34 HOURS IN KANDAHAR

(27SEPT2008)

My time in Kandahar is relatively short. I am primarily pressing the flesh with folks I work with but haven’t met, and seeing if there’s anything I can do for them (there isn’t). I’m also making contacts which, in my experience, will come in handy later.

As soon as we arrive Thursday night, we put our names on the list for a flight back to Bagram. We’re told the earliest flight has a showtime of 0430 Saturday morning. There is groaning.

Friday is spent shuttling from office to office meeting people, and taking in Kandahar for the first time. My POC here has been on the ground for 3.5 years and has seen the base change dramatically in that time. When he got here, he scrounged for everything he needed, building his office with a hammer and nails he “borrowed”. He tells me “If a piece of plywood fell off a truck anywhere on base, I’d catch it before it hit the ground.”

The base itself has an obvious international flavor to it. Run by NATO, American forces are outnumbered by those from other countries. In my short time there, I see soldiers from the UK, New Zealand, Poland, Estonia, Slovakia, Canada, France, Switzerland, and Belgium. Every soldier has their country’s flag on their uniform, and those are just the ones I recognized.

Adding to the realization that we’re not on a US base is the Big Voice, announcing with a thick British accent which I find incomprehensible, and the DFAC whose food is just a little off. At breakfast I see scores of people putting something called Weetabix in their cereal; it looked to me like a dog biscuit. I ask for sausage and receive something undercooked – it was like eating the appendage of some gelatinous creature. Lunch is more of the same, and it’s all enough to make me long for my DFAC at Bagram.

Late in the afternoon we’re largely done with our mission and I sneak off to the MWR to scrounge for books and watch a baseball game. With the game tied in the 9^th inning, the siren wails again and we move outside to hunker down in concrete shelters where we remain for about an hour. I miss the rest of the game.

Not wanting to eat at the DFAC again, I offer to buy dinner at one of the few restaurants on post, all of which are situated on or near “the boardwalk”. While most bases have an area where off-duty personnel can congregate and relax, Kandahar’s boardwalk is the nicest I’ve seen. It’s a large wooden walkway enclosing an open sand area set up for sports, to include a concrete hockey rink in one quadrant.

Our Kandahar native suggests the Dutch restaurant and I’m surprised to see that we can actually sit down inside of it; usually what passes for a restaurant on Army bases is fast-food take-out. That’s all we have in Bagram. After reading the long list of menu items they’re out of, we each order a cheeseburger with fries, and enjoy a relaxing meal at an honest to goodness table.Afterward, we walk around the boardwalk poking into gift shops and watching the Canadians play hockey – no ice or skates, just sneakers on concrete – under the lights. At one point, an Indian on one team scores a goal and runs around with his arms in the air yelling “Score one for the brown guy!”

We eventually return to our POC’s hooch to get some much-needed sleep before our early showtime. He lives near the waste water management ponds and the wind is delivering an overwhelming stink into his living area. He’s prepared though; his shelves are littered with every variety of air freshener the PX has ever offered, and he soon thwarts the smell. I can’t help but reflect that he’s been living like this for 3.5 years.

We’re up and dressed again long before I escape into any meaningful dreams. The APOD is almost deserted at this early hour and we’re certain to make it onto the flight. We check in and watch some boxing, each of us dozing intermittently for the next 3+ hours until we’re told to board our flight.

It’s a Blackwater STOL flight, the same kind I took down to Sharana earlier this month. We pile in and I take a few pictures out of the expectedly dirty window before I fall asleep. We get into Bagram around 0930 and I waste a good portion of the day making up for lost sleep.


NATO = North Atlantic Treaty Organization
DFAC = Dining FACilities
MWR = Morale, Welfare and Recreation
PX = Post Exchange
STOL = Short Take-Off and Landing