Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Month 12 Day 20

Notebook entry
Three reports given, kick out the British, Salim and Qais sleep, 1030 meeting.

Journal entry

I went to the ceremony for Afghan Independance Day.  It was the
anniversary of the end of the 3rd Anglo-Afghan War, a pretty short
nonsense war that just reaffirmed what was already decided, the Durand
line would be the border.  I kind of wonder how the ceremony went over
up in 3rd Brigade where the Brits are the mentors.  They invited LtCol
Valquist to speak and he pulled out the revolutionary war era phrase
"give me liberty or give me death."  At least Afghanistan and America
have independance struggles against the Brits in common.

Salim and Qais were supposed to do class at 1000, but they were both
asleep and Munir didn't have the khootsba to roust them.

At 1030 they had their morning briefing. Graham, Brian and I all pulled
our gear out of our tent so that the next guys could move in.  This
has clearly been a traumatic experience for Graham.  He reminds me of
my dad "don't throw that away, it might be useful."  Brian calls him a
"junkist."  That is, one who collects a bunch of junk for not
particular purpose.  For me it was a labor of love.  It is wonderful
to be able to turn over this place, and move onto a cot in the
knowledge that the next time I sleep on a real bed, it will probably
be my own.

We gave away the chairs that Brian and Graham made to the linguists.
They kindly made me a chair, though I didn't do anything but beat out
some of the stuffing.  Maj Neller, the new team's XO came in and said
"they don't need those things, we'll take them back."  That really
pissed off Brian, he said "we made those things, they don't appear on
the team's density list, they were gifts to our linguists."

At noon, nothing eventful.

In the afternoon our power went down, they claim it was the battery on
the generator, but I suspect the new enclosure was trapping too much
heat in.  I took around the Gunny from CISE and showed him where all
of the contractors live, and because the Route Clearance Company
decided to play ball, there was a big line to get BATed, so none of
the contractors were done this week.

The new team started to show up and put their gear down.  I felt bad
because we hadn't really cleaned our old tent yet, so I ran a broom
around for a while and wiped the floor with some sanitizer wipes.



The XO's new privacy shade

We beat the British Ceremony

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