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.