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.
No comments:
Post a Comment