Now you see it...now you don't!

 I am now in far Western Afghanistan on a FOB called Farah. There is both a Farah River and a Farah city. Farah city has about 100K residents. The city is about halfway between Herat and Kandahar. I flew in on a regular fixed wing aircraft this time instead of a helicopter. Farah has a dirt runway.When I fly fixed wing (which we call the DASH because its call sign is DHS 8) I have to show up at the bus stop at 4AM with my baggage and my battle rattle (helmet and vest with 30 pound ceramic plates) to go out to the flight line.

Usually, I am a very light packer - 2 pairs of pants, 5 shirts, 10 pairs of undies and 5 pairs of socks, night wear (because of possible incoming you have to sleep in something you don't mind wearing to the bunker with everyone else in the middle of the night, so I generally sleep in underarmour peddle pushers and a comfie, old, too big t-shirt) and my dop  kit with shampoo and stuff. We are allowed 50 pounds of luggage on the DASH not counting the rattle. In addition to my clothes and personal hygiene items, I must carry sheets, pillow and blanket (or sleeping bag) because they often don't have them at the FOBs to issue to visitors. I must have my computer, projector, external drive, Kindle and camera and a few other odds and ends. I am never over 50 pounds! Never. I have a big old Marine drag bag with offroad wheels on one end and a strict rule not to bring more than I can carry. Sometimes, it is a very long walk from the flightline to my assigned billet an it is always a walk through crushed granite.

Normally, most of the FOBs I go visit have a PX for snacks, drinks, shampoo and stuff like that. Sometimes they are well stocked. Sometimes not. FOB Farah has a 40' truck trailer serving as their PX. It has a VERY limited selection of inventory. It is also closing June 1st, so the folks on my team that got here before I did sent requests for stuff they wanted me to import for them from KAF. There has been an ongoing theaterwide shortage of potato chips since the closing of the Pakistani/Afghan border crossing but finally the flow of Pringles has resumed at KAF - still no corn chips though, LOL. Anyway, so I packed and brought a huge bag of Jolly Ranchers, a case of Cup o' Noodles, 6 bags of mini Snickers, 2 bags of Werthers and 4 cans of Pringles along with a couple of Ritter Sports, 2 movie size boxes of Sugar Babies and several packages of Japanese chewy Starburst-like candy. My baggage has NEVER been that heavy before! Fortunately though, it still was under 50 pounds.

So the pictures above are of the mountain right beside the runway at Farah Airfield. About 3 days into my stay here we got a doozie of a dust storm. The first picture is how the mountain normally looks. The second picture is how it looks in a dust storm. It is amazing how poor the visibility really is during a dust storm.

Target versus Walmart...

All is well here at my new duty location. We have all the modern conveniences...showers, flushing toilets, sliding doors on our rooms for privacy an a full range of chain stores...OK no Ross and no mall but...



Here at Farah Airfield we have our very own Tirget...maybe next week they will upgrade it to a Super Tirget! LOL. The suspense is killing me. I bought two mouse pads that look like carpets and some Beats earbuds for the grandkids. The little boy sitting in front is in charge of getting people to come in and buy stuff. His cousin is in charge of the store next door. They had quite a little fuss when we went past Tirget to get to Walmart but everyone knows Wally World is the way to go!

Flying in the Spring...

Friday last week, I bid a fond farewell to FOB Wolverine and all my good friends there. I enjoyed my stay as always...good food, comfortable living, fun folks and best of all, a husband for a change. From Wolverine, I hopped a one hour helicopter flight back to Kandahar and got to stay in my own room for a few days - all by myself! After sleeping in a tent that flaps in the wind for 6 weeks, with 5 other tenants, I must say, I slept like a rock for a solid 12 hours my first night back in my own dark, quiet private little CHU.

I had hoped to see red poppy fields during the flight. I didn't. What I did see was swaths of fertile looking green! Spring in Afghanistan. What a land of contrast.

With the Spring of leaves, I could make out actual orchards!

The towns look so barren though...like they just grew up from the dirt. It appears from the air like some towns just dissolve themselves back into the ground and move to a new location nearby. You can barely make out rectangular outlines where they used to be. I think the desert eats them!

Water...cool, clear water...

This is another helicopter view of Southern Afghanistan. I snapped this out the window on my way from Kandahar to FOB Frontenac. We crossed over a couple of large mountainous ridges and there, in the middle of a totally arid plain, was a sparkling stretch of blue water. I thought it was a lake and was quite interested to see just how much good the water was doing for the swath of agriculture along the banks on either side of the outlet river.  I tried to look up the name of the lake online and I believe that it is called the Dala Reservoir and that they use the dam at the mouth of the river - the Kajaki Dam for hydroelectric power. Apparently, only about 10% of Afghan households have electricity. Once, when I was on a convoy, I got the chance to pass through a local village and I saw the occasional solar panel next to a mud hut with a woven reed roof piled with broken stuff to weigh it down and keep the wind from blowing it off. I found it an odd juxtaposition and wondered what they ran with the power from the solar panel...TV perhaps...

Jingle trucks...

One of the more decorative and interesting things we see coming and going on the bases and FOBs are the local "jingle trucks." Some are old, others are newer. Some are tankers, others are freight haulers or dumpers. I am constantly amazed at the range of decorations they exhibit. The truck in the top picture has loops of chain hanging almost lace-like from its trailer. It has whimsical painted metal cutouts of ponies, hearts, birds and fish welded to the sides and back.

The tanker truck below is a "poo pumper" used to transport gray or black water off base.  Both trucks have a platform above the trailer and in the top shot you can see a decorative ladder. Usually, they use these platforms to carry even larger loads, but I often wonder if once in a while they don't take the extended family out for a Sunday picnic or for a little spin up Hwy 1. The view must be grand from the roof rack and I can just picture the family sitting up there on top of the world, playing Parchesi, smoking hookah and having a grand time. Afghans have hard lives. I want to believe they have some peaceful, enjoyable family times as well and for some reason, the decorations on the jingle trucks seem encouraging to me.

Before trucks are allowed onto any base, they have to spend some time in the soak yard - meaning they sit in lanes off base waiting to see if anyone is going to blow up. Occassionally they do. Usually they don't.

Helicopters and luggage handlers...

So this is how I usually get from FOB to FOB.  The blue helicopter in the top picture is a Huey UH 1, according to Pete. He should know. They were using those birds back when he was in the Army during the Vietnam era. I have only flown in the Huey a couple of times - from Shindand to Stone and back. It flies for a contract company called Presidential. The white helicopter in the bottom picture is a Russian MI 8. That is what I call a Dynbird.There is room for about 10 people to sit inside the Dynbird and the portholes open up for ventilation. Both aircraft vibrate quite a lot during flight. Passengers are given disposable marshmallow earplugs to use during flight. We have to fly in full battle rattle - vest with ballistic plates front and back and a helmet. The vest weighs about 30 pounds with the plates in it. Personally I think it would make more sense to sit on the plates since it stands to reason any projectile threats would come from below. I enjoy the helicopter rides. I enjoy the bird's eye view of the Afghan landscape below. I won't miss the lack of luggage handlers, though...

Southern hospitality...

This morning at breakfast, Vector, who in real life, is a very nice man from North Carolina, named Richard, let me know there was a young fox vixen caught in the same trap where we looked at the hedgehog yesterday. New fauna is always so exciting! Can you say Kodak moment?!? I can and I did. This foxy lady actively moved around more than any of the other animals I have visited in jail. She hunkered down, backed up, and showed us her toothsome smile. Then, with a swish of her fluffy tail,  she stood to push at the door with dainty paws in agitation, seeking a way out. This gorgeous strawberry blond appeared less than thrilled with our photographic efforts. I suppose, as we surrounded the trap, we must have seemed to her like some kind of kind of foreign paparazzi snapping away without even a by your leave from her. I sympathize with the lady. I object to having my picture made as well - even when I'm not in jail. To add insult to injury, mug shots through prison bars presumably never portray a gal at her best. I can only imagine how humiliating it must be to a young desert vixen ensnared and then caught on film  - scandalous. Now, the poor thing's wadi cred (what passes for street cred here in the desert) is likely totally in the crapper. I figure all her clever, more fortunate or less hungry pack mates probably double fox dared her to go for the meat in the first place. I can almost hear them yipping...go on Foxy...you can do it...they're only humans...how smart can they be...smell that ....mmmmm ... Where are those fair weather foxen now? Hiding out in the brush of course, yipping in hilarity at her predicament.  Haters... everyone knows foxy ladies sometimes live to regret the occasional lapse in judgement which can and often does lead a girl into temptation - at least this foxy little gal got dinner and a couple of drinks out of the deal. Told you, Vector is a nice guy. Ahhhhh....Southern hospitality...

Hedgehogs...

There is a Vector guy (or gal) on pretty much every base. Vector would be called Pest Control at home. They put out glue traps to catch mice in and around the tents to dissuade snakes from entering tents to hunt for a midnight snack. Vector puts out fly bait to keep down the pest population. They also bait large wire cages around the perimeter of the camp to trap stray cats, dogs and other assorted fauna that wanders on and could create a health hazard or endanger the people living here. Rabies is rampant here in Afghanistan and there are warning posters everywhere about not adopting feral animals. Normally, all Vector does after they catch something is turn it loose near the exterior border of the FOB. By regulation, they must be humane in their treatment of the animals they catch. They provide food and water and check the cages regularly. Vector does not euthanize animals. Only the military can use kinetic force to put down a dangerous animal if necessary as long as the animal is not considered an exotic. Kinetic force means they can shoot the animal - apparently whomever wrote the Army regulation thought kinetic force sounded more humane than shoot. Vector here on Wolverine has been having problems of late with foxes digging under his wire cages and pulling the meat used as bait out without springing the trap. Clever foxes. Cleverer Vector. Now there is wood under the bait.

Anyway, pretty much everyday, I ask Vector if he has caught anything interesting and remind him I want to see it if he does. A couple of weeks ago, he caught a young jackal and Pete and went over to the cage to check it out. The jackal looked pretty bitten and beat up. He seemed quite glad to be safe in a cage where food and water was plentiful - and delivered regularly. The jackal didn't struggle to escape the cage but rather seemed more to kind of make himself at home...like a dog in a kennel. I got the idea that life in the wild for a small, young jackal must be rather stressful and this one was enjoying the time to relax safe from larger predators in the cage and free from the need to hunt or fight for sustenance. Gotta love room service, right?!?

This morning Vector took me on a tour of several cages. He had caught a desert cat and an adorable hedgehog. It was the first time I had seen either one up close. The cat was kind of a cross between a bobcat and a small mountain lion. It growled, hissed a bit, and lit out like its tail was on fire once the cage was opened. The desert hedgehog appeared quite different from ones I had seen in England and Germany with larger ears and a much longer, very facile nose. Vector used gloves to remove the hedgehog from the cage and took him across the road to release. Hedgehogs are carnivorous. They eat bugs but don't bite. They do have ticks sometimes though. When hedgehogs run, their little bitty short legs appear as a blur of motion they move so fast. The hedgehogs body though seems to be just ambling along.

Once in Iwakuni, during our time on the Marine base, Pete talked me into playing on the faculty baseball team. Being a fan of the nifty red and white striped uniform, not wanting to be left out and cleverly assuming that with so many better players on the team, I wouldn't have to really hit or run or anything and I could just decoratively sit the bench and cheer, I agreed. One week, the team turned up a few folks short  so to avoid having to forfeit the game to the Marines, I found myself in the batting lineup. Naturally assuming I would just strike out and return to the warm the bench, I wasn't too worried. I marched myself confidently up to the plate, chocked up on the bat and assumed the stance. The pitcher shot the ball. I swung, and the ball went sailing into the outfield. Total fluke! Talk about kinetic force...I thought, "CRAP! I guess now I better run!" So, I dropped the bat and took off in the direction of first base as fast as my fat little old lady legs would carry me. A fielder caught the ball. I was out at first, but later, on our way home in the car, Pete turned to me and said with a smirky chuckle," Honey, I know you were running as fast as you could, but watching, it looked like you were moving in slow motion." Needless to say, I was NOT amused by the remark. I am pretty sure my face looked a lot like the picture below...maybe I was a hedgehog in a former life.

Sense of community in the Wild, Wild West...

 Sense of community develops  on some Forward Operating Bases. My personal favorites are ones where benevolent leadership understands that development of cohesive kinship and some level of social engagement is a personal necessity out here. This belief then gives rise to planning and encouragement of community activities, sports, events, even designated physical spaces for everyone to enjoy. Everyone is far from home and hearth, kit and kin. Everyone misses their life back home - bars, movies, restaurants, convenience stores, fast food, pizza delivery, the Mall - any number of things. Everyone works 12 hours a day 7 days a week - some at hard physical labor, others doing data entry 'til their eyes bleed. Everyone is confined to 50 square feet of living space...give or take. Privacy is at a premium. Personal hygiene and habits are disparate. Somehow though, at those homey FOBs like Spin B with its parachute shade rescued from the burn pit or Wolverine with its long, shady, front porches perfectly placed for watching sunsets, where one finds a central  meeting area, a movie night with popcorn, a 5K run, or even karaoke night in the DFAC, a great sense camaraderie, even of family, forms - and it is lovely. There are days out here on the FOBs when I get the odd sense that I am glimpsing what life in the old West must have been like for Marshal Dillon, Kitty, Festus and Doc. Last week at karaoke, I sang a rousing old Buck Owens song, "Rollin' In My Sweet Baby's Arms." It was fast and a real foot stomping hand clapper. Everyone seemed to enjoy it although usually the Filipinos lean more towards the ballads. Of course, there are no horses tied to the hitching posts and there are no bar or gun fights...we do see the occassional fire fight off in the distance or Kiowa helicopters shooting flares to assist ground troups on a mission beyond the walls, still this place just has that Wild West feel to it and the Afghans did bring 2 cows onto their part of the base this week, so maybe, this week at karaoke Pete and I will sing Rawhide - likely no one will get it but us but we will be amused...rolling, rolling, rolling...keep them dogies rolling...

Cliques form, of course, among workers of such varied age, background, ethnicity and background. Groups of Filipinos seem to prefer living, working, eating, and hanging out with each other as do groups of Kenyans, and groups of Indians (with dots, not feathers).  Filipinos enjoy karaoke and near beer. They sing ballads. Kenyans play soccer and enjoy gospel singing and chapel activities. Some play cricket, as do the Afghans. Americans are the only ones who seem to worry about political correctness in the treatment of and interaction with coworkers from other races, nationalities and ethnicities. A hierarchy definitely exists whether we worry about it or not.  DynCorp's contract with the government requires that in LOGCAP IV, local Afghan labor and 80% Foreign National workers be employed. Expats, although severely in the minority, still hold the lion's share of supervisory and management positions. The pay scale, theoretically relative to the local economy in a worker's home country, still seems off kilter to some. Afghans who clear mine fields outside Kandahar Air Field get $8 a day, a stick and a face shield and some expats are offended that a Filipino, Indian or Kenyan workers in the DFAC or trades make a bit under $3 an hour while expats bring in between $12 and $50 an hour.  I don't notice the offended dividing up their personal paychecks with the poorly paid though and personally, I am not offended. Each person from each country knew full well what the rate of pay would be before accepting his or her position and deploying to Afghanistan. We all get a 70% uplift - 35% for hazard pay and another 35% for locality pay. American don't pay taxes on the first 92K  as long as we stay a full year. We all work for our money. It is not a bad place to be. We chose it. We can unchoose it too-anytime we want. We all get a free ticket home.

Khan Neshin and a typical village...

This is a little band 5 FOB called Khan Neshin which also occupies another of Alexander the Great's abandoned Afghan fortresses. I thought it was interesting to see the walls up close. Walls are constructed of brick then plastered over with mud. The whole effect is kind of  Flintstones meets the Crusades - chiseled rock meets molten mud meets crenelation. The dirt here incredibly dense. Water never really soaks into it. Rain that makes it to the ground and doesn't run off immediately leaves puddles in the low spots until it can evaporate. The only reason we have mud at all is that foot and vehicle traffic mixes water with the dirt in a kind of suspended solution which coats shoes and pant legs until the dirt particles filter themselves back to the bottom. There are apparently no earthworms here either or if there are they don't come out out of their holes into the puddles when it rains.
The helicopter's eye view below shows what I see when flying over Afghan villages on my way to and from the various FOBs...walled compounds, the occassional dome and not much else.

Alaska tents and a castle left by Alex the Great...

So, this is another view of Lagman - the same FOB where the B HUTS are. In fact, when I took this photo I had just exited my B HUT intending to saunter over to the DFAC, see if the hens were laying, and score myself a yummy eggwhite omelet with veggies. Struck by the grandeur of the view and fascinated by the juxtaposition of ancient versus new, permanent versus transient, I put the old rumbly tumbly on hold long enough to snap this pic. In the distance, ruins of a castle said to have been built then abandoned by Alexander the Great on his way to India, lord it over the surrounding landscape. This massive structure, appears to have just sprouted up out of the sand. I found it bizarrely reminiscent of the crystal gardens my first graders used to make by pouring laundry blueing over charcoal brickets - only beige. Everything here is beige...land, vehicles, clothing...Anyway, rumored to be about 2000 years old, this fortress used by Greeks, Russians, British, Taliban and now Americans, catches both eye and imagination.  In the mid ground of the photo, squats Qalat with its typical walled compounds, mud huts - home to about 10,000 inhabitants some of whom come to Lagman daily to work in the kitchens, pick up and haul trash and perform other types of labor. I hear Afghan workers make about a dollar an hour and if their occupation becomes known to the Taliban, they quit, run, hide or forfeit their life. A couple of Alaska tents dominate the center of the picture. They are the new Quonset huts and the Cadillac of living and working quarters in Afghanistan. Each Alaska tent comes in its own seaworthy container and each has its own ECU...environmental control unit (I think).

Qalat is just outside Lagman's defensive boundary walls. Our military fortifications here in the big sand box  remind me of the "dead zone" that grew up between East and West around the Berlin wall and the one between North and South Korea as well. A exterior perimeter border of Hescos topped with coils of concertina wire surrounds a wide swath of no man's land bordered by a second internal perimeter wall of Hescos and barbed wire. Hescos are those square dirt holders you can see in the very front of the picture above. They are basically wire cubes with a heavy fabric liner. Once filled with the most cost effective and plentiful local building material...dirt and rocks,  Hescos can be useful for all manner of things - boundary fences, road reinforcement, erosion control, bunkers. I have even seen guard towers made completely of Hescos. In my humble Combat Granny opinion, Hescos make much better sense to use in building bunkers and guard towers because unlike concrete T walls which require movement by crane and which are not really as mortar proof as one might think, Hescos filled with loosely packed particulate matter, when hit,  just compact themselves and benignly absorb any concussive force. Concrete tends to shatter and spray the vicinity with sharp fragments.

Camp Nathan Smith experienced an all day attack the day before I arrived there to work. The perimeter was overrun, the warlord and his nearest and dearest were conveniently "away" for the day, and the camp took heavy shelling for about 12 hours. It probably would have been a lot shorter in duration but I am told that our Army guys wanted to let the local ANA (Afghan National Army) on the base take care of the problem. Eventually when that proved ineffectual, the Army guys just went out and ended the whole ordeal. A tent took a direct hit though during the skirmish and a young soldier lost his life. Anyway, the pic on the left shows where the wall surrounding the Materials Yard took a hit. The shell produced kind of an interesting pattern, sunburstish or oddly flower like...a dandelion puffball shape... but clearly this pattern illustrates the point about how concrete performs under impact. In the picture on the right, you can see exterior T-walls surrounding the two other sides of the same  yard with an inside liner of Hescos to back them up. This arrangement made great pipe and lumber racks effectively keeping these bulk items up and out of the way and further lent itself to the convenient storage of spool wire, empty Alaska tent containers and other large items - which would have taken up needed space in the yard's interior working area. As an added bonus, walking around on the Hescos provided an interesting vantage point for taking pictures of the locals just outside the T walls. I often wonder if they think about what we do inside our walls as much as I wonder about what life is like outside them.

I found what I thought was a pretty interesting website that tells the story of Alexander the Great's journey through Babylon and Afghanistan. The link follows in case there is interest:
http://www.awesomestories.com/flicks/alexander-great/alexanders-journey-in-pictures

B HUTS and blabber mouths...

This is a B HUT. FOB Lagman billets visitors and inhabitants alike in B HUTS. Soldiers...B HUTS. Civilians...B HUTS. God and everybody...B HUTS. A B HUT is exactly what it looks like - a plywood shanty with a tarp, tent, plastic sheeting and/or a salvaged water bladder thrown over and nailed or stapled on to keep out the wet stuff. Inside, B HUTS are divided into living cubbies with doors. The walls stop about a foot from the ceiling so the hut can be centrally heated and cooled with a single unit. Inside, they kind of have that tree house vibe and are generally comfortable enough  unless the B HUT one happens to be sharing is filled with seven 12 year old, gossipy PFCs who have no whisper setting, who vociferously come and go at odd hours, who turn on Family Guy full volume at 4AM sans headphones and who apparently were raised by Sasquatch so have no idea about manners as they relate to communal living in a B HUT with a tired, overworked old woman.  During my tenure at Lagman, I came to hate and revile the fact that light switch controlling the fluorescent fixture hunging in my room was in the posession of the gal in the room next door. While candle light might be considered romantic when dining with a lover and minimal lighting might soothe when one is having a 2 hour massage,  dressing by flashlight for a month is not nor is it ever likely to catch on as the preferred ambiance for a morning ablution scenario. Now, had I been lazing around all day in dishabille which is definitely more my style...oddly enough and to my everlasting chagrin, when DynCorp pays one to work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week they actually expect one to do it. The only thing worse than living in that B HUT of constant darkness was my neighbor's propensity to employee the light switch on her side of the wall to flip the light on and off randomly on my side of the wall when normal people are asleep....well, the normal ones...AND ME!

Little old lady who lived in a CHU...

I work on the Mobile Training Team (MTT) of the Integrated Logistics Department (ILS) out of the Contract Support Office (CSO) on Kandahar Airfield (KAF). I am entitled to housing there though I am only in residence a few days a month. I FOB hop - meaning, I hop a Dynbird helicopter and flit off to enlighten the untrained at 20 or so supported Forward Operating Bases whenever my boss spots the bat beacon sweeping the sky over Gothem (or in his Outlook Inbox) - hmmmm more  "old bat" references... I suppose I could swear off them, but they seriously amuse me. Anyway, Camp Hicks is the DynCorp Life Support Area (LSA) next to the CSO, so all the rich, powerful, starred and rockered, entitled and uber-testosteroned, live and work there...the District, Regional, and Theater level Managers, Directors and other assorted and sundry high muckity mucks. I am more in the nature of a low muckity muck, but still, I have been assigned a nice little 8X10 metal cube of a thing, quaintly named I 131, where my bed, my drawers and all the things I choose not to lug about the country with me, roost. Now, I 131, which I believe I shall henceforth begin referring to as the BAT CAVE, is on the lower deck just a scant 3 doors down from the restroom, six stalls, each with its very own door, and only a few steps farther from the communal showers, cleaned at 9AM sharp daily. Location, location, location. My little containerized housing unit (CHU) away from home has its own climate control unit and a window in the door. A small refrigerator awaits me there, patiently keeping my drink de jeur properly chilled. CHU walls are thin and without insulation, but I am a sound sleeper and own noise canceling headphones and lots of blankts. When ensconced in I 131, I must say feel at home - well except for the obvious absence of ringing phones and doorbells, blaring TVs, children, grandchildren, parental units, friends, neighbors and dogs. We do have the occasional British accented big voice public address system chanting, "ROCKET ATTACK...ROCKET ATTACK." tumbling us from our bunks and sending us sleepily meandering into concrete bunkers to wait for the "ALL CLEAR! ALL CLEAR!" announcement. Usually though, there in I 131, I can relax in privacy and darkness with with my reading lamp and stash of salty snack. When there, I am the master of all I survey - yep...all twelve of things. No dishes. No ironing. Neither floors to polish nor windows to clean. Everything with a place and everything mostly in it. My drag bag, body armor and helmet stash themselves under the bed upon arrival. My robe and towel hang on a wall hook in anticipation of my next shower forey. Yep, when in I 131, all is right with my world and I feel quite fortunate given so many others wandering around KAF totally without a CHU...or possibly without a CLUE?