Another Saturday night.....

I was forced to get a cell phone.

My boss told me it was that or I could never leave the office again. By office he meant tent. My "office" is shared by 6 other people, all of us shouting over the roar of the nearby generators/air handler combination units situated all of five feet from my head. And, remember, since this is a tent we are talking about, the walls do very little to reduce the deafening cacaphony of generators, road rollers, fuel trucks, helicoptors, and the litany of other rediculously huge equipment that, by the sound of things, threatens to run directly into our tent and out the other side, paying no heed to its inhabitants.

My phone is made by Nokia, so that might seem normal enough, but that is where the familiarity ends. Abruptly. First, the ring-tones are great: they are all the same as the American ring-tones, except they are clearly the lute and sitar versions of the popular tunes we all love Verizon for providing us. Then, there is the Arabic keypad. Text messaging became a real pain. Luckily, it uses the english numbering system. When I took it out of the box after purchase, it sounded like it had some loose parts inside, but sure enough, it works. One of my favorite features is that it has been wishing me a happy Ramadan for the past week.

Apparently, I can call the US with my God-fearing phone. I havnt tried it yet though, since I'm told they use a strange algorithem to charge you which has to do with the exchange rate between the US dollar and the afghani, the tax the Taliban places on the cell tower usage in Iran, and the severity of the current dust-storm in South Eastern Afghanistan. All of it comes out to basically screw you out of about $.75 per minute, so you can imagine I have little interest in using it.

Assuming it isnt prayer-time, the phone works really well. For the other 37 minutes of the day, I get crackly reception and bits and pieces of information from my contacts. The Iranians, who can hear each of us clearly, are well aware of all troop movements in Afghanistan, wheras I cannot get an answer to the question: "How many loaves of flatbread are being shipped from Kandahar!?!" I never found out.

Most times, I get to listen to a message spoken in Dari, or Pashtu...I certainly can't tell. I would love to understand the message, which very well could be a pre-programmed message: "If you are ever cought, my husband will cut your head off with a rusty sawblade!" I'm sure the voice is telling me something about the benefits of soap, or brushing one's teeth...or it could be telling me about a goat for sale, or where to find the one car that works, I'm not sure how I imagined it into some sort of public service announcement, but without television, maybe this is the only way to pass information around the country. Given my luck with it, probably not.

But there is this radio station that plays all day long broadcast from our little outpost. It's an effort to make good with the locals by giving them some bumpin' tunes to rock out with. Whenever I get the truck and do my 100kph baja race practicing across the expansive runway expansion project area, I love to listen to the wailing of a guy and his all lute band. I mean, these guys are seriously blasting this music, it is so intense. You can really feel the emotion in it, and the boings and bongs of the drums and the wavery guitar notes are creepily hypnotic. Then you roll right into the thunderous beat of what has got to be the modern Afghani pop music. Female singers! What could she possibly be saying??? "I see that you have lots of cows!!!, my father will be pleased with this arangement!!! I am lucky to have such a handsome cousin!!!!!"

But seriously, one of my favorite translators and I spent a couple days together on a project, so he told me all about his life. He was going to college in Pakistan to become a nurse, but as it turned out, the program was not great, and his love for the English language (which they all learn in Pakistan schools, without fail apparently), he realized that he could surpass the average income of his village's working male population by about 7 times by translating. He told me that his haircut and sunglasses would likely get him killed. He cannot go anywhere without fear that he was going to be killed for his association with the US. For example, one day a child with badly beaten legs showed up at the gate carried by his father. The father had worked one day shoveling dirt for the American army, thus his 10 year old was crippled. Way to go Taliban!

But my translator friend told me that his new dream was to go to the US and go to school. LT (06') tried to teach him some American phrases and pick-up lines. I told him never to say any of that- he might get in trouble. So then I learned that he was looking for a new life because his first attempt at gaining a wife had not worked out. The girl he was interested in was a good catch, but she just wasnt interested in him. I couldnt see why not, you've got to understand, dude looks like he belongs in California surfing the beaches.....but I guess his cousin just wasnt interested. So yeah, it's for real. I told him that in America, there were way more girls to choose from, so we didnt have to depend on our cousins in order to continue the species. He seemed to think this was a good thing.

So we have these 2010 model Toyota Hilux trucks. The Hilux is essentially the tacoma, but as you can imagine, they look way different. The old Hilux is very utilitarian. It is the quintisential pick-up truck. It usually comes with a 4 cylinder diesel engine, and it has been asked a thousand times a thousand why toyota doesnt put a 4 cyl diesel in the US. Any idea how many would sell??? Millions. Some reasonable number. More than the gas versions, because of the fuel economy, and the power. Face it America, the diesel engine is 33% more efficient than the gasoline internal combustion engine. Simple physics- complete burn! less heat waste!! But yes, it does burn "oil" thus the sooty exhaust. Clean it up toyota, and you've got a winning product. Volkswagen did it, why can't you??? Long live the Jetta, which by the way, I've convinced my boss he is going to buy one when he gets home. He was looking for a new car, was thinking about the Jetta, and then I gave him all the psycological benefits of the car- "how long has it been since I filled up?" you just stop caring about where you've been, where you are going... you don't mind driving people places, road trips become nothing to financially plan. His fear was a lack of stations that offer the fuel. Not an issue, I told him, as we played a game of HORSE in Kandahar. Boss played on the JV team at West Point, so he's not bad. We were both a little rusty, and a little under the weather due to the air quality there (40% fecal matter, I'm told. Is that possible?? wouldnt that mean you were literaly swimming in it?). Well, you can smell it all right, and we both got sick. Sick sick. Boss and I went to get some pills. He took his and downed two. I asked the doc a bunch of questions. "why are you asking all those question? These guys are professionals that's what they get paid to do, give you medicine for your issue." so I told him how my mom always told me, thanks to her mom, that you had a right as the patient to ask what the medicine was for, and to know what your treatment was going to be. Later that night, boss broke out in a huge rash and I laughed and laughed at his rash, all over him! See!, I told him, who was right?! Glorious triumph.

Later, as we lay groaning in a sleep tent large enough to hold 400, we huddled around his phone listening for details of the big convoy that had such important items as a 5 meter paver, and a rough terain container handler on it. The paver was a huge success. Lets talk about the paver.

The paver has a history. Months ago, a paver was flown into Bagram. The paver was put on a convoy, and that convoy was attacked. The paver was severely damaged. Back it went to Bagram. About a million dollars later, the paver was on its way again. This time, it got attacked again the truck drivers killed, and in a weird turn of events, the paver was stolen and driven several miles into the desert by the Taliban before it got stuck in the sand. Somehow, they put a call through to the paver owners and said that they would return it if the owners (an American company) paid a ransom. Ransom paid, the owners went out to get the paver, and found it completely destroyed.

Fast forward: we get the task of bringing a new paver home. You can imagine the elation of the company when we got it there safely. The RTCH was a different story: it was stuck on the trailer and wouldnt turn on. "Get that F-ing RTCH off that trailer!!" boss shouted when our guys told him they had given up. Off it came. Victory.