Its been a very busy week. I don't know if I've mentioned it before or not, but over here we work a 6 day week, with Friday's as our only day off. Thank goodness the Afghan's take Friday off as a Holy day otherwise, if there wasn't a Holy day, we wouldn't get a day off either. Anyway, back on track.
Saturday, October 3rd, was the day of our last new logistics person. My boss asked me if I'd like to accompany him to the Kabul International Airport to greet our newest team member. I told him "sure". I grabbed my scarf, wrapped it around my head and shoulders (no, there aren't any pictures), climed into our armored vehicle with my boss and our Afghan driver "Hollywood" (his name is very long so they just nicknamed him Hollywood - :o) We arrive at the airport at 3:15, perfect timing the plane should either be on the ground or close to it. A good hour and half goes by, then two when another Afghan man approaches Hollywood to tell him that the plane took off an hour and a half late. Finally, I couldn't stand it any longer and asked my boss if there was a place I could use the restroom. (Only people leaving on flights are allowed to enter the airport, no exceptions everyone else stands out in the parking lot unless your Afghan, then your in another area) So he turns to Hollywood and asks if there's a safe place for me to use the restroom and a place to get a cup of coffee. He replies, "Sure" and begans walking towards a parking lot, we go through a parking lot, across a street and down this 5 ft. wide concrete path, pass a police post and into a large area that contains a huge concrete slab. This slab must of had about 20 Afghan men sitting around on their hinde haunches shooting the bull. Now, I'm wearing my scarf out of respect for the countries customs, but I still stick out like a sore thumb, because while their women wear jeans, they always have on sandals and a long dress over the top of it. I was wearing blue jeans and hiking boots and sunglasses. But my arms and head was covered up. All those men stopped talking and stood up and stared, and they weren't nice about it. If looks could kill, I'd be dead. Like I told my brother, if looks could have killed his baby sister would be dead. It was very eerie. All I could think was "OMG, I've just put us all in danger because I had to go potty." We continued to walk down the walkway to the entrance of the sitting area for the Afghan people and walked to the back of the mall area to the bathrooms. As we stopped in front of the bathrooms, my boss looked at me and said "Here's the bathroom, Goodluck!" As I handed him my scarf, ID holder and bottle of ice tea, with trepedation, I accepted some red toilet paper from the attendant and entered the stall to "Mohammed's Footprints" It was not like all the horror stories I've heard about how dirty they are. It was clean and the sink was clean so I could wash my hands with soap and water. I did however dry them on my jeans. And the most important thing . . . I felt human again because I wasn't thinking I was gonna die from having to potty. I exit the potty, gather my personal belongings from my awesome supervisor and walk over to the coffee shop so he and Hollywood could enjoy a cup of coffee. While sitting there, I look out the door where we came into the mall area to see all those men staring through the door and a couple of them had actually came inside the building. Honestly, you know the news reels you see of the Taliban, well these men looked like the those men on the tv. Not at all like the Afghan men I work with. These men were scary and they did not like having me there at all. While sitting there drinking coffee, the same guy who told Hollywood the plane was going to be late approached and told us it had landed but there was an emergency. We left immediately and went back over to our original parking lot, away from the men with cruel eyes to find out that when the plane landed, it blew a tire and caught fire. One of the guys from another Corp. who was the first off the plane and out to the parking lot said they had to come down the emergency shoot because the front emergency door wouldn't open. About an hour later, our new logistics team member walked toward the parking lot. Needless to say, he looked beyond exhausted. Poor guy, he was actually pretty calm, don't know if I would have been if it had happened to me. We all went back to the compound and had dinner and tried to relax for the rest of the evening.
Sunday was just a nice work day, got lots done.
Monday, was my 51st birthday. It was really hard for me to be away from my family. I didn't want to celebrate my birthday and I just wanted it to be hush hush because honestly, I was homesick and just wanted to cry. My girlfriend Beth called (she works at our sister compound) to wish me a Happy Birthday, that was about 10 a.m. I told her thank you but not to say anything because I didn't want anyone to know. She said, "Oops, to late" I was like who did you tell, Melinda? She was like, well maybe she'll forget to say anything. So I spent the rest of the day avoiding her so hopefully she wouldn't remember. Then at lunch I see Nooria and she mouths across the room, "Happy Birthday", I said "Thank you and smiled" and I'm thinking ok, great now Beth has called Melinda and told her not to say anything. The day passes and at 4 p.m. I'm thinking, cool, the day is almost over and I can hide in my room for the rest of the evening and eat some of the food stash I have on hand. At 4:30, my boss says "hey Jeannie, come with me, let's get Carlos I have a project I need you two to work on". So as we're leaving the building he tells Matt to he might as well come too and we head over to Bldg. 2. Once inside he says, "see that dishwasher that been sitting there for the last two months, it a domestic dishwasher that has never been installed and they made a mistake because we need a commercial dishwasher but in the meantime I need this one installed". So of course, Carlos and I are discussing the fact that a domestic dishwasher doesn't really reach the temperature range of commercial dishwash and our boss interrupts us and says well come in here and look at this so we follow him into the D-Fac (Dining Room), in the mean time all of the attorney's enter the dining hall and all I could think was man they must really be hungry for dinner and I'm looking around and that's when the cook walked in with the most beautiful birthday cake. And it was my favorite flavor, white cake and white icing.
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