Cigar Night

A few weeks ago we had a cigar night after Havdalah at our friends over at the US Army Corps of Engineers compound's cigar porch.

Welcome to The USACE compound!

I'm not an expert in virtually any vice, but the peer pressure got to me and I'm told they were very good cigars.

Welcome to the porch!

Frank is a phantom.

Tobacco is basically the only permissible vice on KAF.

 I realize the irony of my making comments about Mike Self way back in the day and how he looked like Fidel Castro. I am fully aware that in these pictures, with the big beard, and especially with the cigar, I resemble Fidel Castro. Just wanted to get this out there in the open, so nobody else thought they could point it out to me.

I'm telling everyone about this glorious revolution I once led.

Curse the infamous glare off of reflector belts!

Cigar night was also a good opportunity for some great looking pictures of good deeds being done. Benari had lots of comic books, and Avi knew of lots of people who had little time on their hands. Supply and demand at their finest.

Transaction complete.

Preparing for an Apocalyptic Water Shortage or Even Worse: A Dibba Surplus...

I've never really held much stake in the idea that bottled waters had much differences between them. Especially the super expensive waters - Fiji Water, Smart Water... these, to me, were simply fantastic frauds pawning off Polish Spring at higher prices - and I love myself some Polish Spring. Water was water and that was it... until I came here.

When I first arrived here, Dibba reigned supreme. Dibba is bottled in the United Arab Emirates. You'd think the people of a desert country would appreciate the taste of good water, but you'd be wrong. I wasn't fully comprehending, then, that it tastes like a rust infused concoction of gutter water after a rain in a big city, put through a months-old coffee filter. Back then I'd drink it and think to myself, "hey, it's not too bad!". Now I know better.

Nestle water and Kinley water (owned by Coca Cola) are now, to me, like the dom perignon of all water. Still basically the same as Fiji and Smart water, but good lord can they hit the spot, and I'm certainly not the only one who has become a connoisseur of the bottled waters of KAF - I'm not even the first one to write about it.

For most of my time here Kinley and Nestle have been the water of choice for the powers that be to drop at various water drop points throughout the base, but throughout much of late-December and early-January we've been on Dibba... yuck.

You can imagine our collective mirth when one day in mid January - like mana from heaven - an entire pallet of Kinley was dropped next to the Ed. Center. Not wanting to share this bountiful harvest with the vultures that would doubtless descent on the Ed. Center at any moment, we took nearly all of it inside. Storage was a little bit of a problem as you can see below. Under circuit breakers, tables, along walls, in enclaves where people rarely go, we made sure to fill every open spot with delicious Kinley.

Lonely box of dibba water sits outside in the cold dust.

About two days after we carried all that water inside, another pallet of Kinley was dropped off so we didn't have to act as if we would make a memorable episode of hoarders. Such is the water situation in Kandahar.

Haircut

No one had to tell me that I needed a haircut. I was well aware. People told me anyway, but I was avoiding it. Basically only one man in my entire life has ever cut my hair. He works at Village Square Styling in Beachwood, Ohio. All throughout college and obviously before college I would always be in Beachwood for my haircuts. This geographical arrangement didn't seem likely anytime in the near enough future to fix an ever worsening hairtastrophe, so I got a haircut here...

Please note: I poofed up my hair and beard for these pictures.

Profile

Waiting for a haircut

It was windy that day, OK??!

Andrea and Anisa came along to document this historic event.

I'll be leaving a little bit of myself here in Kandahar

The barber joked about leaving my hair this way.

I have a neck!

And now the unveiling.

OK... I'll be leaving a lot of myself behind in Kandahar.

I clean up well.

Mission Accomplished

In Another Life I Was Either a Contractor on the Panama Canal, or Killed by Luke Skywalker

For the past three or so months, I've been reading "The Path Between the Seas" by David McCullough on and off. It's a chronicle of the building of the Panama Canal from early surveys of the Central American Isthmus, to completing the canal just before WWI. It was a solid read, and McCullough is probably my favorite non-fiction author.

One of the last chapters of the book entitled "Life and Times" was about what life was like for all of the workers living in the American "Canal Zone" during the final ten or so years of construction. I had no idea, when I started reading this book, that I'd feel any sort of kinship with the workers who built the canal.

The canal zone was sort of a weird hybrid of American territory/military outpost/private enterprise. It had its own laws, health services, stores, etc. The outline laid out in my demographics of kaf a couple of posts ago, probably strongly resemble the demographics of the canal zone.

The inflated salaries for educated/skilled westerners in the canal zone and the relative poverty in which the unskilled, imported labor force from various Caribbean islands in the canal zone lived closely resembled the differences between westerners and TCNs (Third Country Nationals) from places like Sri Lanka, India, Nepal here at KAF.

As I read further into the chapter I steadily grew more and more amazed at the similarities that continued to appear. The continuous construction/activity, the relatively frequent employer-dispensed home-leave schedules, the availability of a wide variety of religious services in canal-zone provided chapels (although I didn't read anything about Jewish services in the canal zone, now that would truly blow my mind). There was even a line that spoke of the lower prices of goods available at the commissaries in the zone compared to back in the States. At that I thought to myself, well that's exactly like our PX stores, and then the sentence went on to explain that the commissaries of the zone would go on to become the model for the modern military Post Exchange store! Wow!

A future embodiment of McCullough may be tempted to write the story of Kandahar Airfield. Life seems to be the same story repeated and told in different ways - and not just in non-fiction, and not just in books...

Not to try to make any profound statements about the current military force working hard in Afghanistan, but if life were an analogy for Star Wars, I'd be currently living in the Death Star as an administrator for the Storm Trooper Education Center. One of the thousands of nameless innocents Luke Skywalker killed with his Proton Torpedoes... never forget.

The Holidays

Oh the weather outside is frightful... well, no, that's a lie. I can still wear short sleeves during the hottest part of the day, but at night it's consistently been below the freezing point, and I find ice on the ground as I walk to work whenever I have the early shift. All the same, the holidays are here, and it's been very evident since December started.

For instance I was walking to work early one morning when I noticed an inordinate amount of sweaty Santas walking away from the boardwalk as I approached. The Santas per sq. ft. increased steadily as I walked to work until I came across an army of santas!

It turns out there was a Santa/Christmas 5k benefit run that morning.

There were a lot of Santas.

The Education Center's halls were then decked:

Andrea and Muhammad decorating the tree.

I put up a little Hanukkah display as well.

Then we took a professional grade seasons greetings picture from the KAF Education Center.

Seasons Greetings from the Kandahar Education Center

Then Hanukkah came!

Good God! Is that what I look like?? I've got to shave!

The first night we did a more formal thing and lit many Chanukiot, but we had a pretty good turnout every night of the holiday! We even had latkes on that Friday night!

We sang some songs.

More singing.

Told the story of Hanukkah.

The focus was far greater on Christmas around here as you can imagine. One day I came across this flyer:

A flyer for a service inside the zombie church!

As I've explained before, I very much enjoy seeing how other people pray, and observe their religions, so when I saw this flyer, and with my fixation on there being an actual church here on base with a steeple and everything, I resolved to attend that service.

Conveniently, I also had the whole KAF schedule of religious services for December 24th and 25th delivered to me through the mass emailing system we've got here, so I also resolved to attend the Catholic midnight mass here that Saturday night.

Makeshift Altar with communion chalices.

When I told him I was going, my roommate and the new Text Examiner here, Bert, decided to come with me to the midnight mass. It was a nice service with a lot of focus on praying for world peace and juxtaposing those prayers against the backdrop of our locale.

Finally it was time to face my fears, and go to Romanian Church.

Who knows what I'll find on the other side of that barbed wire fence? Romania is where Transylvania is located...

Oh... this doesn't look too scary... I assume that means Merry Christmas.

So far it looks like a regular old church... no zombies to speak of...

Oh wow... not at all what I was expecting. 

The history of the Romanian Church on KAF.

I've been to a bunch of Eastern Orthodox churches in Bulgaria, and I know some of the traditions behind Eastern Orthodoxy, so it wasn't entirely alien to me. Some things are pretty obvious like the serious focus on iconography (the little paintings of all the saints/disciples/representations of god/angels seen in the picture of the sanctuary above). One interesting tidbit is whenever you see a picture with someone holding a model of the church you're standing in, that's a picture of the people responsible for the construction of that church being honored in a painting.

I assume they didn't actually dress like that, but maybe they did?

I didn't stay for the whole service, but that, too, was very nice. Then it was time for lunch and something caught my eye on the way in. Take a look:

Did you catch it?

Oriental bar! Clearly someone way up in the pecking order of whoever is in charge of what we eat around here was thinking about the Jewish residents of KAF, and making the oriental bar an option allowed us to celebrate according to our ancient traditions.

Once again in the DFAC we were treated to the artistic culinary decorations like the vegetable bouquet and so on.

And there you have it!

Happy Holidays from Kandahar!

Women

As far as I understand it, women do not like to be stared at. They're not much different from men in this regard. This fact being a given, women must have it rough here. Keep in mind that women are outnumbered by men by a very wide margin, and also keep in mind the (sort of) ban on sexual relationships in the region, which adds a forbidden fruit angle added to the situation. Women are like unicorns here - if you see one it's hard to look away. That is not to say that women need to be treated like Selma Hayak in any one of her roles as seems to be the case.

When walking with some of the ladies of the Education Center I've gotten an idea of what it must be like to be a woman on base from the perspective of a woman walking (or someone next to that woman walking). Turns out it is really easy to detect the watchful eyes of everyone you pass. Perhaps they could be a bit more subtle, but when it's coming from all directions, I doubt that even if more effort was put into discretion it would much change the plight of the women.

I do try my best to not fall into the habit of staring, but it's hard.

There's a famous photograph taken soon after WWII of an American woman walking down an Italian street. The photo is called "American Girl in Italy", and I think it captures the status of women here on KAF very well.

Picture might as well be titled "Any Girl in any Setting in Which Men are not Afraid to Get Caught Staring"

Honor First Coffee Second

Because so many vices are strictly against the rules here under the umbrella of the US military, the two most popular ones that are not forbidden are caffeine and tobacco. People become experts in what's available to them, so clearly there's a hierarchy of what's considered good in these vices. Far and away the number one choice for a very long time was Tim Horton's coffee.

How do I miss thee? Let me count the ways... I guess it would be one... I miss you one way...

Tim Horton's closed two weeks ago very sadly. With Timmy H, I got into the specialty drinks I'm ashamed to say (normally I'm a regular coffee kind of guy). Not that it has anywhere near as ridiculous a menu as Starbucks does, but they carry a french vanilla cappuccino that is out of this world. I went there every day for the last two weeks they were here. Probably haven't spent more money anywhere else on KAF (and I'm pretty sure the prices were lower here than in Canada). I was never much for Tim Horton's in the past, but you can bet it now holds a special place in my heart. I'll remember fondly my days spent in Kandahar as I order my french vanilla cappuccino and a white-chocolate macadamia nut cookie sometime in the future.

One notch down on the list of coffee available here are the two British coffee places. One of these is the Heroes Cafe where they sometimes sell the lox bagel. I hear they even do a trivia night over there. It's pretty solid.

NAAFI is like the British AAFES

See? These places are like legitimate coffee houses.

The next tier down in the echelons of coffeedom here are the Coffee Time, and the Green Beans Coffee Company. These are franchises that sort of follow the military wherever they go. They have locations in most large-ish bases in the country and were all over Iraq as well. There's a coffee cup sleeve that sort of sums of the view of coffee around here:

It speaks for itself.

After the actual coffee places comes the various forms of home-brew or instant coffees. Most in-demand would be the K-cups that you put into keurig coffee makers. They seem to be a bit impractical for the average consumer (like nearly a dollar/cup for a brew-at-home thing? that's a little ridiculous), but if the military is providing them then great! They come in all sorts of flavors so they have a sort of inner-heirarchy of themselves.

My secret stash of chocolate glazed doughnut coffee (upper-right) is the envy of all of KAF!

I try and limit my coffee/caffeine intake as much as possible, it's hard sometimes.