So there is this guy ...

... I really want to tell you all about, but it would be wrong of me to tell you all about him on my blog. Suffice to say, he is a toolbox and absolutely LOATHES me.

You know those people that ALWAYS have a better story? The kind that has done absolutely EVERYTHING? The kind that can't stand it when someone is better qualified to do their job than they are? The really insecure, has to prove everything kind of guy? The kind of guy who almost craps himself every time he hears a boom, while saying everyone else is scared? The kind of guy that likes to say "I'm not a titles kind of person", immediately either following or preceding him throwing his title in your face? The kind of guy that thinks everyone LOVES him, when in reality they want him to fall down and break his ankle so he can go home and they don't have to deal with him anymore? The kind of guy that makes excuses at every turn about why things are happening, like that he was never supposed to stay at one place, because he was just sent out to open the place, and that's why he is leaving?

Yeah, I know that kind of guy too. :) Remind me at the end of my contract, and I'll tell you all about it.

Howz-e Madad: the Life and Times

When I got to Kandahar, I was told I was going to Tarin Kowt (TK), a multi-national airbase in the northern part of southern Afghanistan. Then I was told I wasn't going to TK, because there was no bed space. Then I was told I was going to Wilson, a small-ish base just outside of Kandahar. Then Howz-e Madad (HEM), who wasn't scheduled for a fire department just yet, had a fire. So Mike (the A/C I went through Ft. Worth with) was told he was going to HEM. He ok, but I want to take Jason and Michelle with me. We'd been together for almost 2 weeks, so it was cool with us. The big Chief said "ok", and so off we went.

The trip getting to HEM was fairly entertaining, if you like sitting around for hours on end. We were told to be at the flightline at one time ... it was IMPERATIVE that we were there on time ... and didn't actually leave until 8 hours later. Jason, Mike, and I all loaded into one helicopter, with a metric crap ton of stuff, (with some other people) and the 4th guy going with us, Pablo (who is a whole story unto himself) got in another one. They told us we were going to a base before ours, so some of us knew there would be two stops. Well, the helo I wasn't on landed at the first stop, while we circled overhead. We got to HEM, landed, unassed ourselves and our metric crap ton of stuff, only to disocver that we had no Pablo. Yeah, he got off on the wrong base. This both amused and annoyed us, and that it amused us is really saying something, because by the time this was all discovered, it was 3am.

So they found us a tent for the night, then moved us to another one the next day, we got our bearings and started life at our new home. (Pablo missed the first ride out of the other place and eventually arrived the next day ... about 30 hours after Jason, Mike, and I.)

This is the fire station:

That's Jason and Mike standing in front of it. The big white boxes on the side are fire extinguishers and/or bottled water.

One of my favorite parts about HEM is our blimp. We have a blimp that hangs out with a camera that looks at the surrounding countryside. Lots of bases have them, but ours is special ... mostly because it is ours. Basically, it looks for bad guys. I'm sure you understand why I like the blimp! The blimp very rarely comes down to visit the earth, but it did today and I got a couple of pictures!

And there were pictures here, until I was told I was wrong for having them here ... so there are no more blimp pictures. But it is an epically awesome blimp. You'll just have to trust me on this.

We also have wonderful places called "bunkers"! So far, knock on wood, we have not had to use them. Fingers crossed it stays that way for a long, long time. Like until next November. :)

Hurrah for bunkers!

So, food. The food isn't bad. It's not exceptional, but I am in the middle of a war zone, so I am not expecting great things. They feed us and it is rarely ever inedible. They often have delightful treats, like kiwi fruit and mango, and rarely can Buffalo Bob's Everything Sauce not make something edible. There was some stuffing last week that even Buffalo Bob couldn't save. Right now, my biggest concern is that I have to keep deciding between strawbery or banana milk for my tea in the morning, because we haven't had white milk in a while. If you work on it, you can eat relatively healthy ... but the goal here isn't necessarily to enjoy low-calorie, low-fat foods. The boys and girls in uniform need their calories. THe worst day is Sunday, because brunch doesn't start until 10, and that's 3 horus after we normally eat breakfast. And sleeping in is very much not an option around here.

So this is my typical day:

0630 - wake-up

0700 - pick boys up for breakfast (if they aren't ready, I harvest my crops on FarmVille)

0800 - finish previous days sitrep, send it to the chief for approval, then forward on

0815 - 1130 - find stuff to fill time

1130 - lunch

1230 - 1800-ish - find stuff to fill time

1800-ish - dinner

After dinner - screw off on the computer and go to bed

Shampoo, rinse, repeat. But only every other day. :)

The Ft. Worth Adventure …

Ft. Worth

So, after leaving Tallahassee at ass o'clock in the morning, I slept most of the way to Atlanta (shock), changed gates, got on a new plane and slept most of the way to Dallas/Ft. Worth. Finding the Marriott shuttle at DFW was entertaining, as it was like 47,000 terminals over and 9 floors down. DFW is pretty high on my list of least favorite airports, though they do have a Bennigan's, which keeps it from being my least favorite. (My least favorite airport is probably Immokalee … mostly because I had to stop there once to throw up as I was flying around Florida pretty hungover, but that's a whole other story. Well, not really ... that's pretty much the whole story … I was on a cross-country flight, I was hungover, I needed to throw-up, Immokalee was close, so I landed, got out of the plane, yakked, got back in the plane, took off, and continued the flight. Good times.)

The Ft. Worth Marriott Hotel and Golf Club is really quite nice. It is across the road from the Texas Motor Speedway, which was hosting a NASCAR race the day I arrived, so traffic was interesting, and hotel guests were even more interesting. It's a pretty cool operation DynCorp has going on there … they rent/lease a good number of the meeting/conference rooms, and a large portion of several floors of the hotel for offices. I imagine it is a mutually beneficial arrangement for DynCorp and Marriott. Other than the race track, there isn't much in the area to warrant a decent hotel. Anywho, we all got our own rooms, didn't have to pay for internet or food, and so the adventure began.

In my deployment class, we had an assistant fire chief, a firefighter, a fire department admin assistant, and me, the dispatcher … or, if we want to use job titles: the FACC Specialist. (FACC is fire alarm communications center … which is a little funny, because my title would lead one to believe there are reporting smoke/fire detection systems in this country. There are not.) Naturally the four of us hung out all week, as fire folk tend to flock together. The A/C (Mike) is from Oklahoma and is in the Air National Guard. He's pretty damn knowledgeable and fun, so bonus. The Firefighter (Jason) is a former Marine from California, who cracks me up endlessly, and the admin assistant (Tonja) is from Indiana and is a math teacher, but her brother works at one of the bases over here, so he talked her into coming to visit for a year. Interestingly enough, Mike, Jason, and I are still together at one base, while Tonja is hanging out with her brother.

The whole DIDC (DynCorp International Deployment Center) experience was interesting. I learned a lot about how things operate where civilians are concerned in a war zone. I learned that the DoD apparently doesn't follow national trends in CPR and first aid, as we were told that CPR was 15 compressions and 2 breaths (and it was … pre-2005). We got a crash course in how to apply a tourniquet, which was entertaining to those of us that have been in the EMS world for a while. We also learned that we don't rinse/clean out wounds before we bandage them, regardless of whether or not we have water and/or saline readily available. Also despite the fact that this place is just TEEMING with bacteria. Let's keep it in the wound, just in case. Both Mike and I gave suggestions on how to improve things for that class. Pretty sure nothing will change, but they can't make me forget my EMT training, so I'll just stick with that.

The most awesome part of the whole experience was getting 5 shots … well, no. The most awesome part of the experience was getting to hang out with Kevin, Lindsay, and Travis, in various combinations. The second most awesome part was getting 5 shots. They made me get a flu shot. I didn't want one. Apparently there is no opt-out option. I was (and still am) a bit annoyed about that. I also had to get a 3^rd Hepatitis A shot. Yeah, I know there are only 2 in that series, but I didn't have a copy of the record that showed I had already had both … I showed I had one, so they decided to give me another one, just so they could document it and show I had 2. Can't remember what the others were: polio, DPT, and something else, I think. Anyway, both of my arms hurt like hell for a couple of days. That was grand.

I definitely enjoyed hanging out with Kevin and Travis and then Kevin and Lindsay. It was nice to see such cool people after not seeing them for a while. In fact, I hadn't seen any of them since Kevin and Lindsay's wedding in May. Just don't let Travis navigate. 'Nuff said. J

We arrived on a Sunday, and got our "deployment" orders on Wednesday evening. Among the things they gave us, including flight info, etc, was a giant vat of doxycycline. 500 pills per person. What's that for, you ask? Malaria. We are supposed to take one a day, starting the day we leave DFW until 30 days after we return to the States at the end of our contract. That's 13 months. The nice folks at the FDA tell you not to take it longer than 4 months at a time. There was no good explanation for taking it 3 times the recommended maximum, so a number of us have chosen to not take our pills. I figure they'll be great for sinus infections. And if mosquitoes get bad (I haven't seen any at all yet), I may take it for a couple of months. But for now, no mosquitoes = no doxycycline intake. But I have them. Just in case!

Another entertaining part of our time in Ft. Worth was mine and Jason's field trip to do laundry. I can't remember the name of the little "town" where the laundry place was, but it was Historical. We threw our laundry in the washers, and took off to explore. Found a building that was built in the 18-somethings and was a saloon, a nice little bookshop that made yummy pumpkin spice lattes, and other assorted things. Then we went back, switched machines (washer to dryer) and walked the other way through Historic Downtown Whatever-it-was-called.

And all that pretty much took us up to the flight to Dubai, which I wrote about already. I know I said I was going to do more than one today, but I misjudged my ability to be annoyed and write at the same time. More about the annoyance part later. Suffice to say, certain companies do not understand how fire departments work.

Oh, and the cell phone number I gave out last time … doesn't work here. Allegedly we have a tower for that service, but it isn't turned on. And I have no way to get the other company's SIM chip where I am. SO unless Roshan turns on their tower, disregard the cell phone thing. Good times.

Field trip to Afghanistan

I was going to do a big ol' blog on the DynCorp in-processing ordeal, but I'll save that for later. For now, here's a brief synopsis of my field trip from Ft. Worth to Kandahar!

I left Tallahassee on Sunday, 11/7 at ass o'clock in the morning (lots of love to Tess and Rusty for coming to see me off ... I put on the necklace Tess gave me and it's still on ... may never come off). Quick flight to Atlanta, slightly longer flight to Dallas. Picked up my bags and caught the shuttle to the Marriott Hotel and Golf Club across from the Texas Motor Speedway. I got to hang out with Kevin and Lindsay a little bit, so that was awesome.

We found out Wednesday evening we were flying out Thursday for Dubai. Checked out of the hotel at 1pm Thursday the 11th, went to the airport, and got everything checked in and through security with only 3 hours to spare before our flight. So, naturally, we rode the train around the airport! It was a couple hour flight from Dallas to Dulles, where we all boarded a nice comfy Boeing 777 for a 13 hour flight to Dubai. Of course, the 13 hour flight was made more fabulous by the hour and half we sat on the plane while they were trying to run a software update on the navigation system. It's not like we really need it. Just head east for a long time ...

The flight to Dubai was surprisingly nice. They were showing about 6 movies I wanted to see, but I saw exactly none of them, as I was either sleeping or reading the Hunger Games series. Awesome trilogy that Rusty recommended to me. Because of the 90 minute delay leaving, we were 90 minutes late arriving, and so I got to see pretty much nothing of Dubai, except the airport, which is really nice!

We stayed at a hotel called the "Dubai Grand". It isn't really all that grand. In fact, it kind of sucks. There was only one other female in my group, but instead of giving us a room together, they put us in separate rooms with other females that were already there (all from DynCorp), so we had the pleasure of waking strangers up at midnight. That was nice of us. Grrr.

Up early the next morning to be downstairs to do timecards at 0630 (why? yeah, I don't know either) and then check out at 0730. Left for the airport around 0800, got checked in for the flight to Kandahar, and ended up with 2 hours to kill, that quickly became 3, when the flight was delayed! So the 4 fire department folk (me, an admin assistant, an assistant chief, and a firefighter) all cruised the shopping areas (found my next laptop ... didn't buy it, but will soon), where I found a Crunchie bar that I did buy (they were selling cases of them, but I didn't have room in my carry-on) and then we decided it was lunch time. There is a nice Irish pub in the Dubai airport that serves Magner's Irish Cider on tap, so I talked the boys into drinking cider with me (which they appreciated, because they really liked it) and we ate our last non-dining facility meal. For me, it was bangers and mash. Yummy!

The flight to Kandahar wasn't bad. Flying over the Middle East into Southwest Asia felt a lot like flying over the American Southwest. Lots of dirt, with mountains interspersed periodically. I'll admit, I did think about how much it would suck if the plane was shot down over Iran ... but since I am typing this several days later, it obviously did not, so no worries.

We ended up arriving in Kandahar around 4pm (local time) on Saturday the 13th. Not really sure where Friday went, but that's the miracle of flying around the world!

SO here are my first impressions of Afghanistan:
- Holy crap it is dusty up in here.
- I not a fan of camping, in general, so this whole tent thing is going to take some getting used to.
- How bad can a place really be, if there is a TGIFriday's?
- I never knew that chow halls could actually serve decent food! Kwaj ... take notes.
- I am a HUGE fan of not having to walk outside of my sleeping area to use the toilet, or to shower ... guess I'll have to get used to that too.
- They still make cell phones without cameras!
- The first time you hear the "rocket attack" siren, you're heart will pound as you hit the floor.
- Sitting in a bunker is boring.
- Khaki is the best color for this area ... you can't see all the dust on your clothes, unless you shake them out!
- While I may be in a war zone, I feel quite safe with the thousands of Soldiers, Airman, Sailors, and Marines walking around in uniform with rifles. And those are just the US troops ... hurrah for: the UK, Canada, France, Slovakia, the Netherlands, and several other NATO countries hanging out around here.

That's about it for now. I should go and pretend to do something productive that could be considered work related! I'll tell you more about what I will be doing in a later post.

Oh, and if you feel the overwhelming need to actually talk to me, or to send me a text, I got an Afghanistan phone number! It is: 079 735 1949. No idea how much it'd cost you to send me a text or to call, but incoming calls are free for me, and I can text you back. Please keep in mind, I am 9 1/2 hours ahead of EST and 12 1/2 hours ahead of PST. So your best bet is to call or text when it is late at night for you, wherever you happen to be.

I'll give you more job, location, etc detail next time. But not too detailed, as that would be against the rules. :)

DynCorp Recruiting

I suppose there are bound to be bumps in any recruiting process, and DynCorp is no different. It hasn't been bad, but sometimes they are not as clear as I would like them to be.

When I got the offer, I had 24 hours to accept or decline. (Obviously, I accepted.) Then you get an ungodly amount of paperwork to fill out, along with several medical/dental requirements. They send a checklist that gives requested return times for all the documents. Personally, I think it is wholly unrealistic to expect to get the medical and dental paperwork back within the requested 5 days. It took me a while to find an opening with a dentist, and it ended up being someone not on my insurance, so I had to pay out of pocket, though allegedly, DynCorp reimburses, up to a certain amount. I say allegedly, because I have not had the opportunity to submit for reimbursement yet, and therefore, cannot confirm through personal experience.

Part of the paperwork process is security stuff, so make sure you know where you've lived and worked over the last ~10 years. Sometimes it's just 7 years, but it's good to have 10 on hand, just in case. Also have 3 people that can vouch for you. If you can find people that already have clearance through the same agency (in this case DoD), I am told that makes things a little easier, because they don't have to question the legitimacy of the people you've put down. Oh, and if you are naturalized like me, make sure you have your certificate handy for the numbers on it.

Once you get all the paperwork done, you'll get cleared (or not) to head to Ft. Worth for in-processing. Before you get to Ft. Worth, though ... there's online training to do. If you've been in the contract world before, most of it you'll already know, but some of the country specific information is really quite interesting. They give you information on customs, traditions, etc of the coutnry you will be working in. My personal favorite part was the Hostage series. What to do if you become a hostage, etc. I was pleased to learn I knew almost everything they talked about from TV and movies. Turns out that Hollywood gets some stuff right.

And in addition to the online training, there is ... yup ... more paperwork! Woohoo! But this paperwork is kind of important ... who to contact in case something bad happens, etc. Obviously, important stuff.

I suppose the only thing that is bugging me at this particular moment (I'll be in Ft. Worth in 48 hours), is the fact that I don't know what I'll be doing in Ft. Worth, or how long I'll be there. I have a vague idea of what to expect, but nothing concrete. I like having things spelled out for me. I like knowing what to expect. I'm pretty flexible, but how can I plan and anticipate if I don't have the information I desire?

Meh. I suppose all things considered, it hasn't been a bad process, I would just prefer a little more information. Oh, and I would really like my flight to not be at 5:38am, but I suppose there is nothing I can do about that now.

So, why Afghanistan?

So after I left Kwajalein, I got a job as a 'Training and Education Specialist' with the Florida Division of Emergency Management. My informal title was 'State Training Coordinator'. I got an office, and business cards, and it was cool. Long story short, the state doesn't pay worth a crap and I was only able to keep the job as long as I did because of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, because we were getting paid OT. There was also some political BS within the Division that I couldn't stomach, so I started looking elsewhere.

I had been looking at various contractor sites and ran across the posting for a 'FACC Specialist' with DynCorp, International in Afghanistan. (An FACC Specialist is a fire department dispatcher.) I had had a particularly frustrating day at work, so I applied for it.

43 hours later, they called and offered me a job. That made me feel kind of good. Of course, the night before, and earlier the morning they offered me the job, I had said, in a fit of frustration, "I swear, I am taking the next job I get offered". Did you know I ended up on Kwaj because of a dare? So, yeah, I have a history of doing stuff like this.

So ... here I am, packing to head to Kandahar, Afghanistan. I leave for in-processing in Ft. Worth, Texas on Sunday, November 7th. Wanna hear more about the DynCorp recruiting process? That'll be a later post.

Yeah, so ... um ... hi!

Well, I suck at keeping things up to date. Unless we're talking about Facebook and Twitter. Blogs, my website, sending emails, or, gods forbid, actual paper letters ... yeah, total crap.

There is an excellent chance, though, that this blog will be updated more regularly for the next year or so. I plan on making it a sort of diary/journal of my time in Afghanistan.

We'll start with a little backstory in the next blog and continue on from there.

So there will be an attempt. Probably not daily, but at least every few days. It's a frickin' warzone ... there has to be stuff going on pretty regularly!