Welcome to my world

So I arrive at my camp in Kabul and I’m already expected.  Somehow someone from the office I’m supposed to be working in sees me as I get out of the armored suburban transport, recognizes my name tag and says, “Hey we’re expecting you.  Come with me!”  I can only think, “This is never good…"
 

I drop my bags and follow him into an office on the third floor of a building that houses the joint command staff for U.S. Forces Afghanistan.  I’m greeted by the Marine who made contact with me via email a couple days ago and welcomes me to the group. After introductions of some people and a reunion with a few others from my home unit who had arrived a few weeks before me, I‘m taken on a tour of the compound.

I’ve been assigned to live and work at the New Kabul Compound (NKC).  Apparently this place is so new, it doesn’t have a name yet?  Maybe our military planners have a creative writers’ block?  Or maybe they’re just getting lazy?  Who knows…

I’m on a one-tenth of a square mile encampment with high ballistic impact security walls.  There are several interconnected buildings three stories tall.  Navigating between the continuous walkways, tunnels, breezeways and courtyards that all look alike I feel as if I deserve some cheese when I find my destination.

Remember how I previously described the giant DFACs and fully stocked exchanges?  Well they’re not located here.  Let me rephrase that.  The DFAC and exchange are sufficient size to provide me what I need to survive over the next year.  Honestly, I’m being a little critical.  The DFAC is still better quality that what we get in the U.S., but the exchange is stocked similarly to a truck stop.

There’s a decent gym here and a tiny USO that offers free low bandwidth Internet.  Supposedly there’s even a bazaar here on Sunday that sells local phone and private Internet service in addition to the usual trinkets and assorted foreign junk.  We also have a barbershop run by women from Kyrgyzstan who barely speak English and a small day spa I might frequent when I’m so bored that a pedicure seems like a break from the monotony.

My quarters I’m assigned to are a basement single person room about the size of a child’s bedroom.  Too bad they have three of us crammed in here with bunk beds and wall lockers.  We’re literally living on top of each other.  And this goes for the lower enlisted ranks all the way through officers up to O5.  I’m not quite sure I understand how a compound planned and built from the ground up was at 2-3 times its capacity from the day it opened.

So I live in a basement room with no windows and work in a building with no windows.  When I do venture outside, all I see are the compound walls.  No matter, since while I was in-processing, the medic at the clinic advised me not to run the perimeter of the compound (tiny as it is) because the air quality is so bad.

That’s the world I’ll live in for the next year.  But we make our own reality around us so I’m hopeful that I can mold my job into something more exciting than what it seems right now.

More to follow.