Salerno Oasis

I walk by this area every day without giving it much thought, but the other day, for some reason, it caught my attention. It seems to be kind of an oasis hidden between the power plant and some office buildings and some living quarters. Nice palm trees and in amongst the trees some kind of building ruin. It looks like a old mud hut, some one referred to it as the thrown. It may have been an old out house, I'm not sure.

Yesterday morning around noon the paving contractor came in and requested that I go with him to the project. This was about the 4th or 5th time he had been in that morning. The first couple times was because he couldn't get his trucks through the gate on to the base. Which is pretty much a problem every day for the contractors. The 3rd time he came in was because he had something else for me to look at on the job. When I went with him to the site, we were walking along and I noticed a cable on the edge of the road that had been cut/ripped. I picked it up and asked him about it, and he said, "Oh yeah, my driver said something about hitting a cable". This cable was right in front of the Communications building, so my first thought was that half the base was without telephones or computer connections. I went and got the comm folks to check it out and we were lucky, it was an old cable no longer in use.

After that, walking up the road towards where the grader was working, I noticed another, bigger cable cut right behind where the grader had been. This one looked like it had about 40 copper wires in it and it was right outside one of the major operations centers on base. I didn't jump to any conclusions this time and went looking for the comm guys again. Once again, we were lucky, it was an old abandoned line.

So, when he showed up in my office a 5th time in one morning, my first thought was that my luck had run out, he hit something major this time. He told me they uncovered some steel in the road way and he needed me to look at it. When I got there these pictures show what I saw.

They had done a pretty good job of tearing up the metal and when I looked a little closer, I found a piece that looked like the edge of a cargo pallet that is used on military cargo planes. So, I had them grade some more and try to pull it up to see what was underneath the pallet. On about the third pass with the grader, I could see what looked like a pretty good sized hole, that the grader tire was about to fall into. We got him stopped and backed off the hole before going in. After looking closer we could see it was an old ditch that had been covered by two pallets. The ditch was about 18" wide by 18-24" deep and lined with stones.

Why someone left this 10 foot section of the ditch and decided to cover it with cargo pallets before gravelling the road was puzzling. We removed the pallets and filled in the rest of the ditch with rock.

Up until this day, I had not been able to convince the contractor to scrape the road down before paving. He would always put the sub base material on the road to get the correct cross slope, then add the 6" of base coarse (crushed gravel) and then the 4" of asphalt on the top, building the road up close to a foot or more in some places. On this road it was important that he not build up the road, so I have told him probably a dozen times to cut it down 6" (15 cm, they work in metric) before building it back up. It worked, but too well, now he's cutting down 12-18" in places and hitting cables and finding buried ditches.

Hard Hats, Coveralls and Design Build

I was driving by the Corps of Engineers work site yesterday and noticed something different about the work crew. They were all wearing hard hats and had the same outfits on. After looking a little closer, I saw that they all had closed toe shoes on as well, no open sandals like we usually see. When I was talking to the site supervisor, he said the Corps did not like their normal work clothes and shoes (man jammies and sandals).

I told the guy I was with, we need to stop and take a picture of this. When we stopped and took the camera's out the crew stopped work and began striking poses. They seemed to be pretty proud of their new uniforms, is what I thought. But, then after we got done taking the pictures they asked us if they could have copies of the pictures.

These guys stayed on the work site and let us take their picture. The two below stepped out into the road, which I thought was because they did not want to be in the pictures. Then I started to put my camera away and he started saying something in Pashto, I finally figured out he wanted his picture taken too. He didn't want to be with the rest of the group. The holes you see are for the building footings, they are all dug by hand with picks and shovels, no backhoes like you see in the states.

When we returned to the jobsite today, they wanted us to take more pictures. They wanted me to be in the picture with them. They were also disappointed the pictures we gave them were not in color, we don't have color printer in the office.

The Army Corps is building offices and living quarters, as they will be working in the local area building reconstruction projects for the Afghan people. This project was let as a design-build project for an Afghan contractor to complete, which means the contractor designs and begins building it while the design is being finished. The mission of the corps is to teach the local contractors US methods of construction. They also intend to have the Afghan contractor complete all the work, including the electrical and plumbing, which is usually done by US contractors on our projects, as the Afghans don't have much, if any, experience with US standard electrical or plumbing.

The Corps awarded the contract in January with a May 20 completion date. Quite an optimistic schedule, based on my three month experience with Afghan contractors. First thing the contractor did was stop by our office and ask for our standard design for the brick and mortars they have built on the base for us. They used these plans to turn in to the Corps for their 35% design submittal. This only took the first two months of the contract to complete and the Corps finally gave approval to break ground for the footings and slabs last week. I don't think they will meet the May 20 completion date. The Corps is still optimistic they will be in by the end of summer. My money is on the end of the year, and that is a maybe.

USO - Toby Keith Concert

Last night there was a Toby Keith concert on base, put on by the USO. He arrived on the base yesterday and spent the night in one of the B-huts. At least his crew spent the night in the B-huts, I saw them packing up the gear this morning on my way to the office.

They also ate dinner in the DFAC last night. We saw a couple of the band members and many of the sound crew, but no Toby Keith. He probably had some better chow somewhere else. The DFAC went out of their way last night and prepared one of the worst meals we have had in three months. Don't want our guests to think we have good meals served all the time.

I wasn't going to go to the concert for several reasons. Number 1, I had heard the name and knew he was a country singer, but I can't name a single song he sings. Number 2, anyone that knows me, knows I'm not a country music fan. And, number 3, it was in a large tent, capacity of about 500 shoulder to shoulder and I thought it would be overcrowded.

I didn't go right away, but then decided at about 9 pm to go check it out (after Amy suggested I go and get some pictures). It wasn't too crowded in the tent and not too bad for country. As one of our team members said, he left after about 5 songs when it started to sound like they were repeating them. I heard the last 5 songs of the night, and I took some pictures. My pictures all turned out blurry, these are someone else's pictures. I did get some pretty good video, though.

The weather is warming up and with it the creepy crawlers are coming out. We found this guy wondering around the base today. It was about 2 feet long and keeps growing everytime the story is told. Someone else said they saw one of these lizards a couple days ago that was at least 3 feet long. The only one I've seen was about 3 inches. Again, these are someone else's pictures.

Less than 100 Days

I've been away from home 100 days now, so I figure I have less than 100 days to go. We have made it to the half way point. Not much new happening here, so it's getting harder to come up with blog topics.

I have been teaching a college math class for the last 5 weeks. It's an 8 week course so I'm getting close to reaching that milestone. The Dept. of Defense has contracted with the University of Maryland University College (UMUC) to provide college courses and degrees for the military members over seas, including in the two combat zones. As you can imagine it is a challenge for the college to find instructors willing to come to Afghanistan to teach a couple college courses.

So, the college recruits military members to teach the courses. I saw a flyer posted somewhere on base and decided to check it out. It looked like a good opportunity so I applied and for some reason they accepted my application and have approved me to teach college math. It's a basic math course, and we meet 3 times a week for 2 hours in the evening, and 2 - 1 hour help sessions. So, you can see I pretty much gave up any free time I had. But, it sure has helped the last 5 weeks go by quickly and it's a paid position.

I've got 13 students, started with 18, the five dropped for various reasons, non of which were because of the instructor. It's a challenge for the students, some of them are working 12 hour shifts in their full body armor and then trying to stay awake in class and stay up with the homework. Yeah, I know, a good instructor would make the class fun and interesting and there would be no trouble staying awake. But, it's math and the instructor is me. Others have work conflicts that make it difficult to even make it to every class. I've enjoyed it so far and will be teaching the same course in the next session, if there are enough students wanting to take the course.

This is probably one of the few, if not the only college that allows loaded weapons in the classroom, even the teacher is carrying. Below is a picture of the classroom, outside and inside, which is also the conference/meeting room for our office. No pictures of the class, yet, or the instructor.

Birds and Airplanes

This incident happened a month or so back. I came across these pictures and thought this would be a good subject for the blog. This airplane intended to make a stop and go visit, deliver supplies, people, and mail and then be on it's way. However, they got to spend a couple extra days with us. When they were heading down the runway to take off, they met a flock of birds. The pilots were quick enough to abort the take off and skid to a stop short of the end of the runway, which is a good thing as the there is quite a drop off at that end of the runway.

If you look close enough at the picture below and use a little imagination, you can see the outline of a bird in flight on the nose of the airplane.

Several birds were ingested into this engine, which was the main reason for the aborted takeoff and the extra time spent visiting our base. The engine had to be replaced, they had to fly in a new engine, and a crew to make the engine swap.This picture shows the skid marks from the emergency stop. The runway is dirt with a thin layer of gravel on top. At the end of the runway there is some metal runway matting, which provided a little better friction for stopping the plane. Doesn't look like they come with anti-lock brakes.

This is the aftermath, looks like the birds lost.

4th Grade, Garden and Lost in Translation

I received a care package from the Roland-Story 4th Grade, Mrs. Bauman's class. Many good things in the package, candy, coffee, soap, toothpaste, notebook paper/pencils, magazines and nice letters from each of the kids. I think their hand writing is better than mine. The letters made for enjoyable reading last night. My favorite question of the letters was "Can you ride bulls in the Army?" and my favorite statement was "One night I actually had a dream that you came home and the President gave you a medal for doing so well in Afghanistan." Thank you for the touch of home and all the great things in the care package. I'll be sending an e-mail with answers to all of your questions.

On Monday I also got a packet of garden seeds from my mother and father-in-law, sweet corn and cucumbers. I got them planted yesterday, if I can remember to water the garden, maybe something will grow. My own little experiment for the Agriculture team. More so that I can hopefully enjoy some good Iowa sweet corn and cucumbers before I leave here. These pictures are of the garden, I hope the next pictures of the garden have some green in them.

"Lost in Translation" - the contractors have to request permission and get a memo from us for everything they take on and off the base. They usually tell us in person, but the paving contractor likes to write memos to me requesting the memos. Some times he doesn't quite get

it correct in his translation to English, but does well enough I can usually figure it out. These are some of the better ones - "Blew color", "one salp for the grader" (a starter for the engine, never did figure this one out), "bring in as a gust" (a guest), "sine out on pawor" (take a paver off base), "tools like a hummer and range" (hammer and wrench), "a dum truck is grew" (gray dump truck), and the best "tractor is red company name is Missy Ferguson". Being from Iowa this one was easy, but I bet Massey would not like the translation.

Contractor DFACs

After posting pictures and a description of our DFAC, I thought I'd include some pictures of the kitchens that are set up and used by the local national contractors on their job sites. It's not like home where the contractor's all bring their lunch bucket or hop in their truck and drive to the closest fast food restuarant. If the job is going to take several weeks, the contractor will set up a kitchen on the job site, bring in food and a cook and serve a warm meal for the workers. The cook also brews the green tea for morning tea break, which usually includes some flat bread or biscuits (cookies). The pictures below are some of the kitchens around the base.

This kitchen is located in the KBR village, where all the KBR employees live and have their offices. KBR employs several hundred local nationals (at a wage of $1.96 per hour) and the locals have built this kitchen behind the carpenter shop, close to a fuel source. Everything is cooked over a wood fire. Some contractors even share kitchens and cooks. When Mike was working on the fence project in this area, he used the KBR employees cook and kitchen for his employees.

I have to include a short story on the language barrier. The contractors have to submit all their workers for badges and they have to identify their jobs. I was looking at one the other day and I could not figure it out. The guy was listed as a "car painter", I could figure out why we would need a car painter on the job, even though I realize they like to paint up their trucks and trailers real nice. After a couple minutes it hit me, the guy is a "carpenter". I'll do a post later on some of the other interesting "lost in translation" words.

This kitchen was set up by the contractor that is building many of the brick and mortar living facilities on base, so it has been in place for months. The second picture is of the inside of the kitchen. I did not include a picture of the counters they use for food preparation, but needless to say it probably would not pass any Department of Health inspection. Everything is cooked for most of the morning in pressure cookers, so it probably kills off any thing that may have found it's way into the food.

This one is a little difficult to pick out of the surrounding scrap wood and concrete forms. It is similar to the previous one, but not enclosed.

The next couple pictures are something I came across today. We have a contractor building a Sea-hut, not to be confused with the B-hut, but it is a larger version. It is much larger than the B-hut and this one is going to be used for temporary housing when there is a change over. The new people will live in it until the people leaving move out of the brick and mortar living facilities. It is a large open bay with cots for beds. Similar to the large circus tents we stayed in while at Bagram, but has a longer life than the tents. The contractor was putting the plywood on the roof this morning and I noticed something about the workers. Two of them were barefoot.

I guess their sandals tend to slide on the plywood. I also noticed that one of the laborers was short a few fingers. Between his two hands I only saw three full length fingers. the other five were stubs, somewhere between the first two knuckles. I wanted to ask what happened, but chickened out and did not, he obviously had his hands somewhere they should not have been. He did have both thumbs, in case you were wondering.

I included this one because it reminded me of my civilian job. The folks over here read road signs about as well as they do at home. All along these two buildings there are 8 "No Parking Anytime" signs posted, but when I went by, four vehicles were parked alongside the buildings. I just can't seem to get away from it (signing issues), even thousands of miles away from home.

Stuck in a Hole

Yesterday the stars were aligned for a comedy of errors. On Monday afternoon we had the heavy equipment guys remove another tree that was located just off the main road through the middle of the base. The road is narrow and we're getting ready to pave it in the next few weeks and we want to widen the road. So, they brought the excavator out and dug a two-three foot hole on three sides of the tree. The tree removal went well, except for the excitement from the comm guys when they saw us digging in front of their building. We were digging close to the main fiber for the base. Our equipment guys told us they were not digging, they would just knock the tree over, so we did not do a dig permit to mark the utilities. Got lucky with that one. That's also when the luck ran out.

Monday evening it started to rain, it rained all night and then all morning. About 10:00 in the morning someone in the office asked us if we saw the Terex stuck in our hole. A Terex is a big crane type of vehicle that is used to lift the big conex's (shipping containers) and is one of the heaviest, if not the heaviest vehicle on base. The picture below shows it lifting one of the small containers on base.

The driver got a little close to the edge of the road when making a turn and just happened to do this at the same location where we had just removed the tree the day before. With all the rain overnight and in the morning the dirt we put back in the hole was like quick sand. You can see by the pictures below, it did not support the weight of the Terex.

It took a couple hours to figure out how to get it out of the hole and then to actually get it out of the hole. As you can see by the crowd in the picture below, this provided the entertainment for much of the base. First they tried hooking it up to a big tow truck, but they only spun the wheels, no moving it out. So, they called in the crane and lifted it up and out of the hole and got it on it's way.

There were many jokes and a lot of laughs, at least by those watching, and some good natured finger pointing. But, I think we all knew it was just a coincidence of events that led to this "little" mishap. What are the odds that these three events would all happen within a 24 hour period?

Easter

Happy Easter! Just another day on the FOB, the only thing different was a larger group at church this morning (just like home) and the Easter decorations in the DFAC. They did serve more choices for dinner tonight along with some Easter cakes and chocolates. Made up for a bad lunch, today was the first time I've had a corndog and chili for Easter lunch.

This afternoon the Agribusiness Development Team (ADT) held an open house on base to show us what they are about. This is a Army National Guard team from Indiana.

Their mission here is to improve the agricultural business in the province. They are doing some testing to see what will grow in the soils here and how to make it grow better, both agricultural products and forestry. Also, they are working with the livestock to help the Afghani's improve their herds/flocks. They also want to start an ag education system similar to the FFA program we have in the states to start educating the younger Afghanis.

They are just getting set up and will be making contacts with the local governments and begin their outreach to the local communities. They will be going out into the villages and working with the farmers and ranchers, both the well established farms and the small ones.

There are a couple orchards on the FOB, but they are in disrepair and are not real productive. They are mostly orange trees and olive trees. The ADT is using the orchards to do some of their testing and they are clearing out some areas of trees to create test plots. The pictures below are of the olive orchard and a lone spring flower I saw in the orchard. The flower picture is blurry, I'm still learning how to use my camera, it's the best I got of the flower.

No More Mouse

Air Force engineers 1, Mouse 1 and done. We got him last night, the raisin was too much for him, the trap worked this time. That's the first confirmed kill for the team, one less enemy mouse. My candy is safe, I hope. We'll keep the traps loaded for a couple days to make sure there are not more mice.

The last week has been kind of dreary, rainy and cooler. Not cold like home, but cool for here. The highs have been in the 50's and we've had rain most every day. A couple days ago the weather broke and I got these pictures of a rainbow in the late afternoon. It's been warming up yesterday and today. The thermometer hit 90 degrees this afternoon, not sure how accurate it was as it did not feel that warm. Tonight we are getting quite the light show, we have lighting all around us, just waiting for the rain to start.

Midnight Visitor

Wednesday night I was sound asleep when I woke up to the sounds of crinkling plastic at about 4 am. I laid in bed trying to figure out where it was coming from and trying to wake up too. I finally figured out it was coming from my desk next to the bed. I wasn't quite awake, my first thought was someone was in my room going through my things on the desk. Then as the fog in my head cleared, I realized it was probably a mouse, trying to raid my candy stash. I quickly grabbed my flashlight and tried to catch him in the act. Well I'm pretty much blind without my glasses, so I was not able to see the little guy. But, I did hear him scurry down the side of the desk.

After that I laid in bed, awake, waiting for him to come back. He didn't return and I eventually fell asleep again. And, this was one night that I did not have to get up to go to the bathroom. The mouse interrupted what could have been a good night of sleep.

The next morning I was telling my story in the office and the guys next door said I must have chased the mouse into their area. Aaron said he was woke up by some scratching noise around 4:30. When he woke up he was looking right into the mouse's face on his night stand. If it's not the same one, then we may have a family taking up residence.

Yesterday, we picked up four mouse traps, I'm not sharing my candy with a mouse. We set them out last night, using peanut butter for bait. The bait worked, but the traps did not. That little guy cleaned the peanut butter off of three of the four traps. He was either stuffed and headed back to his nest for a nap or he just didn't find the fourth trap. Mouse 1, Air Force engineers 0. Round 2 is tonight.

We got some more peanut butter and added a raisin to the meal and we adjusted the traps. They've been out all day and no action yet, he must still be digesting his last meal. Maybe tonight I'll wake up to the snapping sound of the trap.

No pictures today, the internet connection keeps failing on the upload. I'll have to try next time, maybe I'll have some pictures of my new friend/roommate.

DFAC

You can't call it a "mess hall" or "chow hall" anymore it is a "Dining Facility" or DFAC. Makes it sound a little more upscale. Our DFAC is pretty good, considering they are feeding a couple thousand people every meal. This picture shows the main food line. For breakfast you can get "made to order" (kind of), eggs. They use real eggs, but the choices are little limited, two kinds of omelets or fried. I'm not sure what the scrambled eggs are, I'm pretty sure they are not real. For the other two meals there are usually 3 choices, and hopefully at least one is what you are looking to eat. Almost always have some kind of chicken and some form of rice.

This is the self serve portion of the main line at breakfast. Which of the five trays in the middle has oatmeal? It's a good thing they put labels above the choices, otherwise, it's hard to tell what things are sometimes. There are two kinds of grits, plain and cheesey, pepper gravy, something else and oatmeal. The two on the far right are the scrambled eggs - plain and western style. For lunch/dinner they usually have hotdogs, corndogs, mini pizzas (haven't tried them, but they don't look very appetizing), polish sausage, and hamburgers (if you can call them that) in this section.

This is the short line, or if nothing appeals to your tastebuds on the main line, this is your last choice line. At breakfast, they usually have some kind of egg dish (I haven't been brave enough to try it yet), french toast sticks, pancakes, waffles or other things on the line. At lunch/dinner the three most common items, not all on the same day, are spaghetti, taco bar, or oriental.

This is where we eat - on the left is the salad bar, always has 3 or 4 salads, sometimes creative ones like German Tomato salad, (not potato) or some kind of brocolli mixture. Then they have the lettuce salad and fixings and always fresh fruit. The fruit has been the biggest surprise, it has been fresh cut, usually cantaloupe, honey dew melon, strawberries, pineapple and sometimes watermelon or bananas. Though sometimes they accidently freeze it when they store it in the coolers after cutting it up. This is only half of the dining area, there is another wing on the other side that is the same size. We also have a project coming up to close in the middle section and add another large seating area.

And for desert, how about a fresh out of the plastic, chocolate chip cookie with a little Baskin Robbins on top. There is always ice cream, not the 31 flavors, but usually 5 or 6 at every meal, and some pretty good cookies, cake or pie. The temptation is always there.

For drinks, at all meals, there is bottled water, 3 or 4 kinds of juice, (as long as the trucks make it in from Pakistan), milk, pop, tea, or non-alcoholic beer. The milk comes in a "juice box" with a straw, but it's not really milk. It is made from reconstituted or something milk, doesn't have to be refrigerated until it is open and then it is only good for 3 days. They do serve it cold and it is not too bad.

Friday nights is always steak night, served with either lobster, crab legs, or fried shrimp. It's good, gives us one meal to look forward to, but keep in mind they start grilling the thousands of steaks at 3 in the afternoon and keep them warm until they are served. And, they are not good Iowa beef that I'm used too. About every third Friday, I get a good piece of steak, that is actually pretty good. I'm not complaining, the DFAC beats the MRE, meal ready to eat or meal in a plastic bag, even on their worst day.

As you have probably concluded by now there is no shortage of food here, but you can't be too picky, it's not home cooking. Every once in awhile, the food is real good, but the majority is what you would expect from a dining facility that cooks for thousands.

Sunday Feast

Sunday lunch with the Afghan heavy equipment operators. They invited us to lunch today, they put out a lot of food. That's the cook in the background, sitting, in the blue man jammies and vest. The guy with the beard standing by the table is Rock Man, he is kind of the #2 guy in charge of the crew. We call them by the equipment they drive, more than by their names, it's easier to remember and say. Rock man usually drives the dumptruck hauling rock around the base. It helps too that Rock Man's real name is also similar, something like Rahman.

For lunch we had the flat bread, fruits (apples, oranges, bananas, and some unknown fruit from Pakistan), raw vegetables (lettuce, cucumbers, radishes, peppers, onions), rice, cooked and seasoned cabbage, cooked/seasoned okra, barbecued chicken, cabob and goat. The chicken and cabob (beef) was cooked yesterday and served cold. The goat was served warm, not sure when it was cooked. I don't usually like cooked cabbage, but the way they cooked it seasoned with a little curry and onion, it was good. The okra also had some seasoning and something else in it, but I'm not sure what. The cook is called Cookie, no idea what his real name is.

This is Mohamadullah (Supervisor) kneeling and facing the camera, Rock Man and Bobcat, kneeling with his back to the camera, taking the food out of the pressure cookers and putting it on the plate to serve. Guess what piece of equipment Bobcat operates - the Bobcat skid loader.

The crew waiting on lunch. They always serve us first and only a handful sit with us to eat. The others sit together on the other side of the conex on a mat on the ground to eat their lunch, then play cards. After everyone is done eating they serve hot green tea, with lots of sugar.

Preparing the table for lunch. A nice little set up, they have scrounged from all over base to create this environment. The benches on the left are cots with old mattresses on them, the benches on the right are made from scrap plywood, the table clothe is the green screen fabric used on chain link fence so you can't see through, and the shade is provided by an old camoflouge net. And, the floor is old airfield matting that was used for the landing zone on the gravel runway here (it is broken or worn out, they didn't take it off the runway).

It was a very good meal and more than enough to eat. Hard to fight off that Sunday afternoon nap today.