Farah

I finally made it to Farah Province, Afghanistan. It took about 2 weeks of flight hopping and living out of a rucksack but I am here. Kandahar is like being in New York City. It is a huge NATO airfield so every Military you can think of is there; Canadian, British, Dutch, Italian, Australia, New Zealand, Slovakia, you name it. There is a T.G.I Fridays, Cafe's, stores.....it does not feel like Afghanistan.

But now I am at my Forward Operating Base in South West Afghanistan where we are forgotten. It is desolate here. It is a desert environment with HUGE rocky mountains...Its beautiful in the morning but it has been reaching the high 90's in the afternoon. It will get to about 150 degrees in the summer. Yes, 90 degrees is winter weather.

The Afghan people are amazing. Most that I have met are extremely hospitable and grateful. I have been here a week and have gone on a few missions in that time period. On International Woman's Day (March 8th) the Provincial Government and our team held an event to honor women. It was a huge success and I got to meet and speak with lots of local women. They are very curious about American women. As a 26 year old woman with no husband or children I am strange! People love to ask if I am married and when I say I am not, they offer.

This is a very emotional experience. Seeing how poor these people are is astonishing. As I sat in the Humvee looking out the window at the children and babies with torn, dirty clothing I could not help but tear up. That is not the only time either; One specific story comes to mind. We work with a local orphanage here and we invited some of the children and locals who donated supplies to the orphanage to our base to have lunch as a way to show our appreciation. The children were very nervous to be on an American base, but after spending some time with them they opened up and acted as normal children. The boys played volleyball and soccer with the male soldiers while another female on my team and I hung out with the girls. We talked as teenage girls would; about hair, music, hobbies, and henna. They LOVE henna and offered to do it for us the next time we go to the orphanage. One of the girls offered me her head scarf as a gift and I was immediately moved. Here was this 13 year old orphan, who does not have a family or many possessions, and she was offering me a gift. I accepted and ran back to my room to find something I could give her as a gift in return. I decided on one of my head scarfs (I wear them here to respect the Afghan culture, and I very much like it). Her eyes lit up when she saw it. We took a photo wearing each others gift, and I promised to print a copy for her. It was a wonderful experience. Although we may look very different on the outside, or follow different religions, we share respect and friendship. I hope to spend more time with the girls of the orphanage. They made me feel welcome in a foreign place.

Let the traveling begin

So...I always thought traveling was fun; a chance to see new places and experience new things. This is different. I have been on the road (or in the air I should say) for 3 days technically but with the time difference I managed to skip an entire day. I am at my second temporary location, living out of a backpack and getting acclimated to the environment and trying hard to defeat jet lag by constantly ingesting caffeine. The tent I am living in has undoubtedly housed thousands, and I'm pretty sure the red spots on my leg that itch uncontrollably are an indication of bed bugs.

On a positive note, I have nothing to do but sit around and wait for a flight out of here, so I have plenty of time to workout, which takes me mentally away from where I physically am. I look forward to getting to my final location so I can start my mission and regain some sort of normalcy -- as crazy as that sounds.

2 WEEKS AWAY

It seems as if this training will never end. I arrived at Camp Atterbury, IN the day after Thanksgiving and the weeks have painfully crawled by. This is by far the dumbest mobilization training EVER. The strategy in Afghanistan is counterinsurgency, yet I feel like we are being trained to be insurgents ourselves. According to Camp Atterbury, every Afghan is a threat, every rock, bicycle, pregnant woman and wheel barrel is an IED (improvised explosive device), and every car on post will kick up dirt in my eyes then proceed to run me over, thus requiring me to wear a reflective belt and protective eye wear at all times. Some say rather than PRT standing for Provincial Reconstruction Team, it means Prevention of Real Training. This place is an absolute joke. Good news is, we leave for Afghanistan in 2 weeks. I never thought I would be so excited to be going to a war zone; anywhere but here.