Bagram Air Field... WHY

Since the last time I was here, Bagram Air Field (known as BAF) has grown significantly. The most blatantly obvious change has been the creation of a magical place called “Warrior Village.”

“Warrior Village” is likely the place where Obama’s 30,000 “surge” Soldiers and other personnel will be herded to on their arrival here. Where under normal situations you would expect living conditions to improve, here it has not been the case. Warrior Village is a hodge-podge of personnel living all other the place. The systems have not yet been put in place to ensure daily (or weekly for that matter) activities such as maintenance and cleaning will be carried out. Who ever thought that making a shower trailer metal all over the inside was a good idea? Water + metal (steel?) = rust.

One thing I surely don’t understand is the bathroom (AKA shower/latrines in Army-speak). Most all shelter in this place is either in one of two forms: a tent or a trailer. Right now, I’m living in a large white tent. In Kuwait where I lived, we called these “fes” tents, short for festival, because they resemble festival or circus tents, only missing the emblematic red stripes (no, the irony of the similarities between this place and a circus has not escaped me). In this tent, roughly 130 women are living here. We don’t have beds; we have the typical Army issue kot. And it’s cold. Oh, it’s cold. The problem, or the main problem as there are many, with fes type tents is that they are not by any means an air tight shelter. When the weather outside is frightful, as in below 20 degrees Fahrenheit, the air will come in. Around where the sides of the tent connect to the top canopy, there is, most all the way around the tent, a line where you can see the outside, and surely, they can see in. Conveniently, it’s at eye level. Coincidentally.

That having been said, today, during my after formation morning snooze, I awoke to a lady yelling. A gruff blonde, with a what I would call male haircut mainly because on first glance I thought it was a guy (her body shape and style of dress was rather indeterminate, I can’t help it), was walking down the opposite aisle of the tent, closer to the opposite wall of the tent from where I’ve set up shop. She was huffing about the tent being too warm, and upon inspection of the heater’s sad excuse for a thermostat, barked that we couldn’t turn up the heat as high as it was because we were all going to die of carbon monoxide poisoning. Now, some of you that may have seen the illogical possibility of this considering no matter what temperature you turn the heater on it should therefore emit carbon monoxide since it heats the air by sucking in air which it in turn heats, then blasts it into the tent. In addition, there are holes all over the inside of the tent, from top to bottom. There is no “air tightness” about this structure. I feel like carbon monoxide would be heavier than the air in general, and would therefore seep out the bottom of the tent, cracks all the way around the bottom of the tent. We’re all going to die someday. I’d rather die from carbon monoxide poisoning in my sleep than hypothermia while I’m awake. Let’s be honest.

I honestly don’t think that this one Wilms heater is even enough to heat this entire tent. I doubt it was designed for this use. This tent really is big. I would say probably a basketball court and a half and probably twenty feet in the middle high and five around the outside. The thermostat I was talking about before isn’t really a thermostat; it doesn’t actually know what the temperature in the tent is. Most nights, the thermostat dial is turned to an incredibly 40 degrees Celsius. I know all the women in here would not like to sleep in 40 degrees. All of us have sleeping bags, most of us with them over our heads while we sleep because our faces get cold. Mine does at least. Whenever women walk in, they take a detour to stand in front of the heater to warm the chill from the outside. The heater isn’t really even that hot; the air directly from it is very bearable. I wish I could somehow park myself in its path. Right now, I’m dressed in my sand colored fleece, a t-shirt, coordinating undergarments, socks that go up to my knees, and my “silky” thermal pants. I’m cold. Carbon monoxide poisoning, no problem. People are so ignorant.

Soldiers have been talking about this new Warrior Villiage concept. Most have been saying that we’re being segregated from the BAF Fobbits; separate the actual trigger pullers from the spoiled BAF flunkies because they don’t want us on “their” side, clogging up their DFACs, their PX, their MWRs. They have been setting up tons of stuff out here. A new DFAC is being erected right next to the current DFAC which people have told me was built to accommodate 500 Soldiers and there are 4,000. I think this sounds similar to my heater situation. Ugh, I need to get under my blankets. K. Really, I get it, there likely isn’t room on the other side for all of us. But they really put us out in the middle of nowhere. There is a bus, that takes 45 minutes to reach the other side because of the 15 MPH speed limit, but AAFES can’t keep the PX shop shelves stocked fast enough for the locusts to buy everything again. I just wanted a bottle of hair spray, no such luck.

I’m not sure what policy changed either. This tent is filled with women from Kosovo. Normally, the Army wouldn’t allow us and TCNs to all be put together in a tent. I know that these ladies are probably filling voids in various positions such as food services, as our DFAC manager at FOB Airborne was from Kosovo, but what is the deal? It’s one thing when they put us with normal US American citizens such as the interpreters that came in. In this tent there are Czech Soldiers, Kosovars (all I can remember is Kosovar Albanians from that conflict, I can’t remember what people from Kosovo are actually called…), and tons of American Soldiers.

Oh, and the lady next to me STINKS. I’m sorry, but she does. I try to be culturally sensitive, but through the lens of my red, white and blue glasses: “shower, please.”

Seriously...

I just got pegged with an apple on my way to the DFAC. An apple. Seriously, who throws an apple?! The night was completely dark, and all of a sudden an apple exploded on my knee. It actually hurt quite a bit and made a funny sound, like an empty plastic bottle hitting my knee. I really don't have the patience to deal with this crap.

Frustration.

After a year in Afghanistan, I feel like not much has been accomplished. But, one big but, is that nobody back home really reports on the real Afghanistan. It's nice to see shows like the "Today" show here in Afghanistan; its not really the "real" Afghanistan. They interviewed a bunch of people in Kabul, Kabul isn't like the rest of the country. People in Kabul have money, food and housing for the most part. Out here, I guess they have a lot of things, but it's not like Kabul.

I keep having dreams about blowing up too. Like... RPGs, IEDs, anything. It's odd though. I mean, I die all the time. For some reason it doesn't freak me out. Last night I had a dream about RPGs, or what I thought in the dream that were RPGs. But, clearly, as soon as I woke up, I was like wtf, that sounded like an arty sim (for those of you not in the Army, that's an artillery simulator, used in training to sound like some sort of artillery, makes a whistling sound). Real rockets don't sound like what you'd think. The first rocket I heard sounded like somebody ripping nylon. Like, "Ziiiiing!" I can't explain it, there are toys that make the same sound. Actual artillery sounds nothing like an arty sim either. Sounds like you might expect, the air breaking above you, like swinging a yo yo around your head. I only say that because somebody was doing that and it got close to my head... A while back, I had a dream about an IED on the FOB of all places. It was located in a metal pipe that for some reason was on the FOB. I looked in it and saw what looked like a bomb of some sort. Then I got blown up. The odd thing was that when I woke up (because I always wake up when I die in my dreams, I don't know what that says about hell but...), my arm and shoulder were asleep. That's where I got blown up. I suppose most of my left side was blown off in the dream. Morbid as hell. Think if I actually got hurt in this war how bad the dreams could be? Ridiculous. Writing all this crap down helps though.

When I was on leave I was a little messed up too. I don't know why really. I haven't been out really that much, but I think that might have something to do with it. I haven't had the time to get comfortable out with the people. Anytime you're in a crowd over here, it's a scary situation. The bad guys don't care who they blow up. They'll put a suicide bomber in a crowd just to blow up as many of us as possible. The few patrols I've been on have been in places that haven't been real crowded. It's been so long since I've been in say the mall or Walmart. I know I haven't really been shot at before or even been IED'd, but just fearing for your life so often gets to you. When you're actually out there, you don't fear for your life, it's more like after effects. When you're doing your thing out there among the people, you don't have time to worry about your life, you have time and capacity to do your job, not much else. After the fact, you're like "shit, that could have been bad." When in New Zealand, probably one of the safest places on Earth, I was hearing shots, thinking about the fastest way out of the building, just a little more than a little bit paranoid. Not sure if that's PTSD, but it made me feel like a psycho. I'm sure as time passes, I'll relax a bit more.

This place is so sterilized; there's not even a couch to sit down on. Take that back, there is a couch, it's in the chapel. So one couch on the FOB. You can't live a normal life, watch normal TV (the Armed Forces Network or AFN is all that's around and they censor all the movies to make them PG essentially), wear normal clothes. Speaking of which, my skin is dying. I can't believe how dry it's gotten in the past few weeks since I ran out of my good lotion... Oh! Take a normal shower is on that list... The showers here are small as hell! At least we have them, I suppose. The showers that I use now almost always have hot water too! At least I smell good most of the time. :) I can't complain that much.