I forgot all about President’s Day when it finally arrived on Monday. Dobbie and I didn’t even give the holiday a second thought as we showed up to the shop to work on a car. It didn’t dawn on us until later that morning when the radio station DJ announced something about having a great President’s Day. We were happily working away with no regard about it being a holiday. This is one of those fine opportunities when ignorance is bliss.
Ed purchased a brass hand-carved vase here before he left and went to Iraq. He sent the vase through his wife to his mother and then realized he had a problem. His wife wanted a vase as well and she communicated this to Ed the day before he was to leave. Ed asked me to pick up a vase for him and send it to his wife. Not a problem. When I initially went to get the vase that Ed wanted, the Hajji was out of that particular type of vase. I communicated this to Ed and said I would get one when the supply was back in. As it turned out, Ed’s sister wanted one of the vases as well, so once again Ed asked me to get a vase for a total of two. Now I am in a real bargaining position.
Ed shelled out $40 large for the first brass vase. I was determined to pay less than that amount and needing two would put me in a better position. I sauntered up to the Hajji with Dobbie, picked up the vase I wanted, and inquired the price of a vase. The Hajji told me $40. I set the vase back down and said no. The Hajji then told me he would give me a special deal of two vases for $80. Wow! What a deal! Talk about bargaining! I shook my head no and said $60 for two. The Hajji whipped out a calculator and asked me to punch in the numbers as he did not understand what $60 was. I got the numbers in there and he shook his head. With that, I said to Dobbie, “OK, let’s go”. The next moment the Hajji agreed to sell me the two vases for $60. I felt pretty good about the process when Dobbie leaned over to me and said “I’ll bet I can get two for $55”. The Hajji was having none of CD’s deliberation so I walked off to give him an opportunity to do some arm twisting. Finally Dobbie called me back over and asked he could borrow a dollar. He had told the Hajji all he had was $55 and made a demonstration out of pulling $54 from his wallet. The Hajji did not see the extra $20s Dobbie kept concealed. I walked up, pulled out a dollar and handed it to him. Deal closed for $55. Whoooo, talk about shrewd. I learned a great deal from CD on that transaction.
One of the great things about being a civilian in the land of military folks is not having to keep a watchful eye out for saluting. With all of the U.S. and coalition forces walking around, you are almost obliged to keep your right arm up in a salute the whole time you are walking regardless of what rank you are. It’s just kind of nice to walk around with my hands in my pockets and wear whatever I want in whatever color I want. I think I am finally enjoying being a civilian.
We have been having some wild weather, but last night after a particularly rainy night, I was making my rounds to the shower and noticed the sun trying to burn through the cloud cover. As I’m sure I have told you many times, we are surrounded with mountain ranges that are covered in snow and are close enough that it appears you could just walk over to the base of them in five minutes. The mountains are tall with an average height in the low teens and some peaks that are right at 20,000 feet, they are tree-less, and covered in a dull whiteness that not only enhances the lines and depths with shading, but belies their enormity. It’s surreal and as if Norman Rockwell painted this background for us so that we may gaze upon them daily. I digress and getting on with my point, I was suddenly frozen by what appeared to be a large white animal on the side of one of the mountain ranges. I stood there and stared for what seemed like an eternity trying to gauge things like size, movement, etc. I rubbed my eyes and continually refocused. I thought for a moment that I was witnessing the abominable snow man, the much bally-hooed Yeti there in all his glory on the Hindu Kush. Surely if such an animal existed, it would certainly be in the high mountain ranges of southern Asia where the peaks are world-class and the snow is never ending. I was nearly a believer and moments away from telling someone when Nature changed the sun and cloud conditions to reveal what it really was: a cloud formation. It’s a good thing I didn’t grab someone to confirm my sighting as I probably would have been removed from here faster than Klinger attempting to get a Section 8.
The Hindu Kush is so named because literally translated it means, “the Killer of Hindus or Hindu Killer”. They received this moniker because of the trade route that passed right up and over the mountain range causing thousands upon thousands of Hindus to perish while traveling over this range throughout the years of an established trade. They still travel it today with donkeys and mules the same way they did hundreds of years ago. There is no super highway or tunnel that affords safe passage, so Hindus continue to die every year. You would think they could find a different way to import / export their wares. Certainly we learned a great deal from the Donner Party. In any case, CD has now applied part of the translation into a greeting. His new phrase when meeting a local is: “What up, Kush?”
We saw something at the Bazaar this time that we had not seen before and that was children. Local children. Groups of three to five were being escorted around the Bazaar by U.S. service personnel. They were all pre-teen in age and clearly happy and excited about the hustle and bustle of the activities. We have no idea why and were not provided with an answer as we hastily attempted to ask. We have not seen any local women and have only noticed a child or two at far distances on the tops of their buildings or tending to goats. It was obvious to me that the children were as much in awe with the surrounds of the Bazaar as I was with seeing them. Maybe this will happen again and we will be able to find out the reason for this occurrence.
Dobbie and I are trying to develop a weekly routine where we take Saturdays off. Nearly everyone else takes Sundays off which creates a lot of traffic at the PX and other infrastructure, and incredibly long lines. I did say we attempt this as it has yet to become SOP. We both hate to leave work unfinished in the shop and have frequently negated our day off to finish a project. In any case, our infrequent day off is generally spent with sleeping in, cleaning, personal organization, and whatever else needs to be done. We have both talked about things we miss back home like mowing the lawn (yeah, really), working in the yard, washing the cars, and messing around in the garage. Certainly we miss family activities, but there is something uniquely special about those ubiquitous chores laying in wait on a day off that I long for.
The days that we do take off involve a lot of organization and cleaning for me. I change the sheets on my bed weekly and throw them into my laundry bag. I generally do laundry twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays. I like to vacuum my carpet weekly, but that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes we are able to borrow the SPG upright vacuum and other times we bring the shop-vac from the shop. I organize my change/pogs, receipts, and notes made during the week and file them appropriately. I also go through my email by updating, responding, organizing, and deleting as needed. I also take stock of my snacks and foodstuffs in my room armoire and fridge and essentially make a grocery list to acquire.
About once a month, CD and I give the center / shop a good cleaning. We sweep weekly or whenever we cycle a vehicle in and out, but our administrative center doesn’t get vehicle traffic and remains pretty clean. It requires routine stuff like cleaning the coffee pot, dusting off the computer and printers, wiping down surfaces, and vacuuming the chairs and such. Easy, but required stuff.
We go through a lot of water in a given week. I’m not talking about water for bathing, but drinking water. There are pallets of water sitting all over Bagram from a variety of manufacturers (the only one you may recognize is Nestle’, the French company), mostly from Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the U.A.E. I prefer the Jeema and Oasis brands because they come in bottles that are 600 ml and 625 ml respectively instead of the half liter bottles. CD and I pretty much know what brand sits where so we simply drive up to the palletized stacks and throw four or so boxes (24 in a box) into our vehicle weekly. That may seem like a lot of water, but we make coffee from it at the shop, I make tea or hot chocolate in the mornings, and use it for my oatmeal. During the day I’ll drink about three bottles of water and generally one or two in the evening. The empty bottles are great for recycling and the larger sizes are a must when you decide you do not want to make the 100 meter dash to the closest bathroom in the evenings. I know I got those outdoor slippers, but hoofing it to the bathroom at night here is worse than getting out of your camping tent to use the nearest tree.
I thought I would start attaching a picture in each of these weeklies to give you a little insight to some of the stuff I have told you about. You’ll have to let me know if the file is too large or experiences any problems in transmission. The first picture I am attaching is a view from my B Hut and is essentially looking north. That is our Camp Vance Chapel on the left with B Huts lined up next to it continuing on to the right and away.
As you can tell, this was after a minor snow fall, however the sun has already melted the snow off of the tin roofs. To the immediate front right of this picture is our concrete bunker covered with sandbags (and a little snow). A small part of the Hindu Kush is in the background and is approximately 20 km away from my location. The taller buildings beyond the B Huts (and obviously this side of the mountains) house an operations center and an administration center for Camp Vance. Overall, not a bad view.
I almost forgot to tell you fine folks about our elation over wire wheel grinders. We brought one 4” vertical wire wheel that attaches to our drill just because we might find a need for it. As it turns out, we were using that thing daily and wore it down to nubs in short order. We then started using grinding stones, but they just do not perform the task we are asking of them with the same panache and gallantry of the wire wheel. This lack of performance caused us to send a special request to our company for immediate replacement of the wire wheel and wouldn’t you know it, they responded quickly by sending us five wire brushes that attach to our drill. CD and I were not sure these brushes would work as well as the vertical wheel, but once on the job, they outperformed the wheel by the same large margin as the wheel outperformed the stones. Glee overcame us. It is truly amazing how a $3 item can make two men jubilant!
Since I am so late with getting this out, I already have half of next week’s Weekly written. The teaser will be easy for me. There is no deliberation about what I am going to write about because I have already done it. Therefore, next week’s stories will include the back-of-the-neck, hair-raising experience of the Vice President’s visit, unbelievably new vehicles, and mosquito sightings.
Thanks for reading
Craig
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