Izzy and I felt like prisoners today.
We had notices stapled to our doors the last several days indicating that two crews would be coming through all of the rooms in our housing area (“Dragon Village”) today. The announcements indicated that all rooms had to be unlocked, or the locks would be cut. We are utterly at their whim.Still reeling a little from my trip to Kandahar a few days ago, my days and nights are not entirely square. In anticipation of people needing into my room, though, I set my alarm for early, wake and put my uniform on, and then lie in bed with the lights off.
It’s always surprising to me what a person can be attuned to when one needs to be. Though exhausted and, I think, in a deep sleep at times, a knocking noise several hooches down wakes me up. I hear the crunch of the gravel as the team nears my room, and open the door before they lock.
It’s a team of KTRs who are inspecting the rooms for electrical issues. They need to access all of the outlets in my room, so I move my bed and several boxes as they climb around, one of them on a ladder as he takes apart my overhead light.
They find nothing against code, though they add a ground to my light switch, and I bid them farewell as I lie down again, still in uniform, and still on guard for the next group.
Some time later, I hear a knock on Izzy’s door and I get up, waiting for them to come around to my side of the building. After several minutes, I just walk around to Izzy’s room and he tells me they were just taking inventory of who was in each room, and he accounted for me, so we were done.
I had a few hours to kill before a meeting, so I crawl into bed and really sleep this time, getting in some good rapid eye movement and attuned only to the alarm on my watch.
I learn later that there was an enormous explosion while I slept, though we never learn if it was a controlled detonation, an attack, or something else. Izzy says it rocked our hooch, and our colleagues on the other side of post say it was even thunderous over there.
I slept through it.
KTR = Contractor
