1. If I ever hear a woman complaining that she can't find a man, I'm going to tell her to get a job in a warzone. The women here have their pick (though these contractors are not the pick of the litter, admittedly). I'd estimate the male/female ratio is 60-1, if not greater. The women need not be particularly attractive either, but if they are, look out. There is a female contractor, a forklift operator by the name of Amber, with a potty mouth that would make a sailor's toes curl and gigundous gigundas. When she comes into the office for any reason, 20 Bosnians appear out of thin air. I'm only a month in so I am not able to look past her startling vulgarity, weathered looks, or painted-on eyebrows, but who knows. Look for the wedding invitations.
2. Sleeping at an airfield is fun. Aside from the helicopters and fighters and cargo jets, a couple of times a night, the Voice of God comes on the base loudspeakers and announces that the "Aerial Firing Range is now hot." I don't mind so much when the Voice of God sounds like he should, his deep voice booming out, but when a highpitched 18yo squeaks on there, my faith is tested.
3. My boss, Tom, is easygoing and likes joking around. I like that. I was concerned that my bizarro sense of humor might get me in trouble, but, nope, I fit right in. Someone came in the office looking for information. I asked if he'd spoken with Tom and he told me he didn't know Tom. Tom was on the other side of a divider wall where I knew he could hear and I saw that Tom was coming around to talk to the guy. I said, "How do you not know Tom? Everyone knows Tom...but that's because he has to register in every neighborhood he goes to." Tom laughed. Time to my firing: +/- 20 days.
4. While I like Tom, he makes some of the most inexplicable management decisions I've ever imagined. The big one was that he brought Emir back to our FOB. Tom told me that it was for a day or two until he could ship Emir off to another satellite FOB. My guys, who hate Emir, panicked and wanted to know what was going on. I told them what Tom told me. One of them said Emir said when he got off the helicopter he was back to get his old job back. Suffice to say, Emir's being back did not work well. He kept antagonizing the others and they'd come, terrified, to me. I cautiously expressed my concern to Tom, but Tom refused to do anything about it. Finally, when Emir boasted to my guys that I was getting pushed out and he was taking over, they threatened to mutiny. I calmed them down but went to Tom about it. He said nothing of the sort was going to happen.
5. So, of course, he shipped me off to FOB Phoenix, a base in Kabul, to do a "recon." Tom mentioned it the day after Emir got back, so despite his protestations that there was nothing to look into, well, it was pretty obvious. Phoenix is the only air FOB in Kabul (minus the Kabul International Airport, which Fluor employees are not supposed to go to for the time being) so he tried to sell it to me as a big step up in responsibility and autonomy. He'd sent Emir to do a recon also (when Emir got off he helicopter on his return, he asked my guys "Andre packed yet?"), but I needed to go because Emir didn't have a security clearance and couldn't see everything I could. I went, and sure enough, while I was there, Tom told me he was placing me there full time.
I don't mind in the least. The FOB is much smaller and easier to get around. It's mostly paved so there's not nearly as much dust. I have no bosses, no colleagues, and no subordinates. I do my job and have a snack. I'm no longer sleeping on a top bunk in a smelly tent, but rather, I'm in a massive hangar with plenty of space. The bathrooms are nicer. There's pool tables, ping-pong tables, horseshoe pits and an indoor basketball court. The internet isn't blocked like it is at Bagram so I can go pretty much wherever I want. Yup, for Afghanistan, Phoenix is pretty much heaven.
6. Okay, by now, most people, including my mother and people that worry, will have checked out, I hope. I couldn't really mention it in my first communiques, but when I was getting off the airplane from Dubai, literally I was standing at the top of the rolling stairs, about to walk down onto the tarmac, I watched an airplane crash on the runway next to me. Disasters are nothing like in movies or TV. I sort of expected tragic music to blare in the background, but nope, I simply watched in silence as the left engine clipped the runway (I later found out the landing gear had failed), burst into flames, and the plane began skidding down the runway, making a wide left turn before coming to a halt rolled on to its left wing. What impressed me was that the fire engines were chasing after it within about 45 seconds and that there wasn't an explosion. I later heard the pilots came out of the plane (only pilots since it was a cargo plane) screaming and crying, which is understandable when faced with a jet fuel incineration of a death. If I were them, from that point forward, I'd feel invincible in the air. I mean, who's ever heard of someone crashing TWICE?
At any rate, that was an inauspicious beginning to my Afghanistan adventure. I was very glad I was getting off of a plane when I saw that, as opposed to getting on.
7. We got rocketed twice while I was in Bagram, within days of each other. The first attack, I didn't even hear. The Voice of God woke me up. Many of the other contractors in my tent went running for the bunker as they tried to get on their body armor and helmets. I checked into my office for accountability, to show that I wasn't dead. Then I went back to sleep. That rocket hit a B-Hut, which is a long, one-story wood house that is subdivided into a bunch of compartments that people use as rooms. Think cubicles for living. The rocket killed one guy but the other two people next to him were fine. That just goes to show that my attitude about the rockets and mortars is correct. It's a lottery. It pretty much has to be a direct strike. If that happens, you were just due.
Two nights later, I heard the rocket go over my tent but didn't hear the impact. In Iraq, I'd not only hear the rockets and mortars impact, I'd feel it. I'd wake up on the floor of my hut, my hands covering my head, my lungs giving my heart a bearhug as it tried to set the beats per minute world record. Not being cavalier, but this just hasn't bothered me in Afghanistan. I signed in and went right back to sleep.
8. In Phoenix, the hangar that I sleep in counts as a "hardened structure", meaning that in case of rockets or mortars we are safe in there. I'm amazed by American technological advances. Apparently, we've come up with a an aluminum that can repel incoming explosive projectiles. That, or idiotically, the powers that be simply slapped a sign that says "hardened structure" on a death trap. It's okay though, should a rocket hit, it's not like it would send secondary shrapnel from the aluminum roof all over the place. Waitaminute...
Actually, there are bunkers just out back of the hangar, so they must have realized that aluminum does not make good protective material. Oh wait, the bunkers are aluminum tractor trailer boxes with no sandbagging. I'm starting to think they just want a place where they can corral all the dead bodies.
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