The KAIA Burroughs

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The chow hall where we eat meals, it is very crowded, in particular at lunch as it was yesterday. Therefore, everyone has to squeeze in to eat.

Here's a shot at the check in table in the chow hall. Everyone signs a sheet for their particular country contingent. There are about 25 countries in the KAIA contingent.

We ended up sitting next to a few soldiers part of the Czech Republic. The Czech Republic has a contingent of about 150 who work mostly as the field hospital in Kabul. We sat talking with some other US Air Force types, but because I was sitting closest to the Czechs, I was trying to see if I could get anything out of what they were saying - I was trying to put my dormant Russian language skills to work. It was fruitless - the chow hall noise and the fact that although a cyrillic language, Czech is significantly different from Russian. So, I resorted to asking them if they spoke English or Russian (in Russian of course). The young officer in front of me, who was a surgeon of urology, said he spoke a little English and he then informed me that he was "too young to speak Russian." Hmm - isn't that a wonderful thing that he is probably part of the first generation free from being force-fed Russian because of the occupation of communism!

One of his fellow Czechs was a chaplain. He informed us that the majority of Czechs are Catholic, with protesant and eastern orthodox making up the majority of the remainder of christian denominations. The third Czech was a young female officer sitting next to me. She spoke only a little English and at first we thought she said that she was a "urology observer" at the field hospital. We thought that was kinda of weird and went back and forth for a minute or two to figure out if that's what she was really saying. Turns out, that she was actually a "meteorology Observer" - a weather officer. So, then we all laughed because we thought it was so unusual that she would observe things dealing with urology. After dinner and the conversation, they invited us to hang out at their Czech pub. You see, many of the international contingents have pubs to hang out into the wee hours. These pubs are sprinkled throughout the base that is KAIA and they exist as minature burroughs made up of shipping containers that are used as housing (and pubs).

Here's looking out by our "Blue Oyster" complex across part of KAIA. You can get a sense of the shipping container (CONEX) village, again with the mountains as a back drop.

Czechs are over there, Danes across here, the Turks have a nice little courtyard, the Belgians actually have two pubs I am told. German, French, and so on ... The Norwegians' is close to our "Blue Oyster" housing complex (in the US burrough) and is called "the Nordic." These burroughs make KAIA very much feel like a little version of the European Union. It is US military policy that US soldiers will not partake of alcoholic beverages while in theater, which is shame, because I know the Czechs make good beer. The pubs and the US no-alcohol policy explain why I've only seen Americans up early to work out at the gym (which is called "My Gym" BTW). We'll have to go some night, just to hang out I think.

Here's a hero shot of me and Brian - weapons in hand. It's odd to carry around our pistols - part of the wild west feeling - to the chow hall and the NMAA (where I work).