Strawberry Cigars

Generally Speaking my philosophy about smoking is that it is absolutely disgusting, cigarettes are nasty cancer sticks waiting to kill anyone stuipd enough to smoke them and cigars and pipes really arn;t that much better.  However some how, for some reason, I have become a cigar smoker.

It all started out innocently enough.  Every Thursday the men from my department get together and smoke cigars.  It is their way of celebrating "Man Love Thursday".  Generally, I would not be allowed at this party as I am a woman, but ocassionally they let one of us join in for comic relief.  So on one of these days that they so kindly allowed me to say one of my co-workers showed up with a strawberry cigar to smoke.  I got to smell it, and boy did it smell good!  Once it was lit I had to give it a try, and I was suprised by the sweet taste it left in my mouth.  That night I ended up pretty much smoking that whole cigar by myself as the co-worker who brought it left the party and never came back.  And that was the begining of my cigar smoking.

After my first time I figured that I wouldn't mind smoking the flavored cigars as they were light and didn't leave me feeling sick in the morning.  Also, it just so happens that the head dudes of our department all took part in this cigar smoking, so I figured it couldn't hurt to get in good with them...you never know when they might be of some assistance in the future! 

But, that is not where the cigar smoking ended, several of my friends enjoy smoking cigars and one decided that he was going to smoke a cigar every night of the last month he was in country, well for him this turned into some where between one and three cigars a night, for me it was just one, but still...its alot of smoking.  Atleast the company is good!  Once he leaves I will probably be back to the one night a week "Man Love Thursday" cigar party with the boys.

Above is a picture of me squished between two of my favorite seamen on a cigar/pipe night.  I think they want to be like Popeye!

Winning Hearts and Minds One Child at a Time

One of the big campaign strategies for the US military is often called the COIN strategy.  It refers to the winning of the hearts and minds of the Afghan people towards the US and its coalition.  Although this is a good strategy, I and many of my friends feel that the focus of this should be on the children as they are the future of Afghanistan and essentially the most important part.

As a result of our belief in the need to do good for the children and a desire to make a difference my friend Boris and I took on a major project of reconstructing a daycare facility.  The project began as a desire to create a playground for the kids to play in and has evolved as we saw the condition of the facility and the needs that were so obviously there.

It is a two story facility tucked back a ways behind a few other buildings, upon entering you can go straight back to a "Turkish" style bathroon or up two flights of stairs to the second floor where there are two classrooms for the over fifty children that attend the day care, an office, and a kitchen.  In many places the plaster on the wall is falling off, and the paint chipping.  The glass in the windows were broken and cracked, there was exposed live electrical wiring, the walls are covered in soot and ash (a wood burning heater is used in the winter).  The carpets are dirty, the small beds the children nap in are old and worn and there are more children in the small space then probably should be there.  Essentially this place is one that most of us would refuse to live in let, alone allow your child to be cared for in on a daily basis.

After observing these things and many others we decided to do what we could to help.  We wanted to repaint the facility and give it a clean and cheery feeling for the children.  We also wanted to improve what we could.  We started by having a painting party with volunteers.  We were able to paint the classrooms and get a good start on the hallways.  We continued with the improvements and installed ceiling fans in both classrooms, new glass in the broken windows, and the sanding and repainting of the beds.  Once the painting is complete we will be installing new carpets in all of the daycare.  We would also like to install air conditioners and heating units so that they no longer have to rely on burning for their heat and are able to keep and soot and ash out of the facility. 

The play ground area was literally a dumping grounds before we started. We had all of the trash and rubble removed from it and had a new wall built and fresh masonry work done to clean it up.  We intend to put in a small playground, cement the area, and add rubber mats.

It is a huge project that has consumed much of my time over the last several weeks.  However, to see the children happy, the progress that is being made, and the difference we are making has been incredibly rewarding.  I am looking forward to seeing the completion of this project, seeing the difference it has made in the childrens lives and the impact we were able to make in the simple act of trying to make a difference one child at a time.

If you would like to follow the progress of our group please check us out at: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=31358287&id=1005810794#!/group.php?gid=141531235863844

4th of July Celebrations and Adventures

"Special" Food

My friend Boris has been helping me out at AGCHO while my Canadian is home on R&R.  He has been a great help with the students and getting things done.  However, he isn't the biggest fan of our $7 a month lunches.  So since it was a holiday I decided to send my boys out to get lunch for everyone.  Since there were twelve of us I told the guys to get 11 kabobs, a thing of rice for me, chips, drinks, and whatever else they wanted.  So when the got back and we all start to eat I notice that some of the kabobs seem to be made of a lighter meat then the others.  I ask them about it and I am told it is a another kind of kabob, a "special" kabob.  When I ask them what kind of special kabob they didn't want to tell me.  It was Dave who said, "you have heard of Rocky Mountain Oysters right?"  It was then I understood why they didn't want to tell me.  But they did say that since it was a special day they thought special food was in order.


Accidents Happen


So it being a holiday and all I decided that I was going to dress up and look something like a female for a few hours. So I put on this long dress that I had brought along, and since it was a summer dress I had to wear a shrug so I was "Decent".  I was walking down the street with Boris and this local Afghan was riding by on his bicycle. Like always they tend to stare at me, so being the brilliant man that he was, he was riding his bike and staring at the woman on the side of the road. He then proceeded to do that little eyebrow thing that guys tend to do that says "hey, your looking good, wanna go get busy". I was pretty much disgusted by this, so I looked directly at him and gave him a dirty look. He proceeded to run his bicycle into a cement block. I did a side fist pump and exclaimed "yes" while Boris and I laughed the rest of the way down the street. Seriously, I know that I am an accident waiting to happen, but it is even more fun to be the cause of an accident!
 
 
International Relations
 
I am at a 4th of July BBQ, after standing in line for half an hour to get food my only options are lettuce, meat, meat, meat, and meat. Finally I settle on some meat with lettuce. My friend Boris and I snag the end of a picnic table with a tag along. We were waiting for my stalker and his friend to join us, so we were trying to find a table big enough for all of us. When we first sat down there were a couple of Brits on the other end of the table. But about halfway through they got up, so we decided to move down and take up the rest of the table to make sure we had enough room.
 
Less then a minute goes by and another Brit comes over and asks if he can join, Feeling bad that we had the whole table we said sure. Well it turned out it wasn't just 2 or 3 Brits, but like 12. I had gotten up to use the bathroom and came back to find our table had been commendeered by the British Royal Navy. However, there were still a few chairs we had pulled up left, so I said, ok you all can have our table, but I get the chairs (we were going to move them to a smaller table). One of the Brits response was, thats ok, you took our country. I just laughed and asked them if they had had any Tea Parties that day?  I returned a minute later with a festive Patriotic Decoration to put on their table and proceeded to give them instructions to "Celebrate America's Independence" They were afterall at our 4th of July BBQ!

Hugs!

This first part is for all the non-government people:  The government structures the majority of its employees on a GS scale of 1 - 15, I am a lowly peon GS-12, my site lead is a GS-15.  The people higher then the GS-15's are referred to as SES's.  Essentially senior executies. 

Now the group I work with here was run by a US Army Colonel, but is now being co-run by a civilian SES, who I will refer to as Mr. T.  Now, Mr. T is a very nice guy and his office happens to be right next to where my group sits so we always say hello and exchange pleasantries. I have even smoked a few cigars with him!  (Strawberry and Grape flavored of course)

So one night I was hanging out with my stalker and I walked him back to his room.  He gave me a hug goodnight and as we are pulling apart this random guy walks by and asks where his hug is, as I turn in the other direction here comes Mr. T asking for his hug as well.  Since I knew Mr. T I figured why not, so I give him a hug, explain to the other guy why he didn't get a hug but Mr. T did, and continue on my way.

Fast forward 24 hours, I am hanging out with my friend Bruce and I told him what happened with Mr. T the night before and he says, "I would have given him a hug" I just laughed.  Well as we are walking back to our rooms, who do we run into but Mr. T, and I proceed to ask him if he is ready for his hug.  I give him a hug and then Bruce moves in to give him a hug as well.  He turns to me and says "I told you I would give him a hug".  He certainly did.

The next day I run into Mr. T in the guard shack, we both just look at each other and I bust out laughing, he says to me "I know what your thinking" but to be honest, I was just trying to decide if I should ask him if he wanted his nightly hug a few hours early.

Laundry Facilities

I would like to add to the list of things I miss my second hand washer and dryer.  This may seem like a relatively small thing.  But trust me, they are sorely  missed.

For doing laundry at camp I have three options.  The first is a free laundry service where you take in your clothes and they send them offsite to be washed, folded and then returned to you.  The problem with this is that one, I like instant gratification and don't want to wait the day or two it may take to get my clothes back.  Two, ocassionally items are not returned to you in the condition they are sent in or not returned at all.  Three, I feel weird having some stranger handling my "personal" items, especially if I want them washed a specific way.

The second option is the laundry facility, there are two on base.  However, there are so many people on base who want to use them it is a struggle to actually find open washers. When you do see there are open wash, you sing Hallalluah, run back to your room grab your laundry bags, and run back to the laundry facility in hopes that no one else got there before you and put their clothes in the washers.  You then have to wait for the wash cycle to run, generally it is double the length of time that is indicated on the washer, followed by atleast an hour in the dryer.  Nothing you wash will be returned to you with out additional "stuff" on them, random stains will certain appear in places they were not before they were put in the washer and ocassionally you will find someone elses socks mixed in with yours as they didn't get removed from the washer before your clothes were put in there.

The third option is the shower.  By that I mean wash your goodies by hand in the shower stall, ring them out and let them air dry in your room for a few days.  You do this for anything you do not want ruined or you do not trust in the washer.  I dont mind doing it, but things usually take atleast two days to dry...so a pain in the butt!

And of course I have my favorite laundry story.  So I have two bags that I fill with clothes to take to the laundry facilities.  I get there and I wash them, come back 30-40 minutes later and put them in the dryer, and again after another hour I pull them out of the dryers.  I generally just shove everything back into the laundry bags and bring them back to my room to fold so I can put them away.  Well right before I went to pull the clothes out of the dryer it started raining pretty hard, so there were a few puddles here and there.  As I was running back to my room from the laundry shack my one bag of "whites" just happend to hit the ground in the middle of a mud puddle, so my freshly washed and clean white clothes were now muddy brown.  I proceeded to return to my room and did my best to shower wash them and let them hang dry.  Unfortunately, its hard to get muddy brown off of white in the shower...

English Turrets

As a part of our work at AGCHO we teach English to our employees. Dave does formalized training twice a day, probably for about 30-60 minutes a day. Frequently the students will come in with questions about words that they have heard on movies or TV, they will also pick up things that you say and ask what it means etc. There have definitely been some funny words and occurrences dealing with learning English.

After a rough day where Shikeab lost all of the data on his hard drive, he returned the following day with the word “suffering”, I told him I was suffering with him.

Often times I will hear what the students are saying in Dari and think it’s an English word. Once I over heard what I thought was Fawad referring to Nesar as “Honey”, I asked, did you just call him honey? He said no, and then proceeded to ask what honey meant. So I explained it was honey that you eat, but also a term of endearment for your special someone. Occasionally, someone gets called honey.

However, my favorite English story is about Nazir. Nazir will pick up on a word or sentence and then repeat it over and over again, but extremely fast. So fast that I couldn’t always understand his English, so I always have to tell him to slow down and to pronounce each word distinctly. Apparently he speaks Dari very quickly as well, and his co-workers have to tell him to slow down frequently too. I was telling one of my friends about Nazir and how it made me laugh how fast he said things etc, his response, “it’s like he has Turrets”.  And really, how can you not laugh about that?

Peace, Love, and Vampires

Our monthly hail and farewell seems to grow with each passing month. This month I have to say good bye to my site lead whom I have come to refer to as “Daddy Warbucks” this is for a few reasons. First, before I even arrived he began to look out for me in a fatherly fashion, second he is bald, so it pretty much fits perfectly. I am going to be very sad to see him go. He is a great guy and I have truly enjoyed working with him. I also will need to say goodbye to this crazy biker dude from California who has instructed me to refer to him as “The old son of a bitch”. He is going to be truly missed as approximately 95% of our comedic relief comes from him. We have a board where we write down the funny things that people say; it probably should just be renamed for him as all of the quotes are his.

I would guestimate that there was somewhere in the neighborhood of at least 40 people there. To celebrate the fun occasion we got lots of food from the DFAC, this included burgers and dogs, potato salad, beans, chili, chips, and of course ice cream, it was good!

However, my favorite part of the night was the piñata. One of the girls from the team created a piñata full of candy and all of the people that were leaving tried to break it open. Being the smart person she was, she reinforced it with duct tape, so everyone hit the crap out of the piñata and no one was quite able to break it. But it was certainly fun to watch. As an added bonus, she is a total Twilight fan, hence the awesome piñata design!