NATO Forces

KAF is a NATO base. It's not just Americans. So far, I've seen coalition forces from Slovakia, Belgium, France, UK, Australia, Turkey, Romania, Kosovo, and Bulgaria. Definitely there are more Americans than anything else, but these other soldiers make themselves known.

Merukah!

This is the sign for the Romanian compound with the creepy church in it. Might as well say "Quarantine".

Every time I see a Bulgarian I want to talk to them, but don't. I visited Bulgaria as an Ohio State University International Affairs scholar back in 2008, so I know a lot about Bulgaria's history, landscape, and culture. But I know the conversation would go something like this:
Me: Hi! I've been to Bulgaria!
Bulgarian: Really?
Me: Yes! I've been to Sophia, and Plovdiv, and Nessebar, and Veliko Turnovo, and I know about Aleksander Nevski and so on and so on.
Bulgarian: Ok.
Me: Nice talking to you.

As much as it would be nice listing to a Bulgarian the things I know about and the places I've visited in Bulgaria, I think it's a conversation worth avoiding. Perhaps the urge will be too great and I'll have that very conversation some time - word for word.

Bulgarski?

Every time I go to the British compound's "Hero's Cafe" to get a bagel with lox, they're sold out. Their problems with restocking their lox stores aside, their cafe area is a nice place. Almost on par with the Tim Horton's the Canadians have. I'll continue checking in regularly in an attempt to eat some delicious, delicious lox.

The Royal Air Force has come a long way since the events of 1923.

What? Switzerland?! I thought you guys were supposed to be neutral! Oh wait, that's Denmark...

This is in the entrance hall to the building where the people in charge of KAF work. I had to go there to get my Flyer for High Holidays approved to post on the Boarwalk.

Slovaks are everywhere here. I haven't interacted with many of them, so I'll let Sarah Kemp's blog post about them suffice. Whoops! It was about Albanians... same thing, almost.

The inside of the Slovakian compound is guarded as though it were the nuclear launch codes.

There are too many of these country signs for me to take pictures of, so this'll be the last one.

What would one buy in a Canadian Store? Roots hoodies? Muskoka Bear Wear?

The Canadians are headed out of here, which is a shame. They're all very friendly, and on Canadian Thanksgiving we all got a great meal out of it. Also when they leave (which I'm told is going to be in about a month and a half) the Tim Horton's goes with them. This is a calamity! I should start a petition to keep them here. They have the best coffee and doughnuts on KAF. Maybe the Belgians will bring in a chocolate shop to replace it...

Graffiti and Zombies

I see enough interesting graffiti art all around KAF to make it blog worthy.

Some unit's decal.

Stop signs are a popular place for graffiti -many of them make reference to something called hammertime - what time is that? Just kidding.

Can't tell if the plane is coming or going.

The place is pretty graffiti conducive with all of the concrete barriers around...

Thundercats! Ho!

I like the cultural references.

This one is both a reference to The Shining and Johnny Carson... get it?

One of my favorites, Ron Burgundy shows up all over KAF.

Most of the graffiti consists of stencils and decals like above, but there are a few that are a bit more impressive like these:

Very impressive.

Wow.

Outside the french PX/cafe.

If this were 40 plus years ago these graffiti pieces would make cartoon wolves go like this.

I pass this collection every day on my way to work.

That last one has a good point. Not because there are hordes of walking dead attempting to eat all of our brains of which we should be wary, but because those hordes wouldn't feel out of place here. Bleak landscape, lots of concrete, place is divided into sectors, large speakers giving us announcements with creepy echo effects, no entrance or exit... I'm told it bears a resemblance to the resident evil series, but I've never seen or played those.

Couple all of this with an active imagination and you get all sorts of fun scenarios running in my head of what would make a good setting or more dramatic post-apocalyptic imagery. Look at this church:

Not scary.

Ok, it's not very scary. You can't really tell that it's the creepiest church I've ever encountered. It's within the perimeter of some eastern European forces' compound and therefore surrounded by fence and barbed wire where clearly there was some bizarre experiment gone awry in which a disease was created that causes the brain to shut down almost entirely except for the motor skills required to seek out brains to eat. Also, you're not looking at it while it's at night:

click the picture to enlarge - it's hard to see.

That picture was taken from about the same angle, and as you can see it's very eerie.
One more, but this time with all the barbed wire.

In the zombie movie that takes place on KAF, there would be a climactic scene involving the church in some way.

Graffiti like this doesn't really help the situation:

Demon trying to escape from the concrete barrier

Or this one:

Clearly sector 3 is where you have to wear your gas mask.

I've grown used to it, and pictures don't really do it justice but here's some more samples of KAF at night, when the things that go bump in the night crawl out of the woodwork.

Creepy - picture taken from the roof of the Education Center.

Creepier.

There you have it. The art scene of KAF condensed into a blog post.

One Month Contractversary

It has been a month now since I arrived at KAF. It is extraordinary how fast the time here seems to slip by. I'll turn around and a week has gone by. This is definitely related to all the days being the same, and having very little variation. Here's how my week normally breaks down:

The first half of the week I get the late shift. That's 1000-2200. I wake up around 0730ish and go to the MWR gym (because it's closer to my room), as opposed to the NATO gym which is supposedly cleaner and nicer (it's nicknamed two-shoes because you must bring a second pair of non-dusty does with you in order to exercise there). Afterwards I pick up breakfast and then get ready to go to work.

Throughout the day there are various odd jobs that I'm responsible for, as well as breaks for meals and incidentals and this helps break up the time on the clock. You'd think it would drag on because it's half a day's worth of work, but it doesn't.  When I get off work at 2200 I sometimes stay after a bit to skype with home - then go to my room and sleep.

The second half of the week I have the 0700-1900 shift. I pick up breakfast on the way into work and eat it in the early slow hours during which relatively few soldiers come in for help in the Army Learning Center. I try to come in a bit earlier because when it's 0630 here in Afghanistan, it's 10:00pm back in Eastern Time, and once daylight savings time starts in November it'll be 9:00pm: perfect time to talk to friends and family through skype.

After work on these days I either go to the gym or to the Shabbat Services available to me (this is why I requested the early shift during the second half of the week), and then the gym. After I exercise, I'll read or watch tv, or if I'm feeling up to it after the long day I'll go to the MWR or the USO which are like morale and welfare institutions for those living on KAF. They have movie theaters, pool, fooseball, video games etc. And that's pretty much how my time here is spent barring any routine-changingly significant events.

I find myself going through that thought process articulated in the show Seinfeld. You know when they're stuck in Florida for an extra five days and Seinfeld goes on about how the first and the last days don't even count, sleeping and meals don't count, and so on until they're really only stuck in Florida for 20 minutes instead of five days? I find myself thinking this way about months going by.

I know I shouldn't start thinking about leaving this early considering I have five more months to go, and considering that I'm not miserable here and don't plan to be... but I can't help it despite all the advice I've been given to not count down to when you're leaving until at least 3 months have passed... and that's only two months away from now and if you take away sleep and meals... see? I'm doing it again...

Here are some more interesting pictures I've collected from living in Afghanistan:

I live on Illinois, the most commonly landed upon space in Monopoly.

Ohio street is only a block away, where everyone is playing cornhole all day long and is nice to each other

The airport has lost some of its 1960s sheen.

 We had clouds last week. It was significant.

Christian enjoying a cigarette on the Education Center's porch.

What feels like the only tree in KAF.

Obligatory sign pointing out which direction and how far away things are.

Remember VHS tapes? They used to be the way to consume media and still are in some places (like the Kramer household). VHS tapes are still popular in very specific places, namely: The Kramer household, and Afghanistan. I'm pretty sure all the VHS tapes that aren't in the Kramer household are either destroyed or have somehow found their way here.

Lots of VHS tapes.

Some Classics. You'll shoot your eye out kid! Also, You can't handle the truth! Also, 1.21 gigawatts?!?!

Update on my own personal content consumption: I'm waist deep into "The Wire". Season 2 was sort of a let-down, but 3 is better. Reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is pretty enthralling - it reminds me of Dan Brown books. I'm also reading Theodore Rex about Teddy Roosevelt's time as president, he was a badass.

Until next time!

Driving Around

In my broad and deep two-week experience downrange, I have had some opportunity to see a majority of KAF. There's plenty yet for me to see, but here are some highlights from driving around the base and taking pictures of standard things one might expect to see here.

First thing you see when driving around is the steering wheel. Here it is:

Anything strike you as odd?

The steering wheel is on the right!

Proof - except I easily could've shown the mirror image of this photo. You know what? You'll just have to trust me.

Getting used to driving on the right side of the car was an ordeal. It's all a matter of overpowering the desire for your head to be 43% of the road distance from the right side the road and instead having your head located at around 10% of the road distance from the right side of the road - because we still drive forward on the right here. Was that confusing to read? Because it was confusing to write. When I get back to the states people might want to avoid driving with me for a while because I'll be going through a similar acclimation period - also I'll be windshield wiping instead of turn-signaling.

Our next-door neighbors.

So next door there's a sort of headquarters, but it's not the main headquarters at KAF - I haven't quite figured out what goes on over there, but it's apparently the wing of the Army that we fall under in the overarching hierarchy that is this little world.

Here's what you're definitely most likely to see when driving around here:

Barbed wire, generator flood-lights, and fence.

Another thing you're very likely to see: 

What's your sign? "Speed limit is walking speed"? You must be trustworthy.

Signs are everywhere here. Oh look! here comes another one!

For those who can't convert 20 km/h is like 12 mph.

So we have to go very very slow around here. And for good reason! You don't want to get in an accident with this:

MRAP

So this is what an mrap looks like up close. There isn't really anything in this picture to compare it to for scale, but imagine an average sized person standing next to the front wheel right there. Their head would be at about the top of the wheel casing above the wheel - these things are massive, and there are all sorts of them driving around here in addition to a myriad other large and useful vehicles.

Spoiler alert: I'm going to be collecting pictures of the different international compound entrances and posting about them because I think they are pretty cool looking, but here's what one of them looks like.

The Slovaks compound.

And there you have it, a little summary of what driving around KAF is like. Invariably we end up back at the Ed. Center:

Work, sweet work.

A Brief History of KAF

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.

Reminds me of Catch Me If You Can

Did Eric Mendelsohn design this airport? Am I right??

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...