June in Afghanistan
It is June. The trend is that day-time high temp in June will be around 110F. July and August will be about 10F additional for each month. In Yuma, AZ, I remember being uncomfortable at 115F. In Kuwait, I was fascinated with how hot it was at 120F. (Ok, short story: As a former helicopter guy, one of the things my body has learned, while walking around a spinning helicopter, is to step sideways if I happen to walk toward the hot part of the engine exhaust plume. I’ve done it so often, I hardly notice I am doing it. In 2004 when I was in Kuwait – on the way to Iraq – I came out of the air-conditioned chow hall and stepped into the heat of outside. It felt so unusually hot that I instinctively stepped sideways, thinking I would avoid some engine exhaust. Of course there were no engines nearby – it’s just that hot out there.) We’ll see how Afghanistan shapes up. It surprises me that the locals wear what looks like such heavy clothing .
This week I did a lot of good traveling and got out to some of the “two-tent” patrol bases. One of the things about Marines is that the less they have, the less they tend to complain about. They seem to just decide to make the best of it. I usually try to take some care packages out to them when I go. This time, we delivered better than any care package I could bring them. Each little patrol base got a generator and an air-conditioner – a big one. They’re going to think they are at the Ritz Carlton. At the end of June, we will try for a morale boosting flap-jack breakfast including at the small bases – flapjacks by backpack (honestly we ride in trucks). Thank you all for your generosity in making this possible.
RP and I put a lot of work into the USO tent last week before we started traveling. This week we finished it off. We built a home-made couch. It is slightly reclined with an ergonomically contoured bench. We found some shipping foam for the bench. Old tent crates were attached together to make shelf towers and an entertainment center. This Friday, movie night will be on our brand new 27 inch TV. Thanks again to those who sent kettle corn for the pop corn cooker. We have a small café set up to one side and a 300-book library and care package distribution to the other side. There is also a United Through Reading recording studio where Marines and Sailor can record themselves reading a book to their children. Air conditioning to follow. We converted the front door-flap into a solid wooden door with hinges.
This brings me to what feels like a moment of heresy. This war has been going on for a decade now. People have been sending care packages out here for ten years – most of it gets eaten. Some of the thicker novels however, are difficult to chew. So after the books are read, they get put in a giant box called a tri-wall. It’s a 50 cubic foot reinforced cardboard box. We now have one and a half tri-walls of books. We can’t leave them behind, so many will have to be destroyed. They were sorted by virtue of being on a best-seller list or written by a prize-winning author. Our 300-book library is all on the “top shelf.”
Air conditioners are slowly making their way from the big bases to the smaller ones and from the large tents/buildings to the smaller ones. In the meantime, I have rummaged through our version of Home Depot, which we call the DRMO pit. DRMO means something like defense reutilization management office. Like many military acronyms, its technical meaning morphs to local circumstance. Our DRMO pit is a semi-organized pile of class-4 (wood/construction) supplies, hescoes, and things that don’t work anymore. I hope this isn’t insider-trading, but if you haven’t got Hescoe in your retirement fund, consider it. When there is a war, hescoe sales must go through the roof. Hescoes are a wire frame cube with felt-lined walls. They unfold like some sort of erector set. They get lined up neatly, then the bulldozer fills them with dirt and you have a wall. They come in many sizes. So, back to the make-shift air conditioner. I found some old rain gutter, a bent hescoe (small size), some plastic tubing from the medical staff, and a plastic trash bag. I put it all together with zip-ties and now I have swamp-cooler. Water from the plastic tube flows along the rain gutter to soak the sheets of felt and a desk fan helps evaporate the water. It looks like it works, but I can’t tell for sure because my thermometer says 86F no matter what the temp is.
Obviously there are things happening all the time out here that I probably shouldn’t write about. Keep praying thanks for body armor. I can write pages to you about what camp life is like. I could even tell you about the events of war. What is harder to explain is what happens inside a person – in the deepest part of their being. My sermons strive to touch on being prepared for our inner-being to change. It’s likely that for most of us, we will simply go home with a significant experience behind us. For some, the experiences jar the soul a bit more. Because of our training, people can do things (and have to in order to survive) quickly enough that their conscience doesn’t get to weigh in fully before the action is complete. I am grateful to Ed Tick for his book, War and the Soul, which gives words to the experiences of so many.
Some of you have heard me say before that seminary and basic training have many similarities. Drill Instructors and CPE supervisors have a certain access to the core of who a person is. It is interesting that in this counterinsurgency fight, the thing that we have to pay attention to most is relationships. Maybe I am just seeing it this way because of my own formative experiences as a minister. At this moment, and from this vantage, it seems to me that history has driven the style and conduct of war into such a small corner that the list of things we call “civilized” and the list of things we call “uncivilized” are hard to distinguish. For example, can building a school be an act of war? Maybe war has always been that way for humanity – a search for our best in the midst of our worst.
Church last week was nice. We had three protestant services reaching 20 people and one Unitarian Universalist service reaching 10 people. The movie last week was The Count of Monte Cristo – a journey through pride, vanity, despair and revenge. This week it was Five Love Languages – relationship skill building. Next week it will be Hollywood’s original action thriller, The Long Kiss Goodnight – a desperate, do-anything search for one woman’s missing identity.
As far as I can tell, the swamp cooler is working. Someone buy carbon credits for me; the fan runs off a diesel generator.
Seanan
Disclaimer: All entries to CLF/Quest Military Ministries page reflect the personal views of the contributor. The views expressed here are in no way to be construed as an individual or individuals speaking in their official capacities for the agencies, departments, or service branches they serve in. This is not an official publication of the Department of Defense, the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Air Force, any government agency, or any other organization.
- Welcome Home, Seanan - November 6, 2012
- Moving Toward Home - October 10, 2012
- That Precarious Gait - September 11, 2012
