FIX BAYONETS!

Day 131

Today and tomorrow represent the Afghan New Year. It is now 1385, according to the Muslim calendar. Some of the blogs that I read claim that Islam is still mired in the Middle Ages and, I guess that this kinda sorta proves that line of thought……………..

Being as this is a religious New Year celebration, it’s not a bad idea for westerners to stay out of public view. That way, if someone is high on celebration AND happens to not like us, he doesn’t have the chance to go overboard and cause mayhem. I don’t think that’s real likely in the first place but, those who worry about force protection are paid to be paranoid and they put a lot of thought and effort into it. Well, effort anyway. I frequently wonder about the quality of any thinking involved.

The new Governor for Paktika province came in for some briefings today, holiday notwithstanding. The arrangements for this were made at nearly the last minute because of where people were, weren’t or had to be. Coordination can be a real pain.

At the last minute, we had people waiting out at the airport to pick up one of the briefers while one of our Colonels tried to figure out just where all the critical players were. The Governor was due to arrive at any moment and they’d run out of people to use as escorts, so, I headed down to the Swamp Gate, (so named because the area had been a swamp until we invaded and fixed the drainage,) to meet the Governor.

He arrived in due course. Since no one had met him before, (and I sure didn’t know him,) he had to go through all the normal security procedures to get through the gate. He had to give up his cell phones and be searched. That was all handled fairly efficiently but, it took them a few minutes to get a badge ready for him. Since I didn’t realize he needed a badge, (and they hadn’t said anything) we had already started to walk off before they chased us down to properly adorn his jacket.

I got to sit in on the briefings and listened to him explain what his vision for his province is.

In a country where old age is much more respected than youth, this Governor is much younger looking than you would expect. He has definite goals that also sound to be reasonable and achievable. He’s pretty quiet, not at all like politicians you may have met in the States. But, on the other hand, he’s an appointed official, not elected.

I’ve only been here a week but, I’m already starting to recognize some of the locals that pass by as I ride the shuttle in to work from the safe house. Just like moving into a neighborhood anyplace.

Day 132

Today is the second day of the Muslim New Year. We haven’t heard any overt sounds of celebration through the night.

It is a holiday, though. The meeting we had scheduled for this morning was cancelled from the Afghan side. The section chief is pleased about that because my immediate boss thought it would be good idea if I drove, in order to start learning the streets and to ease me into driving in this madhouse.

The SUVs we use are all rentals, Toyota PRADOs or Land Cruisers. The one I’ve been in most has less than 8,000 kilometers on it and it drives fairly well, except for a clutch that was abused when someone drove off one of the roads and got stuck. Most of the vehicles have minor dings, scratches, bent bumpers, gouges and etc. Driving isn’t strictly a contact sport around here but……. the concept of personal (vehicle) space is virtually unknown or is ignored.

I’m preparing a brief for new PRT (Provisional Reconstruction Team) commanders to help them get up to speed once they’re on the ground, so that’s taking up some of my time today. And, down the road a piece, I have another briefing, only this time with some three star. And I’m supposed to do lunch after the briefing. I bet this means I won’t be allowed to eat my peas with my knife.

UPDATE: Remember the change in the smoking area rules that I mentioned? There are now only two authorized smoking areas on base. Smokers from my office can no longer light a cigarette near our front door (and the burning barrel). Their new area, over at the coffee shop, is conveniently located within 50 feet of the refueling point. Way to go, Smoking Nazis! Good thing diesel doesn’t flash very easily.

Day 133-134

I walked into our building the other day and found one of our Colonels cursing his computer, which was doing what computers do so well, being recalcitrant. Egging him on when he talked about stomping it to death and then throwing it out the window didn’t really have much effect on him one way or the other. When he finally managed to finish what he was trying to do, we walked into the Deputy Director’s office, where I warned him to protect his computer. He wanted to know why and I told him about the recalcitrant computer, at which point they both looked at me like I was crazy and said, “What does that mean?” So I had to give them the definition, which they didn’t really believe until the dictionary came out.

“Oh, using the big, fancy words are we?” became the cry. And, “We’ll have to have him provide a new word every week at the meeting.”

I blame my family.

The air quality around here is very poor. Little fires everywhere for cooking, heating, etc. Small amounts of natural gas are produced in Afghanistan but there isn’t enough of it yet. So, anything that CAN be fuel WILL be fuel. Brick factories around the city tend to burn old tires for fuel. The air would usually smell nasty, if you didn’t get used to it fairly fast.

Along with the smell goes the smog, so thick sometimes that you’d swear the house next door was on fire.

Most of the time, though, it’s all blown away and the weather has been pretty nice. Then you’re OK except for the ever present dust.

Streets are paved, or cobbled, or gravelled and there are sidewalks in some places. But, there are lots of places that have no sidewalk or, the sidewalk has disappeared due to abuse. Dirt instead. So there is a lot of dust swirling around every time a car, truck or even bicycle goes by.

I’ve mentioned that most of the cars seem to be Toyota Corollas. Most of the trucks seem to be Mercedes and the motorcycles haven’t been identified yet. I saw one that looked like it said ‘Muntz’ which I don’t recognize. The logo on the rest has been too small and too obscured to read. My general impression is that the motorcycles are Indian or Chinese manufacture but I don’t have any proof of that.

Off to Bagram in the morning. Big conference to sit through. I may get to give a half hour briefing by the third day or, maybe not. The Commanding General is going to be there and everyone is a little worried about anything less than perfect when he’s around. We’ll see.

Our humble domicile has a cat wandering around. It met me as I came out of the bathroom this morning, doing the typical ‘love me, feed me’ mewing that a cat does. Nice to see a cat that isn’t all hyper and running away at the sight of you but, I won’t be petting it, either. The incidence of disease carried by animals in this country is not pretty. It’s high enough that suspicion of close contact can get you rabies shots, ‘just to be safe.’ So talking to the cat is OK, petting it is NOT.