(11JAN2009)
For the second time in less than a week, I show up at the shower point at the wrong time.
I’m up late, as usual, and I head over to the shower at about 0230; it’s deserted. I step into one of the stalls and let the water run for a solid minute but it never creeps above lukewarm, so I move to another and am letting it run when a cleaning crew comes in.
The cleaning crew consists of 5 LNs with red badges indicating that they need to be escorted at all times, and 1 American doing the escorting. The escort/supervisor asks me if I’m coming or going and then asks me if I can wait to shower until they’re done. He says it’ll be about 10 minutes.
I’m frustrated at first, but of course can’t justify having them all stand around and wait for me to lather up and get squeaky. I take a seat on one of the benches in the open area and after the super gets the crew going, he sits a little further down and I strike up a conversation with him.
I ask him if the locals are from the town just outside the gate, and he says they are. He doesn’t know how much they get paid, and in fact has been instructed not to ask his guys, but we agree that it would be a pittance by our standards. He tells me that the cleaning crew jobs are the bottom rung, and that all of the employees want to work at the DFACs because the workday is shorter and if they do that they can go to school before or after their shift.
This surprises me, because I’ve heard many accounts of how uneducated the locals are and it stupidly hadn’t occurred to me that they would be endeavoring to correct that situation. The super relates how some of his guys on another shift recently graduated from High School, though when I ask him if Afghani High School is equivalent to ours, he just laughs and says “Naw, it’s more like elementary school.”
Still, we agree that it’s great they want to do better for themselves.
I don’t ask him what his education level is, but in the course of the conversation we skirt around the topic enough that I get the distinct impression he didn’t attend college. Even so, he tells me he’s making about $70,000, tax-free, to escort the LNs, and of course he has no expenses over here. Not a bad situation at all.
He had asked the crew to clean the shower bay I was in first, and in short order one of them motions to me and tells me “Okay” and I finally get to take my shower, the water heating up nicely.
LN = Local National
DFAC = Dining Facility
