I would like to write about my experience at last night's Jewish service and a whole bunch of other things, but I'd like to get a better idea of what's what before I do that, so I'm taking the opportunity to write something interesting about this place where I live and work.
Welcome to Kandahar Airport!
Kandahar Airfield started out as just that, an airfield, which is some sort of way of saying an airport. We're located just outside Kandahar City which is the second largest city in Afghanistan. It was built in the late 50s and early 60s by American consultants and you can really see the resemblance it bears to the American architecture at the time. There's some conjecture as to whether or not it was originally built for the purpose of eventually becoming a military post in the event of a showdown with the USSR, and in fact it was built while the Soviets were busy building Kabul Airport.
For contrast, this is what was going on with the Soviet-built Kabul Airport's architecture around the same time.
When such a showdown did occur, the airport was used by the Soviets - nice going, Americans. Between then and the current conflict here it became just a regular airport with flights and humanitarian aid coming through. In December, 2001 the airport was captured by coalition forces and since then it's been in NATO hands.
The airport actually opened back up to commercial flights about five years ago, so it's actually a NATO base and a regular airport. In fact when my colleagues go on vacations between their tours at the Education Center, they fly commercial out of here. At one point during the troop surge starting a couple of years ago, Kandahar had the busiest one-runway airfield in the world with 1700-5000 flights a week!
Now it's a huge base. I've hardly seen any of it. What I have seen includes the mod (modular) housing, Ed. Center, boardwalk, and a couple of the administrative buildings where we get our badges do things like register with our background checks and apply for an escort badge. I've also been to the Tim Horton's... Have I mentioned yet that there's a full-service T.G.I. Fridays across the street? That blows me away! I went in there just to take a look and it looked exactly like a regular TGI Fridays!
It's always Friday there! But Fridays are exactly like every other day here so the same could be said of any day.
OK, these pictures seem sort of staged... but maybe such a great time is had at TGI Fridays, Kandahar.
Most of the other American restaurant franchises that are here, unlike TGIF's, are not the same as back home. There's a Nathan's Hotdogs, KFC, and some others, but they're run out of trailers with windows in them that you walk up to and order at a counter.
This is what the other restaurants look like. Burger King's gone from here though... too bad.
Having done a lot of research on Kandahar before getting here, I and everyone I discussed this with were wondering: who is it flipping the burgers and serving the food at these restaurants. Well, I've discovered that most of them are contracted from countries closer to Afghanistan. However, it appears that Tim Horton's imports their own Canadians to work here! Friendly, with that accent that most Americans would make fun of, Canadians!
Fascinating... If you were to google kandahar airport and search in maps you'd be able to spot the unique design of the original airport building among the buildings that make up the NATO base from the aerial view. Don't ask me why military bases are allowed to be shown on google maps...
Now that I'm downrange and I've gotten all my requisite badges and ids and meal-card and everything, my days are different than they were in Germany and I'm getting some sort of regularity in my day. So it's time to create another post about what it is exactly that I do.
I start my day in module housing. It's a collection of about 150 buildings in a grid pattern. Each building has about six rooms with room for six people in each of them, it looks like four people to a room is common though (you can see, I have a bunk bed). Every module building has a bathroom with real toilets (not port-o-johns) and showers.
This is before I unpacked - it's much neater now.
The room is divided into little cubicle areas like mine with curtains made from blankets strung up between dressers. Also, relatively nearby there is a poo pond where sewage is treated. It smells pretty bad when the prevailing winds do not favor the module housing section of the base. Good thing we have lots of air freshener and glade plug-ins going strong in the room.
This is what the module housing looks like (picture taken at twilight and not indicative of the intense sun here)
I walk about a half mile from the room to the Education Center. This morning (and probably in the future) I stopped at a DFAC to get my to-go breakfast. I arrived for the early shift at work, which is 0700 -1900 so I could call people through skype at my desk where there's internet (once again, no internet in the rooms unless you pay a whole bunch).
My desk and chair.
So I work all day for 12 hours either the early or late shift (late shirt starts at 1000), with breaks for meals and stuff. Soldiers ask me for help with registering their information in the army education system, help finding the information they're looking for regarding testing, etc. Most of the day is pretty quiet and there has been some down-time, but I believe I'll be getting some data-entry tasks that have to be caught up on for the Ed Center, and catching up will take a bit of time. Once that is done it won't be too hard to keep up to date with that data entry (essentially a log has to be created whenever a Service Member is served by the Ed Center).
View over my desk/computer of the Army Learning Center. Soldiers sign in at that podium thing right there and use computers for education purposes. As you can see from the picture, I'm hard at work on this blog. I'm pretty sure this was early morning when computer lab traffic is minimal.
At the end of the workday I stroll back to the room. There are things to do while not working like work-out, and eat and watch tv... slim pickings. I plan on getting into a rhythm of going to the gym on a regular basis, but I'm not quite at that point. Also, on Friday and Saturday evenings there is a Jewish service run by Captain Warren Gross, I haven't mentioned him on this blog yet, but I was put in touch with him by Rabbi Bud Frankel who was a chaplain with the military. Dr. Captain Gross is like an unofficial Jewish Chaplain here. His existence here is a large part of why I felt more confident coming to Kandahar. I got in touch with him and he and his entire family have been very helpful to me and mine. Today and tomorrow I'll be attending the services. More on that later.
Here are some things I see on my way back to the room:
A volleyball game taking place within the perimeter formed by the boardwalk.
View of some of the boardwalk. Maybe I'll visit that barber at some point.
Concrete hockey rink built by the Canadians here at KAF with adjacent side of the boardwalk in background.
Since we have literally no days off downrange, I spent this last weekend lazing around the hotel and around Mannheim. Saturday, I went to the Synagogue again (and it was a crowd the size one would expect of a Central/Eastern European Shul). There was just one family with like five little kids that was really cute, but aside from that it was mostly older Russians (since the majority of German Jews came to Germany following the breakup of the Soviet Union). I brought my friend Devin with me to Synagogue and it a unique experience for him.
Afterward we spent some time walking around Mannheim and seeing the famous water tower and the park surrounding it. We got back to the hotel at like 2 and I jumped in the pool because it got hot in the last week I was in Germany and because we had a pool.
This is the water-tower. I can't imagine they still use it.
Very nice. Miss you already, Mannheim!
Then we did something awesome. We made arrangements in this little bier-gaarten/restaurant called the alte-fass (means old-spigot) to go to this event they'd been advertising with fliers on the tables. It was an all-you-can-eat salad bar and barbecue! Man it was awesome!
The chef at work.
All day Sunday I lazed. Not only because of the no-days-off downrange thing, but because Sunday is still very much a Sabbath for Germany. Most restaurants and shops are closed. So I did mostly nothing and then we went to Ali's this little Turkish place near the tram stop for dinner.
When last we left our hero he was just escaping from the clutches of the C-17 cargo plane and unloading himself with his trusty side-kick lappy (laptop case) and his ward rolley (a rolling carry-on bag) storming the KAF NATO base in true Kramer fashion!
But seriously - after (at this point) nearly 40 hours of consecutive travel I was in bad shape. We deplaned and got into the reception area for newcomers. Got a map of KAF (once again, Kandahar Airfield) which has since come very much in handy. I was directed to a phone with which I was supposed to call the contractors I knew here on the base to sign me in and everything. I did that and met Christian - an employee of the Kandahar Education Center.
Christian drove the Education Center's car down to the terminal and drove me to his and two others who work at the ed center's room where I plopped my stuff down next to the one empty bed area - the room is divided into quadrants with curtains strung up between the high dressers for walls.
Kandahar is hot and dusty. There are lots of new smells and the dust is everywhere already and I've been here 24 hours at this point. It gets colder at night and especially colder in the rooms where the air conditioning works 24 hours a day and between 3 and 7 am gets the temperature down into the sixties in the rooms - I woke up freezing this morning. More on the base itself another time.
We made a quick visit over to the ed center and saw where I would be working briefly then came back to the room. I showered and went to bed.
I slept for 10 hours.
Then I woke up and got ready to go into work. The Ed. Center is open from 0700 to 2200 (that's 7am to 10pm for you non military folk out there). Throughout all that time the computer center has to be covered. Most people work 8-8, but I'm going to be working (or so it seems) 10-10 because I'm one of the two people that have to cover the center early or late shift. So all day I sat and worked with soldiers helping them out with the various questions they had having to do with education and how the Army helps them achieve that education.
We get breaks/cover for each other for meals and breaks and there has been some downtime but I'll have some more duties soon that will keep me more occupied than I've been today. And now it's 9:30 pm and I'm getting ready to close up the Ed. Center. That's it!
We were going to get a lot of paperwork for me done today but didn't get around to it. Tomorrow we'll do it so in the meantime I don't have a key to my/our room, don't have any id badges and we need like 20 of them... good news is this morning my trunk got here and now I have a majority of my stuff.
Monday morning we left the hotel for the Frankfurt airport. Me Devin and Becca all arrived to Mannheim the same weekend and left the same day. We first flew to Istanbul where we had a six hour layover. This is not a slight against Turkey - just a commentary on social norms and how they vary between cultures - but Turkey and the central asian countries I don't think have mastered the art of personal hygiene as we know it in the Western World.
I do most of my luggage shopping at the Samsonite store in the Istanbul airport.
Meanwhile, Turkish Airlines has the best airline food I've ever eaten! We had two meals one on the way to Istanbul, and another between Istanbul and Bishkek. We got to Bishkek Tuesday morning, and followed our instructions to NOT USE OUR PASSPORTS but instead call from the specially designated phone a certain number for NATO people to come pick us up. Which we did, and then they did. I was under the impression that Manas NATO base was a ways away from Bishkek airport when in fact - it IS Bishkek airport in large part.
The entrance to the base is off of the tarmac of the airport. In the base are lots of tents and a big supply room and some things there for solders' welfare. Everything you'd expect of a transient base (one that's meant for large numbers of people going this way or that). It felt like Casablanca there. There's the "terminal" building where people waiting for "Space A" (A is for Available) on a flight and all there is to do is wait. After already having been traveling for 24 hours, the following 12 or so weren't a blast trying to stay awake.
My two travel companions left on an earlier flight in the day, and so I was struggling to stay awake by myself for most of the day. Not that exact times would matter to you, but I'm not able to share the times of the flights out of Manas because the information is usable by enemies and could compromise the safety of the flights. Interesting stuff, huh?
The giant waiting room once you've found space-a on a flight has lots of benches and a giant projector screen on which they show movies for the 3 hour waiting period before the flight heads out. They were showing Bad Boys for Becca and Devin's flight (I waited with them), and The Green Mile for my flight.
Finally we were called to the flight. We were bused out to the airstrip where I saw the C-17 Globemaster for the first time. I don't know what I was envisioning before that point, but I wasn't expecting to see this:
A C-17 Globemaster
We crammed ourselves into the cargo area via the loading ramp just as these soldiers are cramming this helicopter into a similar cargo area.
Oh no big deal - just putting this HELICOPTER inside that PLANE!
We weren't allowed to take pictures of our own, but this is what it looked like inside the plane (with a few less soldiers than this)
I was in one of the side seats facing in, basically right where the guy all the way on the left is sitting.
By this time I was in and out of sleep and waking up with pains in my neck. We touched down about 3 or so hours later in Kandahar.
After three weeks in Germany it looks as though I'll be deploying on Monday. I have my itinerary, orders, and all of the documentation/immunization I'll need for my six months "downrange". My itinerary includes flying Turkish Airways to Istanbul, then Turkish Airways again to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. From there I will be hitching a car ride to the Manas NATO base outside of Bishkek. There I'll wait for a spot on a flight to my FOB (Forward Operating Base). I'll also be picking up my kevlar vest and helmet there.
From what I've heard the Kevlar is the reason we even go to Manas at all, and that for most people, their kevlar gear gathers dust underneath beds or in lockers, but thems the rules. We've got to pick it up in Kyrgyzstan - besides, afterwards I can say I've been to Kyrgyzstan!
Should you care to mail anything to me downrange - please do so. The address can be found below.
It costs the same to send something to Kandahar as it does to send something from anywhere in the US to New York! So it's really reasonable! I'm also told that it takes a relatively short time for mail to get there, but much longer to get back. Also, spend the extra dollar or so and make it priority - apparently the difference is really noticeable in terms of arrival time. Mail breaks up the monotony over there so PLEASE feel free to send me stuff (letters, packages, anything at all).
It's a balmy 120 degrees in Kandahar this time of year and they're not quite over the hump of the summer heat yet (good thing my six months didn't start in May or something, then I'd melt).
I wanted to create an Indiana Jones-esque montage of my plane flying from Frankfurt to Istanbul to Bishkek to Kandahar with a little red dotted line trailing behind the map that my plane is super-imposed over, but apparently that takes some sort of skill. So just pretend I did it.
My apologies for the self-centered nature of this blog post. Hey, check out this picture I took with my camera from the plane as it was leaving Cleveland a few weeks ago:
Pretty excellent quality considering the altitude and the window...
I suppose I should face the fact that I'll be away from home for a long time. The longest I've ever been away before this expedition was just three and a half months (my semester in Israel). It's exciting to be going, and the night before I left for Germany I was looking over my parents scrapbook from their big long Israel experience and it was over a dollar a minute to call home in 1980! Now with skype being dirt-cheap and email and everything it is a whole lot easier.
Exhibit A: Grover Goes to School with Mom and Ilana. Every year in late-summer, my mom reads to the Kramer kids from this lesson-teaching tome. Such favorite lines as "I hate baloney!" and "Two new friends in one day?!?!" will forever live on in Kramer lore. We jokingly were saying that we would read it before I left and last night I remembered while on skype with home. So we did it via skype. The hilarious results can be found below.
