Tuesday evening, 13 July 2010 - My day tracking calendar is packed away, so I've lost track of the correct day. Sorry. The last few days have been a bit of a whirlwind. Here's the summary. I'll be candid in the following, but in the interest of decency I'll have to issue my second
TMI alert.
We had a going away dessert at the local Thai restaurant on KIA Saturday night. All I had was the "chocolate monkey." By about 10pm that night, my stomach was churning and doing cartwheels. Turns out at least one other of our dinner party (and likely a few more) had similar symptoms, but it hit me the hardest for some reason. After several trips to the facilities that evening, I essentially spent all day Sunday in a diarrhea induced coma. Cold sweats, stomach in knots, and no ability to get more than five meters from a toilet. Needless to say, I didn't work that day. Especially considering that the only facilities on NMAA are
eastern style toilets. They are not nearly as user friendly for us westerners as the sit down type.
I was able to hold it together long enough on Monday to go to work at NMAA. I finished up all the loose ends I could, had my last lunch with MGen Sharif, gave a bunch of going gifts, and attended a nice going away get together with COL Rahman and the CompSci faculty. My assigned translator (Mansoor) gave me a really nice "Karzai" robe, and the CompSci faculty gave me an embroidered traditional Afghan outfit. I'll pose for pictures when I get home and post them. It will likely be in my last post.
It is bitter sweet leaving. The people in Afghanistan are all great, but the history of war and devastation combined with the tribal traditions of division and nepotism are hard to accept. There is so much to do and so many ways we can help. Most of them are empowering, teaching, and mentoring the Afghans. It isn't really about money, and in a lot of cases, too much foreign aid hurts more than helps. Some level of outside funding is essential, but we are caught in the typical US spiral of excess by opening the checkbook. It's costing the US taxpayers untold amounts, and in a lot of cases doing more harm than good. I hope wiser minds prevail and we balance our fiscal commitments with well thought out personnel assistance. We're out of balance right now, and have been for several years.
Back to my enduro. I'd been checking the outgoing flights from Kabul to Manas for the last few days. For some strange reason, I'm manifested on a flight from Manas on the 16th of July, but I can't get a scheduled flight there. I actually understand why, but it is too much detail to delve into here. To make a long story somewhat shorter, I had to travel space available from Kabul to Manas and make it by the 15th in order to be in place for my flight home on the 16th. There were three flights to Manas from Kabul on Sunday, but I was fighting through my previously described ailments and didn't have everything wrapped up satisfactorily to leave. It turns out that two of those flights were canceled anyway. The schedule did have two flights leaving on Monday, so I targeted the one leaving at 2345.
I arrived at the Kabul passenger terminal about 2030 only to find out the flight had slipped a few hours, so I napped a bit outside the terminal, stomach still in knots and making frequent trips to the nearby facilities. My series of going away "chai's" didn't help my stomach any. They make all the chai here with the local water, and I'm sure they don't boil it long enough, if at all. They ended up getting us on the C-130 headed to Manas about midnight. I flew out with elements of an Army Brigade from Ft. Lewis Washington that did their deployment outside Kandahar. They were headed home with fewer soldiers than they deployed with. I had a grim discussion with a SFC from the unit.
We sat on the tarmac for about an hour and a half, and then did a lights out take off. Pretty cool actually, but when you're sitting in troop seats with full body armor and the load masters have to look out the back of the aircraft with night vision glasses on for the first 15 minutes of the flight, it gets your attention a little. No incidents as expected. The ride was a bit tough, owing to my stomach condition and the fact that I ended up straddling an aluminum support rod. If you've ever flown in troop seats, you'll know what I mean. If you haven't, count yourself lucky.
Two and a have hours of clenching later, we landed in Manas around 0530 local. After all the in processing, I grabbed what I could eat for breakfast, and found a room to crash in for a few hours. I ended up with my first, and probably only good deal of the trip. Since I'm an O-5, I qualified for a hard sided room in transient billeting. It beats the rows of bunk beds in the mass tents most folks get when they're flowing through Manas. After a few hours sleep I had to report and turn in my chem gear and body armor at 1100. Breakfast didn't sit well by that time, so I ended up finally heading over to see a doc about my food poisoning. It finally set in to me that this bout wasn't just going to pass.
I had to walk about a half mile from the supply warehouse to the clinic, and I think I hit four port-a-johns along the way. This is really brutal stuff. A hearty thanks to the people who put the packets of Kleenexes and handi-wipes in the care packages. If you've seen the movie "I hope the serve beer in hell", my experiences at this point were eerily similar. After filling out my symptoms on a form, the doc came to find me, and I of course had to make another trip to the loo. All the medical personnel got a real kick out of that. He gave me some industrial strength intestinal antibiotics. I'm a few pills in and they seem to be helping. I can't eat much yet, and still have pretty nice stomach cramps, but at least I can hold my own.
So, I'm hanging out in Manas now, awaiting my return flight. I report with my bags about 0100 on Friday morning with an in processing brief Thursday at 1000. It should be down hill from here. The meds are kicking in, the food looks and smells good (I haven't tried much yet), and internet access is everywhere, fast, and free. The one up side, if there is one, is that I have free laundry facilities in the room right next to my billeting room. I have to admit, I have some skivvies to launder. I'd hate to take that mess home to Gina...