Dreaming of home...

So I guess after more than 2 months it’s time to get caught back up with my people. 

R&R was great. Instead of heading straight home, I met my wife and kids up in Boston for 5 days. A bit surreal I must admit to get on a plane in Afghanistan, and a day later I am sitting in my mom’s living room. Jolie and the boys had arrived at the airport just 30 minutes after I did and I was standing at their terminal waiting for them to get off a plane for once. When I got on my connection flight in Atlanta to Boston I sat next to guy who had the thickest stereotypical Boston accent. Normally that makes me cringe as I pride myself in not having it myself, but I actually enjoyed it, it was the first time I could really talk to anyone who gave a crap that the Boston Bruins had won the Stanley Cup!

Fenway Park

We had a great time, family bbq on July 4^th, cruised around Boston for a few days, and of course catching a Red Sox game. Being in Boston always makes me want to move back there. Though after being over here any city seems like the magical kingdom. 

Me and my gorgeous wife

We spent the rest of my R&R home in NC. I couldn’t wait to get over to the beach and enjoy walking in sand for once. We spent lots of time out on the water both with great friends on their boat (aren’t all friends with boats great) and we rented our own for another few days. It was pretty obvious after the first boat trip that I don’t spend much time over here with my shirt off or even wearing shorts for that matter….i got quite possibly the worst sunburn of my life, at one point even contemplating if I needed to go to the doctor….how embarrassing to never have gotten one out here in the desert, but was looking like a lobster after 1 day on the water back home!

Being home again was great, it always is, that should go without saying. But being home can also be incredibly hard for me. Sounds selfish yes I know, by no means should that be taken as I don’t want to be home, because nothing could be further from the truth. Stepping off the plane and seeing Jolie and the boys instantly wipes away all the stress, all the exhaustion, all the feelings of loneliness that goes along with being out here away from the ones that you love. But it also smacks you in the face on day one and continues to chase you the entire time. I can’t say exactly what it is, but each time home it has been more and more present. It’s a feeling of disconnection at times, at other times a feeling of guilt knowing that it all passes by too quickly. It’s the pressure of trying to make every minute of every day be perfect wanting to leave the boys with great memories of their time with dad and hoping that it fills them up enough to last until the next time. This last time was on the 1 year mark of me leaving, and for the first time I could tell that I had been gone for so long. It was clear that I wasn’t up to speed on their lives, felt like I had forgotten how to be a dad and a husband at times. It’s something that has stuck with me for the 2 months that I have been back, probably why I am more homesick now than I ever have through all of this. It’s ironic, over hear you get such a bond with all the people you work with, you endure the ever increasing work hours, the harsh environment, the guns, the explosions, the fact that a remote control airplane with a camera on it circles overhead watching you…but we all are hear doing it because we want to make life better for our families back home…the one thing that we miss the most.

My next R&R is due in late October, but we have decided to push it until Christmas for a couple of reasons. My biggest project is due for completion in November and for me to leave less than a month before that is not ideal as it will be an all hands on deck scenario to pull this thing to completion, but also because I really want to be home for Christmas this year after missing it last year and if I go in October I won't be eligible to go again until late January. What that means is that this rotation will be 5 months, I arrived back here a few days shy of 2 months ago…so really today is more like day one of the tour….yikes. Good thing that we are planning on going on a great trip together, finalizing he details now, but somewhere with a fruity drink is all I ask!

There hasn’t been much new going on here lately to speak off other than work, at least if there was I didn’t see it from my office window. Last month was pretty quiet as far as the guns and bombs thing goes. It was the religious month of Ramadan, which traditionally is a quieter time for the war. there still have been the occasional rockets going out, but not at the clip that we had become accustomed to…if you can get accustomed to rockets launching over your head. Ramadan does make pushing a construction schedule a bit of a challenge. All of our Afghan workers and a hand full of others that celebrate Ramadan fast during the day including drinking water. So as you can imagine when temperatures are still hovering slightly over 100 degrees and you have men working in the heat without food and water the production rate comes to a grinding halt. It also affects local suppliers that have taken a month long holiday, and in Dubai, our other main hub for supplies, getting planes loaded with materials & supplies is just as challenging. Someone needs to open a Home Depot over here.

We recently bid on a project here to improve the sewage disposal system,...glamorous huh? The current system has the sewage running off the camp and into the desert. Well there has sprung up a small village right outside the base and they have rerouted the sewage over to their farm land. For obvious reasons they have about the most fertile soil around. Part of this project is to naturally treat the sewage before it leaves the camp, something that the farmers are actually upset with as they see it as potentially hindering their ability to grow there products. We had to meet with the farmer to reassure him that he would still be getting his fair share of poop to put it bluntly, but also to find out how locals grow reed beds in this environment which is a key component of the project. Lets just say that the offer of fruit was accepted, but that fruit didn't even last the 100 yards to get back into the gate before I ditched it....and I am still washing my hands like Lady Macbeth.

Fuel System Project

 

We really have made good progress on all our projects. We are getting ever so close to finishing the Fuels System project and when that one is done I think there are more than a few of us that are going to celebrate. I've never been involved in a project like this. In the beginning myself and me site manager, whom I worked with previously back home, stood there one day and commented on how cool of a project this was for us to be doing, and even though there have been times when i think both of us wished that a well placed incoming rocket would do the project a whole lot of good...I think that as we come closer to completion we are going to be able to stand down there at the end and marvel at what it was that we accomplished out here in the middle of Afghanistan. Trust me, there are bigger and more complex projects going on out here, but at least for me this was the most challenging in my 20 years in the business. 

Driver Training Course

We delivered a really cool project for the British Military that involved building a training course for all the military vehicles, it’s pretty much an obstacle course on steroids for them to drive their million dollar toys over. I was promised a ride through the course by the head instructor once it was done....gotta make that happen.

The entire course was carved, molded, compacted using local labor driving heavy equipment, something that we have starting to refer to as herding cats. Just as you think you get one group going in the right direction you turn your head and notice that the others need gathering again. I have found that you get 2 completely different types of local workers here. Some are rock solid, motivated, want to learn and do well. Others are always looking for the shortcut, the reason why their dump truck doesn't run so they can stop working, or just simply decide to stop working and assume the squatting position that looks like a bird on a wire.

Thankfully the majority of our directly employed locals fall into the first category....one was even so happy to have finished a portion of the days task that he started doing kart wheels...

We also started another project for the US military and myself and the guy that has been running the project in the field took full advantage of the wide open space by going out and hitting a few golf balls. He actually bought a set of clubs online and we finally got over there to test them out. Amazing what 30 minutes of doing something so normal can do for your state of mind. Well most of it was normal, back home I generally don’t go to a driving range that has a guy in a tower with a 50 caliber machine gun staring down at you....talk about pressure.

Here's to dreaming of home......