6 months down....who knows how long to go

2 days ago was my 6 month anniversary, wow.

It's been three weeks since my last post. So much for my plans of trying to blog once a week. I honestly honestly thought it had only been two weeks until I just signed on and saw the date of my last one....man. I cannot believe how fast time is flying by right now, and that's a good thing considering my R&R being delayed. Things here have been crazy busy. I don't usually log my hours to the minute as I basically spread my hours across all the different jobs I am managing evenly (5 right now), but a few weeks ago I kept a tracking of my time as accurately as I could...126 hours, that is an average of 18 hours a day for 7 days. That week included 2 5am'ers too, had I not slept late one morning my hours would have been over 130....so not healthy. Can you understand why I haven't been blogging recently? Anytime I have a few minutes to myself, the last thing I want to do is stare at my computer more. I don't think that I have ever spent so much time with an object as I have with this computer. The keys are already starting to discolor and fade. But what might be the strangest part of this is that I am actually getting used to it, it is what it is, the work isn't going away, and no one else is going to do it for me. On the nights when I get in bed early around 2 am, I can't fall asleep, I just lay there and think about the work I didn't get finished yet.They are trying to ramp up on new hires but that takes a while to get them over here, so for now it all falls to me. Coffee coffee coffee. 

Starting tomorrow the workload here is going to triple for me if that is even remotely possible, my boss just left for R&R and most likely will be heading straight to Kabul on his return, one of my site managers leaves for his on Monday, and the guy who is pretty much my field operations manager is heading to join our new division in Iraq. He's got a 6 hour drive from Baghdad to Basra on a road that let's just say is not the one you want to be found on. The war there might technically be over, but the violence is still rampant. The guy who is heading up our operations there previously worked in Iraq for our company for about 4 years before starting things up here. He's got plenty of connections there fortunately, when he got to Baghdad last week he was holed up in a house in the city for 4 days before being moved by 9 security guards to Basra. Luckily he somehow knows a general in the Iraqi Army who has been providing security for him....for free! How bizarre. The plan there is to not do government or military work but rather hook up with the big oil companies, they are predicting nearly $10 billion in construction activity there in the coming years as the oil that they have discovered has been said to dwarf Dubai. There have been whispers of the head trying to pull me over there, I don't think that there is much of a chance of that happening, but again, I never thought that I would be siting at a desk in the middle of Afghanistan.

So I have said previously how safe this base is....it is, but last week they had an attack just outside the gate, kinda close to where I was chillin' with the warlord. A car of locals that were on their way to the base for work got hit with a grenade, than was all shot up with bullets. One died, the others got rushed inside the base and I believe that they survived. at the same time they put the Leatherneck side of the base on lock down as there was a report of a possible suicide bomber inside the Afghan National Army compound which connects to Leatherneck. Nothing ever came of it though, but it was the first time here that I had any thought about the danger. Granted, they've been firing rockets out of here towards the mountains more than usual, they launch from just past our camp, maybe 3/4 of a mile away. It's intense, by the time you hear the burn of the rocket it is already almost out of view. The only time you really get a good view is if they fire another one and you are outside ready for it, the other day I got a perfect view of the second one, it launched...paused in the air for a fraction of a second before a fire ball fired out the back and it shot into the sky as faster than I could follow without turning my head. It's cool being near the launch site for those, but that also means that we are near the practice firing range, and they are lighting it up out there right now, I say on the news that a new wave of marines just got here, and you can tell they are being put through their training. Explosions are as frequent as ever right now, each one rattles the windows more than the previous, yet no one even bats an eye, conversations continue without a stutter.

We have a few job site on Bastion- the British side, one of them is right near the hospital and the helicopter emergency landing pad. Plus our client, the UK military, has their office in the same general area, so I am up there at least once a day. I have noticed a significant amount of helicopters landing there lately. it is literally like having them land in a park across the street from you. You hear the helicopters all day, but these come in fast and low, a clear sign they have and injured soldier. Before you know it, the dust is kicking up and they are dropping from the sky as the medical staff sits in the ambulance just feet away ready to rush them in. They come in two at a time, not always are both carrying injured soldiers, but they fly in pairs. And just as fast as they land, they take right back off and blast away. You can feel the thumb of the rotor blades on your chest as they lift and turn back.

Last night was a great night. We handed out raises to the majority of the laborers. One by one we brought them into the office and had them sign new contracts- all non US employees are considered contractors and work under a contract. So if you give them a raise you issue them new contracts. It really was great to see these guy's smiles as we told them why we called them in. They all work so incredibly hard, doing whatever we ask, and for very little money compared to what the rest of us make. Most of them start out at $800/month, the more skilled make just over $1,000, there are a handful that make around $2,000. So when you give them $100-$200 raise, they can't contain their happiness. I loved it, but it made me feel awful at the same time. I just can't wrap my head around them making so little money, can you believe that they are working here for such little money? The majority of them are Filipinos, some are from Pakistan and India. All of them say that they can't make even close to this much money back home.

We have about 24 Afghans working full time for us and living on another camp we have here on the other side of the base, those guys are only making $500-$600 per month. Think about what must go through their heads when they make the decision to not only work here, but live here. You know they must have their names on a list out there somewhere for helping those pesky infidels! We actually had to pull them all together a few weeks ago and give them a lecture on of all things...how to use a toilet. Let's just say they prefer to stand and hover, their traditional toilet (if you call it that) is what we around here call a long dropper, it's a hole in the floor with two marks on either side to place your feet, thus the long drop portion of this description. So when they are presented with a real toilet, they climb up on the seat and assume the long drop position...mayhem ensues...cleaners get mad and threaten to quit, hygiene goes out the window, stomachs turn. We had an interpreter with us as two of us tried to explain why this was not ok, it started out uncomfortable, but turned into roaring laughter by all of us as one Afghan tried to show us how he stands on the toilet and we were saying "no no no" and physically trying to force him to sit on the imaginary toilet. It's kinda like controlling kids sometimes. On their day off a few weeks ago they were getting restless at their camp, so we gave them a soccer ball and they settled down. One of them is 48 years old, 7 years past the life expediency of Afghan males. One of the guys drove him back into the camp the other day saying he thought the guy was having a heart attack. We ran out to the truck and I must say, first glance and I thought we had a gonner on our hands. He was pale, moving really slow, and his eyes were barely focusing on me as I opened the door and tried to ask him what was wrong. All he could do was put his hand on my chest and circle my heart. I thought for sure he wasn't going to make it. They rushed him to the hospital where they determined that it was a panic attack of some sort. The hospital report I received explained it all, it listed him as an extremely elderly and weak Afghan male. Again...he is 48..and elderly.

I still can't believe how we are building things here. Currently we have about 44 laborers on one site, and around 20 on another site. We have guys manually bending rebar for massive fuel tank foundations. They are literally bending piece by piece by hand. Back home the rebar would show up on site bent at the factory all labeled and tagged for it's locations. Here we just had a huge truckload of rebar delivered to the site and dumped into a pile. On the other site we have teams of men climbing into Hesco bags (large fabric bags that gets filled with dirt that deflect bomb blasts) and compacting the dirt that is used to fill them with their feet like they are making some sort of wine. You gotta think fast and think outside the box here for sure if you want to keep up. When I am estimating these project I still shake my head when I start assigning the labor costs, I am yet to do one without going back and double checking that I didn't miss anything, the costs just don't ever look right. How can it only cost me around $25 per day per man? Crazy.

Get this..it rained...yup, you know, precipitation from the sky type stuff. Not much rain, barely enough to make you put on a waterproof jacket, but that little bit of rain made a freakin' mess. All the dust turned to a brown gooey mud. It is coming into the rainy season here, and I can see why people say it is a nightmare. The water just sits on the surface and puddles. All the windows have dusty watery streaks on them now. But heck, it was something different and I'll take it. I heard it on my roof when I was waking up and I had to look out the window to see what the heck it was. I was almost giddy.

45 days until R&R, I'm not counting though. I can't wait. I'm even excited about the 16 hour flight, just knowing that for 16 hours I won't have to look at my computer, answer an email.....heaven. My original date was Feb 3rd, and my internal calendar knows it. I've been missing the boys something fierce lately. It's really hard not knowing what their day to day life is after being so involved with it for all those years. The 6 weeks a year off sounds like it will make up for it, not many people can say that they get 6 weeks of vacation time to spend with their family. I am wondering though if it will fill the void. The two weeks flew by last time, it seemed like I was still getting settled in when I had to start thinking about packing my bags again. I tell ya what though, the triathlon that Jolie signed me up for while I am home will probably make me wish that I was back here. Why I agreed to this is beyond me, lack of sleep I think. Other than the two 5k's that I did in Kandahar, I have exercised once. We have $50k worth of gym equipment sitting in Dubai waiting to ship here, but we haven't finished building the gym yet, so like me, the equipment is sitting dormant. How ironic will it be in my obituary when it reads that I survived working in a war zone in the middle of the Afghan desert only to drowned in a pool during a triathlon? I'm screwed. I might claim an injury the night before. Hopefully no one is going to come to cheer us on, I wouldn't want them to catch a cold when the sun goes down and I am still out on the coarse delirious, probably asking random people if they want to be in my blog!

When negotiating with a warlord, don't drink the tea

Happy New Year everyone!

I was at a loss on how to spend New Year's Eve here. I did have the day off and all, so there must have been something to do right? Apparently I was the only one with that thought, no parades, no concerts, no football games, no fireworks at midnight! Afghanistan sure could use some lessons on how to party. So I of course found myself in the office trying to play my everyday game of catch up. Just before lunch we got a call from a  supplier about some materials that he no longer could sell to us. So we hopped in the truck to go find out what was going on.

There is a supplier right outside the base that most contractors get a large amount of materials from. He sells sand, stone, basically anything that you would dump and spread around here. There are middle men, but sometimes you need to go direct to the source to do a deal. I actually like that around here, lots of deals are made in person with a handshake, not a "send" button. We need a specific rock for a project here, it's similar to a river rock. We know that the main supplier has some of it but he didn't want to sell it to us because he can get more money for it after he crushes it into smaller rock than if he sells it whole. If we don't get that rock, we're screwed. There was one other guy who said he had it but based on what he was going to charge me, I think he was trying to retire. So yesterday two of us went out to see the main supplier and try to talk him into a deal.

We parked at the gate and walked out, it's about a mile walk, but since the gate is always crowded with delivery trucks, getting our vehicle back in would be a nightmare. This was my first time outside the wire here, and it's totally different from Kandahar. Here when you walk out what strikes you first is how open it is, not much to see in the immediate area other than the trucks, etc. In Kandahar you walk out and you feel as if you are immediately in the middle of a village. As soon as we got outside, we heard someone calling my coworker's name. It was a local Afghan who he knows pretty well, the guy actually wants to work for us on base as an escort. He falls into the category of the 80's retro dressed Afghan. The majority of the locals you will find wearing the traditional Afghan clothes, very baggy pants with the long baggy shirt, usually a head dress of some sort, leather sandles, sometimes that have a large wrap around them. And then there are the more business savvy ones who separate themselves from that and will have on more of a western style look. But almost always it looks like they just got their clothes from an 80's retro store. Odd looking jeans, velcro shoes, member's only style jackets, and then they will pull an iphone out of their pocket of course. So this young guy in his 80's gear comes running over to us shaking our hands for an uncomfortably long time as is often the case here. He asks us where we are going and says with a laugh "the Taliban are out here" and makes a gesture with his hand like he is cutting his throat. The guy I am with laughs and tells him where we are going, the kids says he will call them and tell them to spare us and then runs off as fast as he came. It wasn't until we had walked another 20 steps before I said "he was joking right?". The kid needs more time at the Afghan Laugh Factory I think to work up some more appropriate material.

We walked out the long sandy road about 200 yards and past the final check point where 2 marines were attempting to get the local truck drivers to understand that they cannot all park there trucks where ever the heck they want as they wait...it was a log jam, not sure how any of them ever made it through. One marine turned towards us and in between his arm waiving and yelling said with a defeated tone "f**k me".  I couldn't have agreed with him more. Imagine trying to sort out grid lock on a major road with dozens of 18 wheelers driven by men who don't even have the equivalent of a driver's license. All this while wearing a uniform that puts a target on your back. At this point the trucks have already gone through the bomb search and have sat in the "soak area" which means that they have been in a parking area away from the gate for at least 48 hours to make sure they get searched and that nothing funky is going on. This whole time the drivers are eating, sleeping, etc in, under, on, around their trucks. As we walked past them there were some who still were in the camping mood even though they were at the gate and had blankets and bags spread out as they huddled in a group to stay warm. Fuel is so expensive for them that sitting in a running truck to stay warm is not an option. The whole time we were walking I couldn't help but shake my head at the trash. It's EVERYWHERE. Empty water bottles, paper, wrappers, cans, blankets, construction debris, you name it and it is out there. Truck parts, oil, tires, it's unreal at what you can find out there just by walking around, never mind actually picking through any of it.

There was a guy and his son out there with a cart selling food and drinks, kinda reminded me of Causeway street at a Red Sox game...well minus the nice smells, good food, and cheery atmosphere. But you could tell that this was his regular spot, because the pile of trash behind him that was directly related to his cart was enough to fill dozens of trash bags. I watched as he pulled more items out of a box and just tossed it behind him and onto the pile. The young boy was busy stomping on the empty cans all around him when he saw us and as the well trained salesman that are all the children here, he locked in on his target and marched straight towards us...."you want drink" "you want eat". Note the lack of question marks there, these were not questions to his potential clients, these were statements. When speaking with the locals, they rarely take the tone of a question. Most are statements, which can be tricky when trying to negotiate something. Sometimes I leave those conversations and wonder what the heck I just agreed to. We denied his mind reading and told him that we wanted nothing. Literally having to get to the point of near rudeness to get past him.

Finally clear of the mayhem, we headed towards the entrance to the rock supplier. We were met at the entrance and waved through. Once inside we saw a guy who I recognized, I had met him previously at our office. He is the talking head so to speak, he goes on base and meets the contractors, etc. He was the one who originally told us he would sell the rock to us, and now was saying the opposite. He began by saying again how he couldn't sell to us as they needed that specific rock for themselves. After a few minutes of banter back and forth, he motioned to us to follow him. He was about 10 feet in front of us as we went past another massive pile of aggregate. We could see a group of about 6 men ahead, the guy I was with said "oh good, Hodgie is here", i asked who that was and the response was "he's the local warlord who owns this place", my blank stare led to him saying "no...he's cool". Oh good, he's cool. That eases my mind. Out amongst the piles of what must be millions of dollars worth of rock material and equipment in the middle of Afghanistan and he tells me that the warlord is cool. As we got close, the men around him all stood, one smiled and walked towards us and greeted us, my colleague of course knows this guy too, he seems to know everyone. After a quick hello we began telling him what we wanted and he turned to Hodgie and relayed the message. Hodgie is an old man, looks about 90, but most likely that means he is around 60. Long gray beard, dark wrinkled skin, arms were all wrapped up tight against his body under his wrap. We spoke to him through the other guy, though I think he understood English, protocol I guess. As we were talking price, someone's cell phone began to ring, it was one of those ring tones that are a song, no idea what it was though. Hodgie reaches deeper under his wrap and whips out a phone that put my little pay as you go model to shame. He steps to the side and begins to talk. Poor cell phone etiquette if you ask me. But I guess a warlord's business is never done, with all that planning of the next extortion maneuver and all. Once he was done presumably ruining someone's day, he stepped back towards us, reached out his hand, and we shook on the deal. Most of the locals shake your hand and then touch their heart, it's a nice touch. Basically we gave him the asking price, but that was just fine with me. I like nothing more than a good negotiation, but this wasn't exactly the place for that. Once the formalities were done, we were invited into the house for some tea. I like my tea with milk and sugar...on the lite side. They like their tea with opium in it....not really on my list of things to do around here, so it took about 5 declines before we were allowed to go without.

The ironic part is that we were probably safer there than if a local had been in the same situation. The base is the gravy train for this guy. I would estimate that he supplies multi-millions of dollars worth of materials for the construction around here, and if something were to happen to a "client", he would be expelled and out of business. Thus cutting of his "legit" bank roll. This all begs the question....by all the contractors and military purchasing these materials, and the money that is literally pouring into their bank accounts, are we actually bank rolling some of the corruption that has gotten this country into the situation that it is in? I can't see how it doesn't. Though he is not a direct enemy, and he most likely is providing information and some sort of service to the military, it adds to the already cloudy politics here.


We spent only about an hour there, but it seemed like longer. Outside the wire is a time warp for sure. On our way back in, and after the denial of hunger pains to the food kid again, the marines were still arguing with the truck drivers. We entered into the walk through portion of the gate, stood at a distance on top of the sand bag that marks the spot, opened our jackets, lifted up our shirts, turned and did the same to show our backs, lifted up our pant legs, and got the signal to come forward. Had our badges checked, and were led in front of the body scanner. Once through that we were able to skip the eye scanner and we were back to the comforts of the base.


Just another uneventful day off I guess...I better go approve that Purchase Order for the warlord.