Well, here I am. Just about all moved in to my new little home here in Afghanistan. The housing for us really isn’t too bad. We live in what are known as “B Huts”. My room is about 10x10 with a door and a window but the window stays shut due to all the dust in the air. The hut is made entirely of plywood and 2x4’s and I have one outlet to run everything from, so we are pretty much living in a matchbox. Eight of us live in a hut, four to a side with a hallway that runs down the middle. As of now I really like it. It’s nice to have my own space to get away from everyone at the end of the day. There is a bunk bed that the pervious tenant built and under it is a desk that I am typing from right now. I strung up some Christmas lights for some lighting since there is no light and I have a small fan to move some air. An ugly 4x8 piece of carpet and a broken office chair and some shelves and that’s pretty much it. Tomorrow I got big plans of hanging my OU flag on my ceiling. That should really take this dump to the next level of classiness. Slowly though it is starting to feel like a home.
There are talks of moving us over to some new CHU’s similar to the one I lived in Iraq, but typical contractor BS has slowed that all down to a halt. They placed all our CHU’s in nice rows and got them all set up but there was no hardened roof to protect from rocket attacks so they placed sandbags on top with no added supports. Well, that cracked the roofs and let water in. Then they noticed that the shitty concrete work that they over paid a bunch of stupid locals to do was cracking from the weight. Not too long after that they realized that the other group of local overpaid jackasses didn’t clean up all the water in all the CHU’s like they were hired for. And well, when they opened up some of the rooms they were covered in mold. Way to go guys. Awesome. Glad my tax dollars are paying for this.
So once they clean the mold out, fix the slab and install a roof structure we will get to move in. I am not holding my breath on ever moving in there. I don’t really want to anyways, I will have a roommate over there and I don’t want that. I was able to find a little TV for my room so I can watch AFN (American Forces Network) programming and all their sweet commercials. Those that have been stationed overseas will understand what I mean about that. We also have Wi-Fi in our huts now. It’s not the fastest ever. Probably won’t ever be able to FaceTime on it or video Skype but I can chat and email and obviously, blog.
As far as surroundings, we are tucked down in a bowl in the mountains. The view would be quite nice I would imagine but the smog and dust in the air from the relentless air traffic reduces the visibility a bit. There are F-16 and F-15 jets stationed here and they fly out regularly. When they do you can miss it. Its shakes the little hut so bad and if you are outside it’s deafening. We live no more than a few hundred yards from the runway so it’s pretty noisy here. But that’s the sounds of freedom so I am not complaining.
As we get more settled here I will fill you in on more of the living conditions. So far I am very pleased with them. Much better than you would expect for a war zone.
“Freedom hangs like Heaven over everyone…” - Iron & Wine
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