found somebody who could tell us where it was but the downer was that it was over so we walked around the boardwalk and looked in the shops that the locals had set up. Georgia really wanted to send a package home so he bought a few little bits of brick-a-brack, and I told him how to get to the post office and I went back to the tent.

At work tonight the mood has been pretty intense. The feeling of wanting to get out has been growing. Everybody is talking about who pays more, and who might be hiring in Iraq or Kuwait, anywhere but here. We are all miserable but getting online is such a challenge. You could easily go to MWR and wait hours to get online and have to leave before you get you turn. The internet at the boardwalk is just fast enough to get your email, there’s really no way you could check company’s websites and apply online.

1-7-10

At work tonight it was pretty slow, like look busy for nine hours because your work was done early kind of slow. So the day shift had given us a list of trucks they needed picked up.
Note: there is no one that has a whole picture of what is happening here. We all get pieces of it. No one here for instance knows where any given vehicle is, they only have an idea where it might be. There is no one keeping track of this stuff as far as I can tell.
So we took six people plus one to drive the van. You have to have one driver and one guy who walks the truck out to make sure you don’t run anyone over or run into anything.

The process for getting trucks is to drive row by row and look at the hand written numbers on the doors of the trucks. The problem with that is, in the middle of the night you can’t see anything. So you use a flashlight and drive really slowly but they park the trucks super close together and everybody piles out and starts walking the rows trying to remember the numbers to the three trucks you’re looking for.

An hour and a half later we found two of the three and I drove mine back to the shop with my ground guy John. Oh yeah, you also have to wear reflective belts and hard hats. Everyone is required to wear reflective belts from dusk to dawn because there are no street lights and no sidewalks, a soldier was killed a couple of months ago walking down the road. The CID hasn’t found who did it either, these trucks are so massive whoever did it probably didn’t know they hit anyone and just kept on driving.

That was our night getting trucks and looking busy.

1-6-10

After work today I had the day shift guy who drives our shop van shuttle take me to South Park. South Park is the part of the base that has all of the company’s other stuff, work related anyway. Meaning a huge shop for heavy wheeled trucks, and tents they use to inspect the trucks and a huge shop for minor repairs (TPE) the tire shop/billeting/HR/security and all the offices. Plus the other companies that are here doing the same thing we are. South Park is also where the 10 man tents that we have been promised are. It is also where hundreds of tactical vehicles are sitting waiting, grouped by model. Think of the biggest car lot you have ever seen, now instead of cars it’s full of trucks the smallest is a HMMWV up to the size of a tank. Scattered throughout are about 12 shops to work on these trucks. The shops have a foot print of a football field, with a top that looks like someone cut a giant tin can long ways and stuck it on top.

So I caught a ride over there and went to human resources where they gave me the phone number of the person who knew the name of the guy who carried my bag from Bahgrahm. I got his name Ed. It took HR a while but they told me Ed worked in Heavy wheel. I walked about half a mile over to Heavy wheel, there were three Ed’s. I asked them and none of them knew anything about my bag, then I asked if any of them had just come from Bahgrahm. Ed said he had then I asked if he brought an extra bag that wasn’t his and he said yes. Sometimes you really have to lead people! He said that transportation had picked up him and an Indian guy from the airport, and he left it on the bus with the Indian guy. Ed told me where the Indian guy worked, another half mile walk and I tracked down the Indian guy. He told me he left it on the bus, so I said “Transportation has it?” he said yes. Another half mile walk to HR, so I can call the transportation guy. He says that his guy dropped my bag off at property; I tell him I need a ride to property.

They send a short but to come and get me. It turns out that property’s office is in the back of my shop. I had no idea; you have to go through a door in the back of the break room. The property guy isn’t there; he is out at South Park unloading a connex with tools in it. I take my short bus back to South Park. I start going from shop to shop looking for a guy unloading tools from a connex. Finally I find him and I let him finish and explain the situation. He told me that the transportation guy told him that it was my bag and that it didn’t come with me. So he figured that I had gone on leave and left it with property to store. A lot of people will do that because if you going to be gone for three weeks and you want your stuff to be safe you leave it with property. So he took me over to his storage, luckily he had his own gator (a cross between a golf cart and four wheeler, they are all over here). There it was my bag!

The property guy was even nice enough to give me a ride back to my tent. What a good day!

1-5-10

We met our day shift shop supervisor today. I am always meeting some new supervisor; there are more people in charge over here than you can shake a stick at. For example there are nine mechanics on night shift, four Indians and five expats, and I will see at least five and up to nine different bosses during my 12.5 hour shift, that doesn’t even count all the army guys who show up at all hours of the night to make sure we are on task. But this new supervisor just got back from Rand R. He is Scottish and younger than 40, about 5’10”. He has a really red face, that dude must have high blood pressure.

No word on my damn bag.

1-4-10

I was talking to some guys at work today and they were telling me a story about an Indian guy in our shop who was lifting the cab of a truck up. He didn’t want to wait for it to be all the way tilted and climbed up to work on the engine. Well the cab fell on his hip crushing it. There is no 911 here so they called safety because the guy who got hurt is Indian, if he had been an expat they would have called the MP’s. Safety gets there and calls up the food chain until they get the project manager, he tells safety to go buy four plane tickets to India so they can lay him out on the plane and send him home. But while all that is happening and the guy is laying there in pain with what turned out to be a broken hip and a chunk of his hip bone broken off and floating around in his ass. Somebody called the MP’s and they sent the Canadian paramedics to get him and take him to the hospital. That’s where they found out what was wrong and medivacked him to Germany. Once the Military gets involved in something over here that is just the way it is, there is no arguing from the bosses, it wouldn’t help and the last thing the Sergeant Major wants is to be argued with. The guys in the shop took up a collection for him and raised $2000. Which is about 2 months pay for them; I have seen the pay stub. These guys are second class citizens over here. They make 1228 dollars per month; the lead mechanic makes an additional $60 making his total $1288. And they have to do all the shit work that expats won’t do, and the Indians do it because the last thing they want to do is make trouble and get shipped home. That is always hanging over their heads; if I get fired I could probably be back in country within a month. But these guys had to pay the recruiters that got them these jobs $2000 just to get them the job. So they work the first two months for free.

We heard about this early on in the night and then around lunch time Josh and I and Leo (who is Indian) were talking about dinner. (Note: There are several DEFAK’s or mess halls but only two serve a midnight meal. The Luxemburg which serves a European style cafeteria food and Falcon which serves American style cafeteria food. Think about you school lunches. The army doesn’t care about taste or nutrition so much their main concern is calorie intake. The want the food high in calories, nothing else.) I am tired of the Luxemburg, there is never anything I want to eat and the line to have the guy make you an omelet is always really long. So I said we should go to Falcon and Leo said they won’t let him and Denesh in. I asked what he was talking about and he told me they were going there for a while and one night an American guy was working the door (when you come into the DEFAK you have to wash your hands then slide your meal card) and told him that Indians can’t eat at this DFAK. Leo said that he and Denesh would drop us off and then come back and get us. I told him that was bullshit and if the Army was going to let him fix their trucks with me and cram them in a tent way past capacity because they won’t house them with Americans, then he was at least going to eat dinner with me and Josh if he wanted to. So went to Falcon, Josh and I went first and then Leo went to slide his card and the Philippine guy made Leo show his ID, which they can do. Then the guy says Leo doesn’t have the right color stripe on his CAC card (military ID), I hung back to make sure Leo got in. When I heard him say that, I told the guy “No, he has a CAC card he has a meal card. He’s eating.” Then I told Leo to go on and I waved Denesh through. Leo got in line and I watched to make sure nobody else was going to give them a hard time, and I saw this other Philippine guy laughing. I looked at him and he gave me two thumbs up and kept laughing. He was really tickled with what happened. It’s like an apart idée here, there is a spoken rule that everything is separate, and that the Indians get the shitty one of whatever there is to choose from. Like showers, the Indians got showers after a year of having to use water bottles, no showers for a year! Because the army guys wouldn’t let them use threes.

After work I went to the gym.

1-3-10

My boss came around this morning and we were talking about our families. I love my family and I love talking about them, but it’s kind of a delicate topic over here because we all miss them so much. We all know we are here for them; it’s just hard to spend too much time thinking about them all at once. It is really easy to start missing them so much you just want to cry.

Still no fucking bag.

1-2-10

I went to work on the little shuttle that the shop runs. There is a whole big complex of huge shops, it’s called South Park. That is where the Tire Shop and HR are and also where they keep all the trucks that need to be worked on. Well South Park has shuttles that run to and from all the time but really on no set schedule. Well our shop is by itself over by MWR and the Boardwalk so we have our own van that someone from the shop drives over and picks everybody up from in front of the tent.

On one of my breaks I sat down to write a letter to Audrey and I felt something on my leg. I shook my leg and instead of it falling down, it went up. It was a mouse! I started yelling and cursing and knocking over chairs and pushing the table around. I was hitting my pants and stomping my feet. After the noise died down my boss came out of his office around the corner and just looked at me. I told him a mouse ran up my leg and he started laughing. He said “I thought you were whipping somebody’s ass. So I figured they must have had it coming, since you’re going to go home I might as well let you two finish it before I come out.”

About an hour later I went across the street to the toilets that flush. I took down my pants and the mouse fell out, already dead. It was kind of traumatic.

1-1-10

Happy new year to me! I woke up about 2:00 and got ready to go. I walked down to the Danish place, this time they had me talk to the office guy. He told me it was the fire wall that was keeping me from getting online. It took forever to get it all set up but finally I got it. Somehow I froze my iTunes so I tried to re-download it, but before I could get it one of the waitresses came by and told me that it was five o’clock and it was going to be strictly a restaurant. This meant we all had to put our laptops away no more internet café that day. I left there and just walked around, and made my way down to my shop.

I feel a whole new kind of lonely here. I am trying to figure out how to describe it.

Work is interesting, what happens is you get to the shop and the day shift gives you a rundown of what is parked inside. Usually there is a folder for each truck; the folder has a list that the Quality guy made, or the Technical Inspection. The TI is all the things that need to be fixed. Maybe it’s that a fire extinguisher needs to be installed or maybe the engine is leaking. The thing about trying to fix stuff over here is that there are no parts, and if you try to order something it will take at least two months. So you have to make sure that the part you need is in your hand before you actually start working on it. Because if you start tearing a truck a part and then can’t put it back together it has to sit in the shop. These things are the sizes of dump trucks so the shop would fill up really quick if you had that happen very often.

12-31-09

I woke up to early today, I rolled out of bed about 9am. I poked around a little bit, went and took a cold shower. You tell yourself it will be ok but when you get under the water it literally takes your breath away. You wind up turning it on for a few seconds and getting wet, turning it off and soaping up, then rinsing off. I got cleaner, but I did not get really clean.

I walked down to the boardwalk and found a flushing toilet on the way! It’s all about the small miracles in a place like this. I check out the NATO gym which was super nice. I got myself a little speaker at the computer store so I can listen to my iPhone at work. Then I went to the Danish restaurant which is just off the boardwalk and bought a 25euro wifi card. I couldn’t get it to work on my computer. I tried a dozen times to fill in my info and then it kept telling me the page couldn’t be displayed. Si took it back up to the lady at the counter and told her it wasn’t working and she said “this is Afghanistan”. I told her that if I wanted my wifi to not work I would go across the street (to the boardwalk) and have it not work for free. She told me she couldn’t give me my money back without her manager there and she didn’t know when the manger would be back. I left there and walked back to my tent and had some dinner with Josh. We got ready and went to work.

We caught a ride tonight. We worked on this huge truck tonight. I am totally amazed at the way you can stretch out work, people start getting ready for lunch about half an hour before its time to take it. It seems to me that the key is to always be doing something. Weather its taking a flashlight and inspecting the Hmmwv or taking a tire off and reinstalling it. As long as you are not sleeping or being a problem for somebody you are doing well.

What a long night! The big bosses came in about 6:30, it seems like just to make sure nobody is sleeping. The shitty thing about it is, when you have been working for 11.5 hours already you are pretty much just trying to look busy and not attract their attention.

12-30-09

I woke up about 11:30 and had lunch with Gary. Then Josh and I went to the boardwalk to use the internet and get a treat. The internet is so slow, it took about 5 min to pull up my email.

We walked around and just checked out the stuff in the shops. Josh bought an external hard drive, so that he can download movies from other people. We are all trying to find little pieces of home to cling to.

We had to walk to work tonight because there are all kinds of shuttles driving around but you can’t tell which company they are driving for or where they are going so sometimes it’s just easier to walk.

Tonight is Josh and my half day so we only have to work tell 12:30. This is good because I am super tired. We got off at 12:30 and went and got some dinner, and then a couple of guys gave us a lift back to the tent. I think Josh is going to go take a shower. Forget that! I don’t care if I stink, everyone else here does and I am very tired.

12-29-09

Everything looks better in the light of day. We got up at 5:30 so we could eat breakfast and catch our bus to HR at 6:45. It was pretty gloomy at the breakfast table, we all feel sad and a little angry that we are being treated this way. The HR lady was nice but everyone is feeling so bad about the situation it is hard to appreciate small kindnesses. They separated us up between Heavy wheel, Light wheel and TPE. Heavy wheel means you go work on big trucks, light wheel means you’re going to work on smaller vehicles like Hmmwvs and TPE means you will be working on anything that needs a quick fix. The way it works is the military buys these trucks and ships them over here, when they get here this company gets them and inspects them and if anything needs to be fixed they send it to one of our shops to fix it.

Here at KAF you have to have a special badge in order to move about un-escorted. If an MP catches you without it they can arrest you and hold you for five days then put you on a flight out and expel you forever. From what I have seen here that doesn’t seem bad to me!

The company I work for hasn’t invested in anything here. I t started to rain and there was water running through the HR container/trailer like a fountain. The tents we live in are hundred man tents that the army provided. They are way over capacity and not being maintained. There are no flushing toilets within a 20 min walk. You have your choice between hot communal showers with the solders or cold semi private showers in modified trailers.

I feel so sorry for myself here, what have I done? I am tired of people saying it can only get better. That isn’t true at all! It gets worse all the time.

The HR lady took us to get our badges, then for a quick tour. She took us to the boardwalk and I got a coffee and a fancy pastry at the French PX. The boardwalk is the place where all the shops are, it has a huge open square in the middle with a basketball court and a hockey rink (no ice) and a small baseball field/area. The shops are all facing the boardwalk that runs around the outside of the courtyard. There are little 7-11 type stores from countries who have soldiers here. There is a French, Dutch and Canadian PX. There is a dairy queen and a burger king and a kabob place and a pizza hut. Three places to get coffee, a computer store and a couple of cell phone places.

After we left the board walk we went to our shops to start work. My friend Josh (big un) and I are in light wheel which is supposed to do mostly Hmmwv’s and stuff but there are all kinds of huge trucks in this place.

We got the rundown of the shop and Josh and I got paired up. We worked for a little while on an electrical problem on a Hmmwv, and then it was time for lunch. Josh and I talked about it and we decided to volunteer to work nights. When we got back from lunch we told them and they said that would be fine. We kept working on the Hmmwv and then this hail storm started, it was really coming down!

The HR lady came by a little bit later and got a couple of guys and told them the tent was leaking. A couple of hours later Josh and I went back to the tent to help. It turns out that the tent had a couple of skylights right over the bunks we had found the night before. Guess we know why they were empty! John (John Doe) and Scotty had gone outside and tightened up the lines by the time we got there. Also they rearranged the bunks so we have our own little space now.

A guy in the tent gave us some high tension string and we went to the shoppette and bought some blankets and started our own shanty in the “overpass”. It’s our nick name for the tent because it looks like we are living under an overpass.

I tried to stay up late so I can sleep late tomorrow but it isn’t working.

12-28-09

I woke up early and tried a couple of times to call my oldest kid, no luck this time. I called the wife and it really seems like she could use a break, I am glad she is going to spend some time with her family.

I went and talked to my new boss at 7:00 and he said that he was going to put me in a shop today to start turning wrenches. I thought I was just going to stay out of the way for a couple of days and wait for my bag, but this changes things. Now I might as well go and just have them ship it to me. So we had to drive down to the terminal to find out what flights are leaving because they can’t tell you the day before what the schedule is for the next day. There is only one flight today with a first call at 1:15, so we went back to the other side to pack up. I went to the shoppet to get a foot locker to move all the crap they have given me, they didn’t have one so I had to get a bus and go back to the other side, get a locker, get another bus back. Then I had to go to property to get another pair of boots, cold weather gear a sleeping bag and my body armor and helmet. You have to have body armor and a helmet to fly mil air. We came down to the terminal and made the list, so now we sit here and wait.

We landed in Kandahar at 6:00pm. The plane ride was a lot different than I expected, military air is absolutely no frills way to go. The pre boarding briefing was from one of the crew “Emergency on ground, follow crew. Emergency in air, hold on.” It was fold down bench seats but they were made with red netting, there was something like a seatbelt but it had a quick release and never actually latched. After sitting on the netting for 10 minutes my ass went numb and there was really no way to get comfortable because you are so close together and you are wearing body armor. Its four rows of seats, the outside rows have their backs to the hull and the inside rows have their backs to each other. And it is so noisy, I was wearing ear plugs and it was still deafening.

It took about an hour to get picked up at the terminal. Then a ride to the HR/Security/Billeting/Tire Shop, that’s where we got our meal cards.

Then they took us to our tent. I can’t describe the utter despair I felt when we walked in here. It is like living under an overpass, but in a tent. I have tried to take pictures, but I think the best way to describe it as a feeling of losing all hope. It smells in here of sewage, it isn’t so bad that it makes you gag, but it is always here. We found some empty bunks together and I got one that doesn’t have a top, which is nice but you kind of need the top in order to have any kind of privacy.

12-27-09

I didn’t wake up as early today so I wound up in the shower at five am and it was already busy. I have to use these crappy prison style flip flops, they are too small and I am always scared my feet will slip off into that cesspool shower floor. Whenever I go in the main/only real bathroom I see guys brushing their teeth with that nasty chemical treated water. Even though there is a sign right by every mirror saying not to drink the water.

I had breakfast with the guys at about 5:45, there are eight of us mechanics who are headed to Kandahar together and who came in together. I never realized how much having friends would help me get through this, but it is.

We caught the 7:30 to the other side again. When we got there the teacher had gotten Scotty a birthday card and a little cake thing. His name is actually Gary but we are all kind of latching onto nick names here. It’s funny but you kind of get reinvented here, and the nick name seems more appropriate. Like the real world is only something that we all remember together, but not much of it makes it to this place. We live in the memory of what it’s like somewhere else. This is the world’s armpit, and I don’t know what that makes me.

So we had coffee and cake while we reviewed for the test, which I then got 100%. Actually one guy missed 2 out of 25, but that was the lowest score.

Then the movies again until 3pm. The movies are kind of harsh really, because for a little while you forget where you are and get caught up in something else and then when you go outside for a break that cold air hits your face you can’t ignore where you are and how long you will be here. The cold is really starting to make me resent this place, as if the cold is a physical manifestation of the loneliness and isolation I feel here.

After class we went down to Military Air so I could see if my bag had come in and so the other guys could remanifest. Which is what you do when you take a military flight you go get your name on a list and then you have 10 days to try and take the flight. Taking the flight means you go down and wait and if there are no military guys show up in front of you then you get to take the flight.

When we got back I went to HR and she said she got an email saying my bag would be here on Wednesday the 30th. So she said I need to wait here for my bag and everybody else is going to leave tomorrow for Kandahar. So right now everyone else is packing up to go except me.

12-26-09

I talked to the wife a little this morning; it’s so nice to hear her voice. Then I went to breakfast and caught the 7:30 bus to the other side of the base to take the class. It takes about 15 minutes to go just a few miles because they can only go 25km per hour. We spent the first 45 min going over the last little bit of info and then we did a review. After that it was movie time until lunch. After lunch it was movie time again until 3pm. We started watching “Sons of Anarchy”, we are going to try and get through the whole season before the class is over. I am not sure if we can do it though because we have a cigarette break after every episode, which eats up a bunch of time.

Our teacher is woman who retired from the air force; she is nice but pretty rough around the edges. She said she came to Afghanistan because they told him she wouldn’t have to cook, clean or do her own laundry. She gave us a ride back to our side of the base. It takes a while because you have to drive in a loop around this giant airfield at 25kmph. If the mp’s catch you speeding they will kick the vehicle off the base, the transportation guy said it’s because the military wants to get some of the cars off the base because there are too many. We had to wait until 3 again to leave, so that we don’t go back too soon and get her in trouble.

12-25-09

It’s my first day of MRAP training, I am doing pretty well. I am following what the teacher is talking about. We got out of class about 3:00 and the teacher told us to make ourselves scarce. We went back and hung out in the tent until dinner time.

The nice thing about being in such a shit hole at Christmas is that nothing about this place feels cheerful or at all like Charismas. The food is super shitty and no one really seems to care. There are some decorations up here and there, but the spirit that usually comes with the season is noticeably absent. I am growing to dislike this place.

I got to talk to the wife and the kids, it was so great. I get so happy knowing they are happy. The wifey sent me pictures of the presents under the tree, I cried for myself for a little while when I saw that. It’s so hard being away from all that; I miss the kids so very much.

(the picture is of my Christmas dinner)

12-24-09

The project manager came and talked to our class today, he is the guy with the final say on everything here. He seemed like a nice guy, he said he has an open door policy. Then we split up and met with our new bosses. I like my new boss too.

We went down to the shop where all the trades work out of. The plumbing shop is a 12 x 12 room with a few bins of parts. Then we got a tour of the compound and plumbing we maintain, which really isn’t that much. Then we met up with a guy who was putting showers in a shipping container, it consisted of one giant water heater and 10 shower stalls. There was one expat and two Indians working on it and he wanted the help of the three of us new plumbers. I stood and watched for ½ an hour before I told the guy I needed to go to HR and check on my luggage. I made my way to HR and there was no news on my bag and when I got back to the container there were tools everywhere but no one in sight. So I met up with the mechanics in my group, they said that I should be a mechanic and go with them to Kandahar. So I told them what my mechanic experience was and they said I should put it on a resume and take it to the project manager. So I pulled up my resume and they helped me church it up, I went to a meeting with the PM and told him what the situation was and he said ok. He told me I should take the MRAP training the next day and go with my friends to Kandahar.

12-23-09

Last day of class. I really like my routine of getting up early and taking a shower and calling the wife and getting online. By then some of the guys are up and we will go and get some breakfast. It’s working pretty well for me.
A bunch of people came for little lectures to our class today. There was someone from Quality control and transportation and security and also facilities who I will be working for.

I have been texting the wife, which is so good for my morale. To know that I can talk to her from the other side of the globe anytime I want makes me feel so much better.

My new boss seems like a pretty nice guy. I’m not really sure about working for facilities though. My job is a lot different than I thought it was going to be though. I thought I was coming here to maintain the whole base, but that’s not the case, I am just here to maintain my company’s part of the base. I’m not sure how I feel about that yet.

12-22-09

I woke up super early again this morning. I was so glad to get to talk to the wifey. Just knowing that I can call home has made things so much better for me. I love her so much, I really miss the kids. I am so proud of the little people they are, and I can’t wait to see the people they become.
I am really getting to like the guys I work with more and more they are cool guys and really nice.
We had classes/meetings all day, one of the things we had to do was go to property and get shirts and boots. That is fantastic! Because I still haven’t heard about my bag. Today’s classes included a lecture from the safety guy and a cultural sensitivity training. I think it’s because of all the Indians we will be working with and around. They said today that the company is trying to reach a 70% Indian work force. Mostly because they will work here for next to nothing, no one will say exactly but it’s between 20 – 30 thousand.
One of the big differences is… the toilet. They don’t sit on them because they are dirty, so they stand on them. No joke every portable outhouse has boot prints on the seat and a mess everywhere. The stench is incredible. Even the flushing toilets have signs up not to stand on them.

12-21-09

I woke up so early this morning, about 2:30 am, I am not sure how many guys I woke up trying to find my stuff so I could go and take a shower. I went to the little shack that sells stuff and bought a towel and soap and these gnarly little shower flip flops last night but I still had it in the plastic bag this morning. After the shower I went and got online in the MWR. Then I sat and watched a movie for a while, and then got back on the internet for another 20 min. I felt bad about taking two turns because even at 4:00 in the morning there is still a line, so I watched some more of another movie to kill time. You don’t get to make requests about what to watch next and there is always a movie playing so sometimes it is a pretty stupid movie. Finally 5:30 rolled around and I could go to breakfast.
Most of the day was classes, at the end of the day we took a bus tour around the base. We went to the PX and I found a shop that sells cell phones and local sim cards. There is also a place to get your haircut, a burger king, a dairy queen and a pizza hut and about a dozen little shops selling polished rocks and flags and hookah’s and local apparel. There is a north face store where I got some pants, underwear and socks. I feel so much better knowing I can call home!

Pictures from Dubai

12-20-09

I packed my bags and went to the airport with Roy the other guy whose bag is lost. At the airport the guy behind the desk said that they don’t know where our bags are. They gave me 180 Durham for my inconvenience, that’s about 50 dollars. Then they said that when they found our bags they would forward them to us. We left that terminal and went to our outbound flight terminal, which is a $10 cab ride. At that one there were Indian guys in front of me who didn’t understand how the metal detector worked. They would go through and it would beep, so off comes the belt, beeps again and out comes the change from their pockets, beeps again and off comes there bracelets. All three of the guys in front of me did the same thing.
The airplane we took from Dubai to Bagrahm looked like one of those planes that get parked in the desert, one of those airplane junk yards. Well they dusted that old girl off and crammed it full of contractors. Hot, sweaty, unwashed guys (maybe four women) with no seating assignment. It was the greyhound of the sky’s.
Two and a half hours later with a crew that didn’t speak English, and a guy next to me that wouldn’t shut up about the lineage of modern guns that rivaled biblical accounts, we landed at Bahgrahm air field (BAF).
We were escorted to a holding area where they took our ID’s and had us wait for an hour and a half. They let us out (about 25 of us), from there we walked down the street and collected our luggage from a pallet in the dirt on got on a couple of busses headed to our camp. We had a 15 minute bus ride, no one was on the bus to tell us what we were looking at, and it was all a bunch of dirty containers and plywood buildings as far as I could tell. When we got to the camp we all had to dig out our CAC cards to show the guard. They let us through and stopped the bus in front of a plywood building next to a sand bag covered bunker and in between two rows of empty containers double stacked and clearly for housing. That plywood building was billeting, we met someone from HR who told us to head in there and get our bunk assignments and some bedding. My new home Tent 15 bunk 5 bottom, the furnishings for my new home are one garbage bag containing 1 pillow, 1pillow case, 1 set of twin sheets, 2 blankets. The HR lady was nice and smiled a lot, she showed us to our tent where we dropped off our stuff, and then she gave us a tour. It is a lot like summer camp but without the fun parts. There is a trailer with toilets and sinks, another with showers and sinks, a plywood hut to drop of your laundry another to pick it up. These guys are really particular about the laundry, you have to fill out your forms in duplicate and they have to done exactly the way they want or your bag will get left in the laundry shack. There is a big dining hall, and a ¼ mile from there is the billeting office and the moral welfare recreation (MWR) building. The MWR is great to have, there are 10 computers that you can sign up to use for 20 minutes at a time, there is a big TV that plays movies, there is a little break room that has coffee, tea and popcorn. Past all that is a weight room, all free weights but most of the lighter ones have been stolen so you have to be ready to lift heavy.
It is 7:30 but I am so tired I am going to bed.

12-19-09

I lost a day, I lost my bags I feel very sad.
Waiting in the lobby of this hotel, I just now noticed how many people are employed here. I must have seen at least a dozen people working at 3:30 in the morning. The labor must be super cheap.
Dubai is really interesting, my hotel is in a crumby part of town and all I seemed to see were Indian men. Very few women and they all seem to be Philippino. One guy I am with bought a cell phone, so that he can make calls when he in on base with sim cards that locals sell, when he turned the phone on it was in Arabic. He bought if from a pair of Pilipino girls selling them from purses. When we went back to the hotel no one working there spoke Arabic so he couldn’t get it switched over to English.
The other thing I don’t see is ice. I have been to two fast food places with the other guys and their sodas didn’t come with ice. Then we went to a starbucks so I could get an iced mocha and they only had hot drinks. I told the guy it was 85 I didn’t want a hot coffee and said “sorry sir” and that was that, he didn’t know who had cold coffee.
I went back to the hotel and headed to the bar, it was about 10 pm. I drank beers with the guys I am going to Bahgram with until about 1am. I had to leave for the airport at 4am so I went up to my room and got on the internet and sent some e-mails, took a shower and then a nap. I hadn’t meant to nap so I woke up scared that I had missed my plane.

12-18-2009

Manchester was not my favorite place to fly into, but after a kerfuffle at the transfer counter I got myself a full English breakfast. It was really good. I had a couple of pints at the airport, and then we got on Emirates Airlines. It is so very nice, there were drinks and a really good dinner, plus your choice of six newspapers and a dozen magazines all for no extra charge, plus they gave us headphones. They are so nice. I am so, so tired, I haven’t had more than a little nap since I got on that first plane.

I finally got to the Fortune Hotel in Dubai. Now I understand why I couldn’t find it when I Googled it. This place is a serious shit hole! I mean damn they couldn’t find us a motel 6 or something?

12-17-2009

The love shack was the closest place to get food from our hotel.

Woke up two hours after my wakeup call should have happened. Found my phone bill slipped under my door, good thing too because I was going to make a couple more calls! Went over to Starbucks and Radio Shack to get the wifey a last minute gift. I bought some comfy shoes too. I am not really looking forward to 33 hours of traveling!
I am getting to know a couple of guys and they are really nice. I think there is a comrodery between everyone. None of us are glad to be going, but we all want to make the best of it.

Plane travel kind of sucks, at least the boarding the plane part. They charge to check a bag so everybody tries to carry on and it’s such a log jam! Plus there is no fucking way a guitar is a carry on! The guy sitting next to me is from Malia Spain, he is cool. A good person to have next to you, interesting but not imposingly chatty. I got bulkhead seating, I love that!

When the pilot says winds out of the north, who does that actually mean anything to? I mean, I appreciate the heads up, but I can do shitall with that nugget of information. I wonder if I will be able to leave the airport in London. I hate that I will be there and can’t even look around. If I can I might get a cab to drive me around for an hour.
It was so nice to get to talk to the wifey for a little in Philadelphia. I really miss her already. I miss the kids too, so much! I don’t think it’s going to be possible to go see Buckingham on this trip, damn.

People will seriously eat almost anything as long as they didn’t pay for it. Really… that was the most disgusting chicken I have ever tasted. I am pretty sure there was sand in it, and everyone I could see cleaned their plates. What the eff?

12-16-2009

I had an early start today, I went down to grab a bite from the continental breakfast. I had a super gross muffin, which I ate really fast because I thought I was running late. Then they had to break us up into two groups to take the van to the base, I was on the second van. We drove to the base and when we got there our guy had already pulled numbers for us and I got the first one. I waited two and a half hours to get my military ID, as I sat there, this Scottish guy Gary who is a mechanic from Georgia, and I were talking. I had to keep asking him to repeat himself, he said “Whaa yeou canney undeertan me ahksent” and I told him it was pretty thick but it was more that he mumbles than the accent. He agreed that he mumbles and we kept chatting. He told me about his three and a half year old son. One night stand who is the bosses daughter, we exchanged phone pictures and he told me about how his son got his Christmas present early, a DS, and how he didn’t eat for two days because he was playing it. He told me that the boy would only eat McDonalds and that for those two days he only ate five fries.

Then it was my turn to go get my card. The fellow that took me back and made my card must have been in his late fifties, beer belly and was rocking the GAP homeless line of clothes; I think it really stuck out against the crispness of his military counterparts. As he was imputing all my info he only looked up from his belly to the keyboard and then reached over and grabbed one of two harmonicas. And whipped out short and quiet prison riffs in-between questions. I was trying to make polite conversation and said one of them was pretty good. He told me that he had to play quietly because someone in a nearby cubical had complained, but since he had a captive and clearly interested audience I got my very own Christmas concert.

Got my card and was the last one on the bus back, shotgun. The hotel driver took us by a house on the way back that was decorated with Miller lite cans, the effort that someone had taken to create a display like that was just unbelievable. When we got back we chatted a little with the others in my group.

The nurse was the first one of the people coming to talk to us to get there. I had five shots to get. The HR lady gave us the gist of what was going to happen. Nobody really seems to know the whole picture, they only know what their part is she told us that we are employees of an off-shore company and that she has nothing to do with them and that we should direct any questions to them. She also said that we should not get over there and forget about our wives and girlfriends because she hates getting those phone calls. She said it’s not fun to have to tell them that she doesn’t know where we are or had to reach us and that she doesn’t know why we haven’t called.

Then they gave us some cash for incidentals and food. And the last guy went over policies and procedures.

I was over about 3:45; I went back to the room and made some calls. Called a guy to make a dump run, called mom and the wife, I love her so much, and I called my brother.
In all I rang up $119 in phone calls.

After that I walked to a bar and had a burger and fries, because I figured it would be my last chance for a while. I had a couple of Blue Moons and chatted with the bartender. She was nice and mostly indifferent until I told her about my trip. She turned up the sincerity after that, she bought me a shot and I had another beer to smooth it out. I had a tipsy walk back to the hotel after that. Got back and made a few more calls. Went to bed kind of late, it’s so awkward to sleep alone when you’re used to your best friend and your son in bed with you.