22 JULY 2007 – BRUNCH WITH BOB

22 July 2007 – Brunch with Bob

Ever since I left my little apartment in Banker’s Hill I’ve been listening to a popular San Diego radio station over the Internet, for no other reason then it’s nice to hear a familiar voice on a regular basis. My favorite show being Brunch With Bob & Friends- a weekly program on Sunday mornings (Sunday nights here) that plays three hours of classic and rare tracks by Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and several others. Just as if I was sitting at home or in my car, I get some commercials now and then, a traffic report, weather and surf reports, and other local San Diego blah-d-blah. Something has changed though in recent weeks – it seems the novelty has turned into a longing, and borderline sadness. As it turns out, I miss home.

But it’s more then just voices on the radio.

For a while now I’ve been struggling with what to write for my next post because in all honesty, much of what’s on my mind isn’t exactly positive. And as I previously wrote, I knew keeping a positive attitude might be a challenge. I was right, it is – but not for the reasons I thought.

The biggest challenge by far has been coming to grips with the “post-conflict” mission here in Afghanistan. It could be called a lot of different things, and many of the buzzwords: humanity, development, and progress seem to depend on the glasses one looks through. I have found it easy to get frustrated and annoyed with organizations like the UN, USAID, and others. Growing up in San Diego all one needs to do is get in a car and drive 40 minutes south to find lousy roads, little infrastructure, children digging through trash and begging for money, and a corrupt government – and as far as I know, the UN and USAID have no presence in Mexico. This of course begs the question of what exactly are the people of these organizations doing here, other then driving around in brand new Land Cruisers and being extremely well paid. I’ve had many long and deep conversations about this with people far wiser than I and have been reminded that often the day-to-day achievements are difficult to identify – that more is going on then meets the eye, and in the end, good things will happen. I hope this is true. But I still have to wonder: if every white UN SUV suddenly disappeared and was replaced with a donkey-drawn cart (like many of the locals use), how many people would stick around?

The beginning of July brought with it the arduous task of moving to our new compound – Afghan style. Let’s just say it’s been one of the more entertaining things I’ve gotten to experience since I’ve been here. The landlord did his best to get various remodeling projects finished and the house cleaned before we arrived. Neither happened.

Major construction was still going on as we moved in. Walls were being torn out to expand rooms and plumbing leaks and faulty outlets were still being fixed. The electrician and plumber is a 19-year-old nephew of the landlord; and anytime there’s a problem it requires a chisel, a mallet, or a jackhammer and sometimes all three as the house is made completely of brick. As a result dust came from all directions: inside, outside, and every-which-way. I learned that some phrases just don’t translate well (if at all) into Dari – phrases such as, “why did you install a 220V outlet IN my shower?” and, “yes, that is a lovely new hanging closet you built for my room – except it’s not deep enough for a hangar because there’s only 7” from the back wall to the door.” That kind of thing. I’m not sure if the blank stare I would get was a lack of understanding or quiet loathing.

For several days open boxes and furniture were everywhere, and because the movers didn’t label anything they had no idea where it went after it got to the new house. And in all honesty it wasn’t really that big of a deal – after all, we were moving and some disorganization was to be expected. We packed up most of our personal belongings ourselves, the only exception were the clothes hanging in my closet – I asked for a clean box or plastic bag to keep my work clothes as clean as possible. “No problem!” they said, “we’ll take care of it for you Mr. DJ!” Two mornings later I was scheduled to fly and went and found the last boxes I knew had clothes in them. All new clean computer-sized boxes sealed with packing tape. Cracked open the first box – success, it was mine… only to find that someone had decided to pack a bunch of cleaning products (including a toilet scrubber) with my clothes. Kinda gross, but okay, not the end of the world. More aggravating however was the open container of the Afghan equivalent of “Comet” also tossed in. The box apparently flipped over several times on its 10-minute journey from the old house to the new, resulting in my nice clean clothes being covered in white a granulated powdered soap shit with blue “active enzymes” all over the place. As I write this all I can do is smile and shake my head – but at the time I didn’t find it all that amusing.

I did manage to score the penthouse suite – by far the largest room of the complex located on the top floor with windows on three of four walls and my very own patio. The downside is the five flights of stairs I have to climb each day, but it’s worth it. Construction standards aren’t, well… standard. The foundation wasn’t level when they poured the concrete so neither is the first floor, or any of the subsequent floors built on top of it, resulting in hallways with “ramps” and small toe-grabbing lips in the floor to try and level out the living areas. The height of any given doorway seems to be largely dependent on the height person that built the door – if the builder was 6 feet tall then the door is about 6’2”. If the builder was 5’7”, then it’s about 5’9”. Several of the taller residents have taken blows to the dome as they’ve learned the hard way which are the shorter doors.

Another interesting piece of cultural difference is the rental agreement. When a house is rented, the renters pretty much inherit, and are responsible for, any problems that might come up. Plumbing or electrical problem and it’s the renter’s responsibility to fix it. So you can imagine the incentive the landlord has to hire a “real” plumber or “real” electrician to do the job right when the house was first built, hence the 19-year-old jack-of-all-trades nephew. Camel hair versus Teflon tape is the leak-stopper of choice, which only works about half the time regardless of how much you use. My suggestion was if we were to pay for new plumbing then we should get to take it with us when our lease is up. Yes – we’ve had a lot of plumbing problems. The previous renter used the house as an illegal brothel and nothing was ever fixed.

But the good news is the place is coming along. Most of the plumbing and electrical problems have been addressed, the dust is gone, the a/c units and curtains have been installed – it’s starting to feel like a home.

Work has been more or less the same. I’ve been officially signed off as captain and now bear the responsibilities associated with such a title. We currently have only one flyable airplane as the other is down with an inoperative yaw dampener, limiting the airplane to 17,000 feet and making it more or less useless here in Afghanistan. We now have five pilots, four Americans and one from South Africa. The South African will be leaving in a couple of weeks leaving us with just four and I imagine things will pick up once the other airplane is operational again. Also recently arrived is a Bell 212 helicopter, its two crew members, mechanic and one support staff, so the house is already starting to fill up.

The dog-days of the Afghan summer have arrived and are in full swing. The hot, clear days of Kandahar has been replaced with even hotter days and visibilities of about a half a mile due to blowing dust. Kandahar has both a GPS and ILS approach which helps, and both times this week we ended up flying the approach to minimums. Good times. The engines however don’t seem to appreciate it much as any attempt to open the ice veins to try and keep out some of the dust and the oil temperature climbs dramatically – a nasty little side-effect when the outside air temperature is so high. So our options are to melt the engines from the oil temp or sandblast the innards. Gotta hand it to Pratt & Whitney though, the PT6 is one helluva engine to consistently take the abuse we seem to feed it, and so far, haven’t had any problems.

And while Kandahar has its dust, Kabul has its wind. Afternoon wind picks up dramatically straight out of the north, and the only runway at Kabul is East/West. Admittedly it took a few tries, but we’ve all gotten pretty good at putting the airplane down nice and soft in a 30 knot sustained direct crosswind, gusting to 40+.

I recently finished a book that many of you recommended – The Kite Runner by Khaled Housseini, a fictional story of two boys growing up in Kabul. A sad story, but well written and an easy read. A couple of noteworthy parallels – the boys lived in Wazir Akbar Khan and the author writes of them climbing a hill near their house and looking down on the airport below. The house we moved from sat at the base of the only hill in Wazir Akbar Khan, at the top of which is a perfect view of the airport. The pomegranate trees he writes of, if they ever existed, are gone but a cemetery is still up there. On the plateau of the hill now are several abandoned military vehicles and an Olympic-sized swimming pool the Russians built years ago, complete with diving boards. When the Taliban took back control they used the diving boards for hangings and are no longer usable as most of the steps are missing, but the pool is still supposedly usable. I haven’t been up there recently but one of the neighborhood kids was very excited that it had recently been filled up, or at least that’s what I got out of his broken English. Our new house is in the Shar-e-naw district, also mentioned in the book, about a half-mile from the old house.

I’ve gotten to know one of our cooks pretty well; his name is Farhad and is 24 years old but could easily pass for about 34 – pretty common for the region as the sun has a tendency to take its toll on the skin. We’ve had long talks about the pre-American invasion and life under Taliban rule; take all the horrible things you’ve heard about the Taliban and multiply it by about a hundred, and you’ll just begin to scratch the surface. Public executions in the most brutal of methods, rape, kidnapping, ethnic cleansing and a multitude of other human rights abuses were the norm, and to talk to a person who lived through this only a few years ago literally puts a person to the black and white article in the New York Times. Like with Steve in Uganda, we’ve also talked about life in America and some of the differences, my favorite of which is why I haven’t taken a wife and had several children. I tell him my mom would also like an answer to that one.

But in all seriousness, after my chats with Farhad and others, I’ve learned the people have gotten screwed for a very time. Take any Bob Marley song about oppression, struggle, liberation, and freedom and it can easily be applied to the people of Afghanistan. Like the Brunch with Bob Voice Gnome boasts, “music that grows more relevant, more liberating, everyday.” Nothing could be truer here.

I hope this finds everyone well and I’ll do my best to provide updates a little more often. Even the people I live with give me crap for not posting in awhile and I see them everyday. But rest assured, I am safe and in good form. The bad-guys are, for the most part, behaving themselves here in Kabul and aside from the occasional earthquake and the scheduled detonation of land mines, things are relatively calm.

Until next time,

~dj

very random photos at www.flickr.com/photos/djhorton