Hi Mom!
I am doing well. As always, the adjustment has been hard, but I am getting there. The elevation here is greater than one mile high so the air is void of O2 but also the air is very polluted too! Worse than Los Angeles. Everyone has an adjustment period where working out even moderately is very difficult and you even wake up several times throughout the night gasping for air. Then there is the Afghan crud. Everyone gets it and I had it a couple of weeks ago. Felt lousy, sluggish, feverish and nausiated for a few days. My boss sent me to my room to sleep it off and so I took advantage of to get plenty of rest while I could because that won’t happen too often.
I had my first visit. Vice Admiral Thompson and 5 other Admirals with the Defense Logistics Agency came for a visit. Things went smoothly enough, but I am glad to get it over with. The Vice Admiral must have been pleased because he coined me! Every General and Admiral has his own commemorative coin, and it is traditional for him or her to award people’s good performance with a coin in the handshake. When I sent the Admiral and his party off into their C-130, he gave me his coin in a handshake!
The coins are pretty cool. It gives me something to collect and remember my time here by, but it is hard work to plan and coordinate these visits. The General officers are not so bad, but it is all of the “strap-hangers” or the other people that come along for the ride. Sometimes they want to do their own thing, and I have to deal with these requests very politically because my job is to support the principal’s itinerary, and not all of his other strap-hangers.
I have lost about 15lbs since I arrived here. The main reason is that the food is not so good. I reside on a NATO base–not an American base. The food has a european/mediterranean slant to it, but they don’t even do it very well. The meat is always dry and stringy. They cook a lot of pork, lamb, chicken, and fish. They sometimes do steak, and turkey. There are always fresh vegetables, and salad. There is always pasta and rice/veggie mix too. I don’t do the pasta, but I do the rice. They do potatoes whole and peeled and mashed, but I avoid the potatoes too. My typical lunch and dinner consists of meat, rice/veggie mix, steamed veggies, and salad with oil and vinegar and black pepper. Olive oil and white distilled vinegar is all they have in the way of salad dressing. I have grown used to this. I eat more salad and veggies here than ever before in my life! The food is healthy, that is for sure. But it also is not too good-tasting so I eat a lot less! When I got sick, I hardly ate anything for a week! The food didn’t appeal to me, and my stomach felt so bad that I couldn’t take much anyway.
Breakfast is the same every day. Eggs, cooked in a variety of ways depending on the day of the week and bacon. The bacon is not strips like you and I are used to. It is more like pan-fried shaved ham. It is thick and dry and stringy. but the flavor is good and it seems to be less fat than American bacon strips. Also available for breakfast are: stewed tomatoes, baked beans, shriveled nasty hot-dog links, a big pot of pre-made oatmeal, and a variety of cereals. Sometimes there is french toast or pancakes, but I do not care for either of these. Sometimes they have cheap nasty maple syrup, and you will never find any powdered sugar. There are a variety of breads for toasting, too. There is a “sandwich” line where you can build your own, but there are few meat–salami is always one of them, and then usually roast beef. There is only one type of cheese, though, and I do NOT care for swiss!
There is plenty of fattening, unhealthy, delicious American food at the other US camps in Kabul. My team of colleagues and I get over to these other places occasionally and I consume a whole LOT more calories during these meals. Two grilled cheese sandwiches, fried chicken and broccoli smothered with cheddar cheese sauce! Mmmmm! A loaded baked potato and fire-grilled steak! A double cheeseburger with french fries and baked beans! A hotdog covered with chili and cheese! I eat my way to an upset tummy fast at these American dining facilities. The diet thatat my NATO compound keeps seems much easier on the digestion. American food is my fast ticket to gas city!
The tap water is for hygeine purposes only–it is not potable. We drink bottled water only and we even have to brush our teeth with bottled water. Neglecting to do this can result in sickness and unintentional rapid weight-loss! Local dairy is to be avoided also! All drinks provided in the dining facilities are bottled! Soda, juice boxes, and ultra-high pasteurized milk that just doesn’t taste the same as fresh Amerian homogenized/pasteurized skim milk! I miss my skim milk! Thought of getting a pitcher and my food-storage powdered milk from home. That would taste better than the high-shelf-life ultra-pasteurized stuff, and at least I will be able to get my calcium in me.
The water I shower in is usually cold. The hot water gets used up fast with 40-60 girls to one hot water tank! I take luke-warm to cold showers most mornings. I have learned out of necessity to take a combat shower! Turn water on, get wet for 10 seconds, shut water off. Soap up, shave, and lather the shampoo. Turn water on for 20 seconds and rinse off! 30 seconds total of running water and I’m nice and clean! On the rare ocasion that I do get some warm water, I linger in there a little bit longer, but the showers are also very disgustingly filthy, so I never stay too long. I miss long hot showers and seamy hot baths! I suspect that I will want to take many of these when I get home.
There is a well-equipped gym, but all the measurements are in Kilos–not lbs!! This made for an interesting first workout! And when I stepped on the scale for the first time, I thought I was unhealthily light weighing in at 62 for the first time when I got here! I weight 59 kg now=130lbs. I am still dropping weight, though. The weight machines are all man-size also, too big for me to use a lot of it, so I mostly do free-weights. There are plenty of cardio machines and a variety of cardio classes and sports offered too. I plan to play some soccer as soon as David mails me my indoor soccer shoes. There is a large outdoor field too, but it doubles as a helopad and therefore has limited availability for sports events. The propellers of a blackhawk would do quite a number on a soccer-ball I’d imagine!
I also get over to the U.S. Embassy as often as I can to swim. They have a 23-yard lap pool. Pam sent me all of my swim toys and laminated swim workouts so I can have some fun and get a good workout at the same time. It is still hard for me, though, due to the poor quality of air. I just can’t perform the way that I do back home. I went to spin class at 0530 this morning too, and the oxygen thing kicked my butt. I will get used to it, though, I guess.
We sometimes walk in a group between the HQ ISAF compound and Camp Eggers. It is in the green zone, but still we walk with loaded pistols. As I mentioned before, the children mob you and try to get you to buy bracelets and scarves. I am not intgerested in buying from them, but I do want to help. I talk with them and I am learning their names. One boy named Rhosa pleaded with me to buy from him so that he can get new shoes. His shoes were falling apart! I promised Rhosa that I would provide him some new size-3 shoes. All the kids’ shoes/sandals are pretty shoddy. Their toes hang out and their feet are filthy. I would like to provide ALL the children with new shoes and socks before the winter. I think my La Jolla/PB ward would jump at the chance to help in that effort. Nothing too valuable though, because they will just end up selling them. I want to see these kids wearing the shoes I procure for them.
The children’s hands are filthy too. My friend Pete once pulled out a handwipe and cleaned a girl’s hands. She admired her clean hands like she has never seen them so clean in her life! I can tell that they do not shower often if ever, and they do not use deoderant either. The kids are dirty and they stink!
One widow in blue burka with a small boy beggs outside the gate. “Please, my baby sick. Need money for docotor. My baby sick.” Her toddler does not look fatally sick to me, but his belly is round and protruding like he might be undernourished. His cheeks are dry and chapped. Looks like he has outgrown his clothes, and he could use some shoes like the other kids. He is an adorably cute kid, though. They all are very beautiful children with strikingly gorgeous eyes. It is hard to tell them no.
If the children are any gauge of the effectiveness of our efforts here, then I would say we still have a long way to go as for “winning the hearts and minds”, or as I prefer to put it “earning their trust and confidence”. There is a school between the camps and while walking by the other day, a child shouted, “F@*& you!” at us several times as we passed. Another boy on the streets called my friend a “bad man”. A US Air Force Captain offered two boys a chocolate candy bar that he split into two for them. One boy ate and enjoyed but the other refused and swatted the candybar away. He did not trust us Americans. This distrust no doubt is transferred down from his elders. We have a long way to go here even in the capital city.
Was at the U.S. Embassy pool one night when I heard several explosions. My swim companion decided it was time to get back to our respective camps once he noticed that the security guards on the grounds had doubled. Sure enough once we got to our camps, the take cover sirens sounded. There was a rocket attack at the Kabul air base. The next morning there was a suicide bomber attack in a Kabul hospital dining facility that killed 6 and wounded twenty.
Such a world that the people of Afghanistan live in! Can you imagine raising your family here? Yet the people are so resilliant to suffer decades of war and unrest that has kept them living in such poor and destitute conditions. Such a resilliant people to have to fight for survival and to bounce back after so much loss. We must be successful in our mission here. We must aid these hard-working people to establish a legitimate central governement and security force of their own. And that is what just we are doing here.
We serve the Lord’s purpose here too, I believe. I believe the Lord uses the joint coalition forces here to help establish the conditions of freedom and liberty which will someday allow for the freedom of religion in Afghanistan. Can you imagine an Afghanistan where Christian Churches, Jewish Temples, LDS Temples and Islamic Mosques can coexist? When this is at last realized, perhaps we will see a more peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan. At any rate, I do know that the Lord loves the people of Afghanistan as he loves all of His children. He seeks to bless them and if my service in anyway helps this cause, then I feel blessed and a pleasure to serve.
Your Loving Daughter,
Heather