Comments Reply, Etc.

What a great story by Grandfather and it's amazing I really never heard it before, go figure. I'm responding to comments since I don't have enough cool stuff for a new post yet. I have been busier than ever and will be for some time, probably the rest of the way.

Boris and Natasha, taking time away from getting moose and squirrel to drop a post, awesome. We run around our extremely small base. There is a paved square of road that isn’t too large - these are my kind of laps. I run for a time not a distance since I don’t really know the distance. We can make the run feel like cross country by running on the unpaved portions of the base including some gravel and dirt, but it hurts don’t ya know. We should use our running for niceness instead of evil.

I don't think you'll swing the drug trade with a couple t-shirts Terry, but there are people who would plotz if they knew some stuff I teach about sending aid to developing nations from an environmental perspective.

I spent about an hour or so in Canada House tonight at the invitation of one of the guys I work with. We are about the same age. Canada House is what they call their building that houses their National Support Element. The buildings generally have administrative rooms downstairs and a social room upstairs. We have one, but people don’t socialize there as we are not that tight here as a nation. We use it for the phones, Internet connection, and a bit of TV. They have a party every night, very nice group, the Army of the West. There are a few reasons the US doesn’t bond like the other countries here. One is we are too large in numbers and another is the guy who runs our support element is a piece of work. Our place doesn’t even have a cool name like Canada House, maybe we should use theirs.

I didn’t mention my brief yesterday. During what we call a pre-brief or rehearsal before the Commander comes in, one of the generals really gave it to me on some trivial stuff. The more experienced guys who do this every day spoke to me after and said I handled it well and that he goes after everyone sooner or later. Well, I got the reputation you would all expect. My general reassured me not to be concerned about that guy and that he’s the only one I need to worry about. Such relief. The best validation was that the Commander liked the presentation exactly how I presented it and it was the information he wanted. All's well until the next battle, which is about daily.

Ireland Day

Last night, Thursday, we were treated by our Irish comrades to a barbeque in honor of their national day/St. Patrick’s Day. We had to delay it until then due to scheduling conflicts. They served beer, steak, chicken, sides, and had Irish coffee available for dessert along with a nice cake. Held outside in a nice courtyard by any standard, it was quite well done and the best attended event I’ve been to since my arrival. The group of friends I was with had a wonderful time and shared many laughs. I wish Sean could have been here for it, but the travel to and from would have been a real challenge.

Along with dessert we were regaled with a performance by our camp musical group – The Tali Band. They played all Irish music of course and are led by a British General who plays a number of string instruments and sings. Not bad at all. As a hobby, they tour the area bases when they can and play a variety of music.

After being a little sick last night (the Irish coffee perhaps), I had a relaxing day that included a run and a jaunt in the bazaar. My Friday/day off has come to an end. Another week lies ahead, but another week closer to home.

Dinner Conversation

When a bunch of military guys get together to eat three times a day, the conversation can range from philosophical and intelligent all the way down to pure bathroom humor. Here is part of a conversation, verbatim, I had with Carey tonight. A 6'4'' 275 lb black guy from Tennessee, he is in one of the bazaar pictures posted earlier.

Carey: Where are the Three Stooges from?
Ithan: I don't know for sure. I do know that they are Jewish.
Carey: No! Really? All of them?
Ithan: Yep.
Carey: That's meshuge.

Good thing I wasn't drinking milk at the time. That was the intelligent part of our conversation, it went downhill from there. To balance it all out, we're going to watch a Dolemite film in the theatre tonight.

I had the opportunity to sit in for our General yesterday as he was stuck in another city with no flights available. As our story goes, you may remember our deputy was stuck as well in a different city. Interesting sitting in at meetings with a bunch of one and two star generals around. Believe it or not, they didn't look to me too much for comment. I almost had my first high visibility media conference today since neither of them was available. It would have been me and a two star being asked questions by a group of European journalists who were not expected to be too friendly. In a solid example of diplomacy and raw common sense, they cancelled my part. Another international incident avoided.

Easter's Past

And what would Easter be without chocolate bunnies? Well absolutely nothing to me. So, I had a lot of chocolate and some jelly beans, not to mention a few peeps for tradition sake. They put together a special lunch in the dining facility. We had a choice of steak or fish (I had the lasagna) and a huge dessert selection. When we left, there was a goodie bag with a small chocolate bunny and some chocolate eggs. My kind of holiday.

I have been covering for the deputy director for the past four days while he is on a trip to one of the other cities. Nothing has come up, which should give you a good idea about the difficulty of that job. Or perhaps he is going to face a world of hurt when he gets back, can’t wait to find out.

I thought the cashews my sister sent weren’t going to make it through the weekend. I was wrong; they barely made it 24 hours. Around 2.5 pounds of cashews gone - what a treat.

I usually have breakfast with a Romanian colonel each morning. We talk about a number of things. He forwarded a lot pictures to me that I sent home. Some pictures are of the children here, which are depressing, but even worse to view since I’m here. I can’t get over what they have to look forward to or what they don’t. They will not be posted here at this point, just can’t do it. I was out in a convoy today and saw many kids throughout the city. Some weren’t going to school, but many were. They wore what we would consider rags for clothes, but some had nice little backpacks. The themed pink or blue packs like our kids might have set against the gray and black of their clothes somewhat dazed me. We passed their school quickly and I could not get a long look, but it resembled an open area with a wall surrounding it. Almost like a fort. The school year began on Saturday coinciding with the New Year here and the kids look happy overall. I saw little children maybe 1-2 years old around the road being guided by what appeared to be a brother or sister only around 5-6 years old. It has nothing to do with my job, but I feel some obligation to find out more about the schools here and make some attempt to figure out what is going on. Perhaps more on that in another post.

For those who have it, I hope you are all enjoying your spring break.

Not Quite M*A*S*H

But, it's in the ballpark. We often compare walking around base to M*A*S*H, especially after a hard rain with mud everywhere. The first picture is the box I live in. I am on the second floor, last room in the back. My building is in the back in the poor section of the base, but at least my room is on the opposite end from the bathrooms. Adjacent to my building, on the left, is where all the wastewater gets pumped. In the room, I have a cabinet to hang my stuff in and a small thing I call a desk with a good chair. A twin bed rounds out the accomodations. Pictures from home decorate the wall at my "desk." It works for me, my home away from home.



The second picture shows the small soccer field on the right, the temporary building I used to live in on the left with a small cafe above. Sometimes I go there for coffee or a beer and use the computer on the lanai.



The last picture shows some living accomodations in the foreground with the mountains surrounding the province in the background. The mountains are quite beautiful. Almost all the snow has melted at this point. This province lies in a bit of a valley, mountains surrounding us for the most part.

The base is small, maybe 300m x 500m or so. It seems real small after a few weeks. There are some places to shop, all run by other countries and overpriced. If I didn't know better, I would say there was a bit of price gouging going on here. The dollar isn't doing too well against the euro, so that doesn't help. We have a couple cafes, a gym, free dvd rental (not much choice), a basketball court, volleyball court, dining facility, and of course the small soccer field. Not too bad for where we are.

I received a number of care packages yesterday and my officemates and I had a blast. All the stuff is greatly welcomed, the cashews probably won't survive the weekend! The coffee is great. This is some serious gourmet stuff! Usually, we would be happy with some freeze-dried Taster's Choice right, but you spring this serious GOURMET stuff on us! It only took around six days for it all to arrive, excellent time! Thanks from the directorate! And another big thank you to Kathy for getting this posted!

Speaking of Economics

For Terry, these kids - and adults - will accept anything. They ask us for pens if they see we have one, or soda, doesn’t matter. Sometimes they’ll pull us aside and ask us to bring them some shoes. Some people do, especially those of us who are more religious and feel a bit of a higher need to help out. Of course giving has its complications. You won't be left alone and there are security issues too.

So, here’s some basic economics. One of the main business ventures in this country is farming. People are also starving for any number of reasons. For one thing, growing crops is not enough. One must have the infrastructure to get the goods from farm to market to the people. Roads are hard to come by. Refrigeration is hard to come by especially since electricity is scarce. Many, many districts do not even have 24 hour electricity if they have it at all. Getting crops to the consumer is not too easy. In cases like these, rich countries and people, kind of like us, send all kinds of aid. We typically send food, which we did in this case … lots of it. What did that do to the farmer? It put him (and his family) out of what little business he had. So what is a farmer to do with the field and equipment now? One thing a farmer with poor soil and very little water can grow is poppy. Opiates, narcotics, heroin come from poppy. Multiple choice test: what is the number one export of this country? A) narcotics B) automobiles C) computers D) nanotechnology-based equipment. Narcotics make up an unreal amount of the economy here, look it up. If we try to stop the trafficking, what are we doing to an already poor country? If we let it occur, what are we doing? The story is more complex and sadder than this, but we would have to move away from the economic issues a bit to ‘splain.

I spoke with Aaron, Stacey, and Sami on Skype as best we could. Aaron points to the computer to talk to Daddy. He doesn’t talk too much to me, but he smiles. He was “cooking” something with his spoon and cup and he tried to feed me some in the computer screen. I hear he is doing well at home from everyone including two important friends he has – Alyssa and Kerri.

Happy Saint Patrick’s day to all. I’m not drinking, but I am certain the Irish here are celebrating. I think they started this morning. That’s all from this side of the world for now.

As Time Goes By

I have had a bit of difficulty signing on to my blog and checking AOL from my computer. Not having AOL access also means I can't email Kathy pictures to post. I do have some pictures of the base, which is hard to show with just a few shots. As soon as I can manage emailing them out, we can get them posted. The connection is poor mostly because so many people use the system at night. I got to have dinner tonight with my old roommate Sam, which was great. Tonight will be spent preparing for my brief for the Commander tomorrow. That will be my typical Saturday night, which is like Monday night back home. Since my brief last week was cancelled due to a time crunch, this will be the first time in the lime light.

The bazaar was fun yesterday. My old bodyguard was with me and he didn't complain this time, he is learning. He was well compensated for his 45 minutes of walking around. There was a nine year old boy who had his own table and gave me his schtick. It was heartening. He couldn't have been more than four feet tall. I was out of money, but will probably through something his way next week. I bought a couple laser pointer/pens for $2.50 each. If one lasts through my presentation tomorrow, that will be worth it.

Sorry about the connections and lack of pictures, but we'll get them up at some point.

Outside the Wire

Going outside the wire means leaving the relative safety of the base. I usually leave a couple times a week for different meetings, but close by. We are our own security force in the vehicles, hence the weapons and training. In short, the vehicles are bullet-proof and have a few other safety features.

On Tuesday though, I travelled with our directorate general (my boss) to a conference a little farther away than usual. A professional security force travelled with us, in a car nicer than what I am used to, so my services were not needed (I was ready though). I got to see a little more of how people live here in the capital district and province. It is not a pretty sight. We have poverty back home, but nothing like this, nothing at all. All kinds of animals on the sides of the road looking for food or soon to be food. Buildings broken down in a way I can't really describe in this space. No running water and what is available is not potable. The average income is around $800 per year, coming to a little more than $2 per day. So, when I pay my bodyguard 2 dollars, I am matching his father's income for that day. To answer a comments question, the boy I see does go to school and is educated compared to the rest of the country. His English is good and he wants to be a doctor or a pilot some day. In short, we are his only hope of those dreams ever coming true. If I can find what I did with the statistics, the rate of children attending school (especially girls!) has skyrocketed since we have been here. There are many other positives that I'll post in the future.

So back to my story, the conference was a meeting of all the high ranking officials from the army around the country. It was all in the native language and we had to wear an earphone in which a partial translation was provided. I was probably able to understand about 30% of the conference. The most important thing is that their leaders are confident and independent. I believe things will go well here in the years to come. Because the foreigners (us) could not understand a lot of things, most took the time for some serious napping. Humorous to say the least.

Lunch was my first experience in formal, local cuisine. You all remember the formal dinner scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? Anyway, I'm a kosher vegetarian now ... But seriously folks, the meal was not bad. We had two kinds of sweet rice, soup, awesome bread, and lots of what we used to call monkey meat, meaning a number of different kinds of meat you can't name on a skewer. I tried some of it and I had a banana.

We had dinner there too, which was a bit smaller as everyone wanted to leave - we ran over a couple hours. We got back to base around 2000 making it a real long day, but an experience I'm glad I had...

To answer some questions from the comments, the wool rugs can run around $150-250. The real silk rugs run a few thousand. Size matters. We have an army guy here called Big Money who has the proverbial uncle in the carpet business. He buys rugs all the time for a couple thousand and flips them for triple the price. His uncle probably does business with my brother-in-law. Rugs, pajminas, scarves, gems, jewelry, small electronics, loads of dvds, some military knock-off items, old weapons, fur coats, marble items, and games make up some of the many things sold at the bazaar. I am not in a real position to take orders as sending it home can be a bit difficult based on the number of orders I would need to take. I don't have the ability to bargain on the rugs at this experience point. I was also asked what uniform I wear - I wear the one you see in the pictures everyday and everywhere (I do have more than one set).

The Bazaar

Although I missed the bazaar last Friday due to work, I thought I would post a couple pictures from the prior week. The first one is of me and my bodyguards. The one to my right is actually my bodyguard, the other one is Carey's. Carey is the large gentlemen in the second picture standing with one of the merchants. Merchants generally like to be in pictures and always ask us if we can print one out for them. As good businessmen, they try to get to know us so that we will come back next week. I suppose that gets us some better prices than we would have had. However, it is interesting to note the American servicemen are blamed for driving up the prices in the bazaar. This is completely true. We pay what we think is a good price or fair price, but we could get things for far less if we bargained or walked away a bit more. I don't blame the other countries for this and I will do my part to pay less. Walking away is always interesting, merchants will often chase you down and usually give you the price you ask. I've overpaid on a couple things, but have definitely paid a fair price on most things.

My last few days were really hectic, but I'm still here so we'll keep plugging along. I think every week will be busy with some down time sprinkled in so that we can joke and laugh and yell at each other in the office. I don't know what you've all heard about how servicemen can use foul and degrading language when no one else is around, but believe me, it's true.

Days Moving On

It's been a bit over two weeks and now I guess I am deep into things. My first brief was yesterday to a group of civilians who have to bring their opinion back to the US and Europe on what is going on. I can't wait to hear what problems I started, should be interesting. (I recently learned from a Marine Colonel who is leaving I'll be expected to brief the media from time to time - I can't imagine what will go wrong, but we'll find out). My first brief to the Commanding General will be on Sunday and I'll meet the General I work for on Saturday when he returns from leave. Today is Friday, our normal one day off, but it looks like I'll be working part of the day. It's going to be a very busy few days coming up.

I moved into a new room yesterday, which should be my permanent room. Apparently a friend of a friend (Sam, my now former roommate) got me into a single room. The room is in what I would call the hood, but it is what it is. I am a few feet from one of the walls of the base. The place is built like a fortress, but the town is right on the other side. Nothing has happened for quite a long time, so as I've always said, it's safe. My experience living in my fraternity has prepared me for the filth, broken/disgusting common bathrooms, and general odor that permeates the buildings. See, all experiences have some use.

Did I mention we all get to take malaria pills while we are here? This is US military medicine at its best. At this altitude and temperature, no mosquitoes anywhere, but I think a long time ago someone got something, so we have to take them year around. I waited to start until Mar 1 when the weather turned and I saw some bugs that would indicate there could be more. We also get to take them for four weeks after we leave. Of course our great medical crew has no data on what taking this drug/antibiotic for long term (some for more than a year) will do to your body in the long term. Those of you who know me well know I hate taking anything I don't need and also know my contempt for navy doctors much less the military doctors at large.

And so we move on...

Postcards from The Edge

I'm Ithan's friend Kathy, his administrative technical assistant (still waiting for my first paycheck...) He had some technical trouble with the photo upload and so I am posting these for him. Ithan's words are in blue



The first one is part of Club 3916 (all Commanders) waiting in the hangar to leave South Carolina. From left to right: Bruce, Mark H, Mickey, Mark R, Doug, Rich, Tim, and me.




The second one is a group of us waiting in Kuwait having just completed our training. We lived in the tents to the left, a sandbox describes the rest of the country. Most of the others are in the first picture except Jeff who is the tall guy and Alec is on the right. If this goes well, we'll post more.

One Week+ Down

That's one week down and too many to count to go. My day off yesterday was good for me. The night before, my roommate invited me to a small gathering at the Embassy. It was my first visit to an embassy of any type. It was just a bunch of people gathering, nothing official, but it was nice to kind of get off the base. The Embassy is colocated with our base, so not a tough drive. In fact, it is walking distance.

I spent a couple hours on line yesterday and that was relaxing except for the 30 minutes it took to renew my engineering license on line. At least it's done. Carey and I did go to the bazaar. I did a very nice thing by bringing my bodyguard a Pepsi, which he appreciated. I also bought something useless from his shop (table) and a dvd from his brother's table. He then had the chutzpah to ask for more money than the standard amount at the end. He is so getting fired.

The job is going all right. I like my boss, the deputy director, so far. He is laid back and doesn't have us do inane things or force his opinions on us in any way. He doesn't waste our time either. As a fourth generation artillery officer I think he knows what is important. Tomorrow I am travelling to the US base for a meeting and hopefully a stop by the exchange (the place we buy military stuff and sundries). I expect to see two of my friends there, Alec and Drew. The AFGHAN 5 went their separate ways after Bagram, so I am always looking for the chance to meet up with the members of Club 3916. I got an email from Mark the NCIS guy and he told me his mom has started reading the blog. So, a big shout out to her! No matter what your son says, we are friends, especially if I get into some trouble. My friend Greg has also checked in from Kansas (I imagine his group can't stop saying you know what). I don't think we'll be bumping into each other too much as he has a serious mission elsewhere in the country. I am thinking about him and wish him the best.

My next goal with the blog is to post some pictures. I tried the other day with the address, but it took a long time to load and then failed in the end. I have some pictures of my friends and the Kuwait area that you should see. Let's hope it works.