Apparently, some of my colleagues saw this coming.
After just three days in Afghanistan, Jennifer has decided to catch the next flight out of country and homeward. As a contractor, she has to resign her position, which means that the job she's held successfully for several years in the States is no longer hers. It is within her right, of course, though it still leaves many of us shaking our heads.
The reason for her abrupt departure, she tells me, is the conditions we live and work in here.
"I can do the job," she says, "I just can't do this."
I hear later in the day that some who knew her were surprised she volunteered in the first place, that they know her as a bit of a neat-freak and not one to rough it. When told she was deploying, one of her colleagues already in country said she wouldn't last and, when asked why, he simply kicked the dirt at his feet.
I don't see those of us who live and work here - and of course there are thousands - as particularly hardy, though perhaps it's true that we're willing to put up with a certain lack of luxury. We don't mind that dirt gets everywhere, though many of us try to keep our own private areas as clean as possible. Izzy and I share a vacuum and we use it regularly. We grumble when the PX is out of something we want or need - and it is always out of something we want or need - but it's part of the price of doing business.
She apologizes profusely, but I tell her she doesn't owe me an explanation. She has to do what she thinks is best for her, and I think we can all agree that Afghanistan is not for everyone.
I want to ask her, but do not, what she expected when she signed up to come over here. How did she imagine it was going to be? Surely she knew we don't have hotel rooms and private bathrooms. Or did she? Did no one tell her? We require the KTRs we hire to have prior military experience, and she does, but she had never deployed to the Middle East and by all accounts this came as a complete shock to her.
I don't have the opportunity to get to know her well, but she has been polite and nice throughout her time, and I'm sorry to see her go both for professional and personal reasons. Not everyone who comes over to work with us is as nice. She's the first KTR I've worked with in either theater to quit, and it's a surprising development.
She came over with Heather who, though sick as a dog the past several days, remains in good spirits. When I ask her how she likes it so far, concerned that she too would be despairing of the conditions, she tells me "I slept in a tent in Mosul for 7 months. This is nothing."
That's the spirit.
KTR = Contractor
