26 January 2010 Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

I started the day early because I was having difficulty sleeping. I stepped outside into the bitter cold fog and scanned the street. The orange lamps were haloed in the misty ether at 5:30 and the cylindrical tan tents faded to a night time white as I set foot onto the slushy gravel. Soldiers and Marines were already up and moving toward the chow hall, ghosts in the early dim whiteness. “Ey-XHAHT MYED-leen-uh” was written in Russian on a street sign. “Go slowly.” The speed limit on the base is 10 kilometers per hour. “How do you go slower than that,” I wondered. At 7:30 I was still waiting for the day to begin to brighten but the sky remained dark until just a little after eight o’clock which surprised me. I realized that we must be farther north than I’d imagined.

Greg and Bruce were sitting in the DFAC—again. “I’m getting sick of seeing you two still here. Get out!” I chuckled as I pulled up a chair beside the pair. “You guys are never going to get out of this place!” The two of them have been trying to catch a flight for the last two days but there haven’t been any spare seats on any of the flights south. Civilian contractors who fly on military aircraft are given last priority. Greg, an architect from Washougal, Washington, near the mouth of the Columbia River squinted at me. “Don’t say that! You’re putting a curse on our flight!” Bruce is a high voltage electrician, but he’s quiet enough that I haven’t really learned much about him. He remained quiet and watched a football game in progress on the Armed Forces Network. Greg continued, “The guy at the terminal told us to sacrifice a virgin chicken and we’ll be able to get on the flight. And if we don’t get on the flight, well, the chicken wasn’t a virgin after all.” I rolled my eyes.

“So what have you learned since you started to work?” Greg asked. I gave my report. “You know—how to pick up trash after the soldiers how to straighten up books on the shelves, how to tell the difference between an X-Box 360 controller and a Play Station 3 controller, how to run a Texas Hold ‘em tournament. It’s all a learning experience. I’m a baby sitter.” Greg and Bruce both laughed. We sat and ate for a minute before Greg asked, "Do you know what gun control is?” I knew that there was more to Greg’s question by the way he asked it, but I wasn’t quite sure what to say. I opened myself up for the sucker punch. “No.” “It’s two hands on the grip.” I like the man. He’s a potential NRA member. Greg turned out to be a funny guy whose dry sense of humor makes me laugh.

He and Bruce came to Kyrgyzstan with me on the same flight, though separated during our time in the air by several rows. Neither of them had beer spilled on them and neither of them was graced by a red-haired man in underwear. The three of us waited together at the Kyrgyzstan International Airport for the greatly anticipated ride that didn’t ever come, all huddled into a corner and surrounded by taxi drivers, and we checked into our temporary rooms together after we finally arrived on base.

Greg turned to me again. “I haven’t told Bruce yet.” Bruce’s ears twitched slightly as he focused in on the new topic. “But I heard today that when we finally get to Afghanistan we’ll be living in 40-man tents.” I knew where the conversation was headed so I contributed, “I’ve heard that about the place. I’ve heard that the showers are in Con-Ex containers near each row of tents. I’ll bet that’s a cold walk on a January morning!” Greg smiled as he realized that I’d decided to play along and Bruce’s half expression faded as he realized that he was being had. He settled back into his self-appointed role as the strong, silent Clint Eastwood of the group.

They were nearly finished with their dinner by the time I joined them and so they began to get up to leave when Greg turned back. “Send me an email, Jed. I’d like to keep in touch.” I nodded with my farewell wish, “Good luck with tonight’s flight. I don’t want to see you back here in the morning!”

I walked into Shooters a few minutes before the start of the day shift and found Ruben, the night manager, ready to flee. As soon as he saw me come through the door he clawed his coat from the wall and headed for the door. “Goodbye. See you tonight,” he called over his shoulder. He was gone before I could reply. I strolled through the corrugated steel building, picking up trash that had been left by the soldiers during the night—popcorn bags, candy wrappers, Monster cans and empty water bottles. I swept up popcorn that had been strewn across the floor of the larger of the two theater rooms and returned scattered chairs to their places around the game room tables before Rita, the day time manager, came through the door.

At eleven o’clock I was sitting in an Air Force conference room for a class on escorting “K. P.’s” around the base. K. P.’s are “Kyrgyz Partners” in military acronym speak. “You’re not here to be their friends,” the Tech Sergeant told us. “So don’t get too friendly with them.” The presentation took about an hour and I was on to my next station, Computer Security, where I took a short lesson and test to be sure that I could use a computer. It consisted of pushing the mouse around the desk and clicking on a few boxes on the screen. “We actually had one American fail this test,” the man from the Help Desk told me. “She was a cook.” That explains it, I thought with my tongue firmly tucked into my cheek.

I rode the shuttle bus from one part of the base to another, listening to Russian music on the radio and looking at the neatly trimmed trees that lined the sidewalks. Each tree touched its neighbor and was trimmed into a near-perfect cone. They lined well planned and beautifully built sidewalks that ambled past unpainted, roughly finished brick and steel buildings. An old man in a black overcoat and an large, brown, newsboy-style, tweed hat peddled past on a black bicycle with a small package strapped behind the seat. The bus’ route took me past a graveyard for aircraft that had fallen into disrepair. Brick-red block Cyrillic letters spelled the name “Kyrgyzstan” along each dilapidated green and white hull. I thought about how the buildings and the crumbling airplanes were so much like the old Soviet Union and that the beautiful trees were symbols of the strong will and character of a resilient population.

I spent the rest of the afternoon being fingerprinted, scanned, tested, registered and certified. By seven in the evening, just in time to finish my shift, I walked through the door of Shooters feeling just as Ruben had felt earlier. When he walked in for the night shift I pulled my jacket back down from the wall and dashed out the door. “See you tomorrow! Have a good night!” I called over my shoulder. I love you all! Jed (Dad)