Pre-Fab Purgatory

Hello Sports Fans! Hope all of you are recovering from a wonderful bout of March Madness. Kudos to Big Baby and company for exceeding all expectations in making it to the Final Four this year. Commiseration to Seimone Augustus, the best player in college basketball today (period), for reaching the plateau of the Final Four again, but not the summit. If that were not enough, we even have "a tradition unlike any other" this weekend, as Tiger, Vijay, Phil, Ernie and company all make a run for the green jacket in Augusta. This being an all-Kiwi zone, we won't see any of this, but will be browbeaten with Super 14 rugby all weekend long (the Crusaders won a tough match against Waratahs from Australia. I can tell how excited you are. :P

It is good to be back in Bamyan, even with a dearth of U.S. sports options. I spent a week in Bagram Airbase, about an hour's drive north of Kabul, for a series of meetings and conferences, and wow, I will be so happy if I never have to return. Ugh.

The drive up to Bagram is the first thing. Roads here are . . . glorified goat trails, let's face it (my cousin Willie and my uncle Pete likely would enjoy these roads, the rest of us -- we'll skip, thanks very much). The usual road paths meander along, parallel to, across from, through, and under rivers, making for wonderful driving conditions. At least the snow and ice are giving way to spring (reluctantly), so that the chains don't come out. Nothing quite as unnerving as a 5-ton Hum-V skidding across the road with a 400 ft. vertical drop directly to one side. Anyway, the drive, all 120 km of it, takes anywhere from 6-8 hours. There are not potholes in the road, there are roads in the potholes.

Lesson for the uninitiated: do not eat a large or heavy meal if planning a trip involving similar conditions. Given the departure time, I figured we would not have a chance to eat lunch, so I scarfed down a huge breakfast, as opposed to the usual cereal and yogurt routine. Turns out, they moved up lunch an hour so that we could eat, so I followed the mega-breakfast with a burger that would make the Hardee's Monster Burger proud, potato salad, and a zillion calorie banana smoothie.

All that food, even with my accelerated metabolism (altitude and exercise, mostly), was over the top. Then we hit the potholes. Ugh. Have you ever seen a person with red hair, red beard, and green skin? That was me? I looked like some perverse Christmas smurf, and felt worse.

So, upon arrival at Bagram, I can't say how happy I was to be at the destination (the final 30 minutes of the drive is paved, wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles). First impressions did little to dampen that enthusiasm. I went with the Kiwis down to Subway. THEY HAVE A SUBWAY!!! They also have Burger King, a serious looking pizza joint, Korean food (excellent), and a Popeye's (the Popeye's disappointed). I could not believe all of this existed in the middle of Afghanistan, but anywhere you have a large contingent of U.S. soldiers, U.S. amenities are never far behind.

Better still, the base has a hair salon that also does massages. After that six hour drive, a massage sounded like a good idea. A nice, young Kyrgz women beat me up like a meat tenderizer for an hour, all for $20, and I am happy to report that this is all she did. (Contrast that to Bangkok, where you have to find massage points that advertise "no sex" or else they will offer more than you expect.)

At this point, I think I could get used to this place. Wrong.

Well, come sunrise, I get a more complete sense of the camp, and in this case, more information is not better. Row upon row upon row of B-huts, all slapped together, next to two-story conexes that served as latrines and showers (thank goodness they were smart enough to put the showers upstairs, and the toilets down below). Spaced irregularly around the camp are tons of port-o-lets, such that the warring smell of human excrement and the massive chemicals used to break down/clean up such waste is ever-present. The air smells stale, on a good day.

The chow hall is also slapped together, as well as the food. (To be fair, the Kellogg, Brown and Root contractors are trying, I believe, but you can't personalize food for thousands, I don't think). Think every boring meal you ever had at the school cafeteria, just multiply the options for ennui. Nice touches like how many calories a particular dish may contain became suspicious, as the steamed broccoli and the braised pork ribs and everything else were 122 calories. I should have lost weight, right? Ha.

I did like the gym they had there, tons of elliptical machines, tread mills, and weights galore. This being for the U.S. military, where everything must, by definition, be bigger and better, the weights were out of my league. I thought after 3 months in the gym here I could at least hold my own, but they had dumbbells (these were not smart bells, believe me) that weight 150 POUNDS. Sorry, that's only 20 pounds less than me -- if I am one-arming that, I am the next Barry Bonds with the "cream" and "clear." Oh, sorry, don't want to get sued, ALLEGEDLY with the "cream" and "clear." The gym was put in under a semi-circular roof that could be retracted. It needed to be retracted more -- the sour smell of human sweat was ever-present.

Why was I there in all of this? Turns out a lot of PRT commanders will be rotating out fairly soon, so there was a conference with the outgoing PRT leadership to get lessons learned, best practices, that sort of thing. Great information to take in, but somehow I can't help but think it would make more sense to hold such a conference jointly with the new people coming in. Oh well, I am no expert. Neither are the gazillion lieutenant colonels running around. In other settings, I would say you would need to call in an exterminator, as you have an infestation. In this setting, I call it HQ. Go figure.

The Kiwis have their own small enclave in one nook of this giant base, and thank goodness for that. A little sliver of sanity helped me endure the eternal blah that is Bagram. I can only feel for those poor unfortunate souls who will spend their entire time in theatre based in Bagram. You see them, people whose gray insides are beginning to eke out beyond the new camos (U.S. military has some cool pixellated camos that supposedly work in all environments -- I would not know), people bereft of enthusiasm, of smiles, of hope. It really is a way-station to everywhere for the military, and a way-station to nowhere at the same time. Pray for these folks. I know I do, now that I have had a taste of life in pre-fab purgatory.