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Afghanistan ‘08- Days 10-12

Day ten we were back in Bagram for our last scheduled show. It was our biggest show, unfortunately it was also our worst. About 10 minutes in, airplanes started taking off and helicopters circled overhead. I’m not kidding, it went on almost constantly and stopped right after the show ended. I swear the pilots in Bagram must hate us or something. Every time we try to get a flight out of Bagram it’s delayed for some reason or another but as soon as we start a show, they’re taking off right and left. It wasn’t a bad show but some bits got lost in the noise so the tour didn’t end on the high note we would have liked (click here to read a military article about the show).

When the show ended, I was told that check in for our departing flight would be at 4:45 am so I opted to stay up the whole night. I was hanging out in the MWR office watching CNN when a commercial came on. Out here they don’t show regular commercials, it’s all military propaganda or public service announcements. They’re usually so poorly written and performed that I find myself laughing at the end of them, even when they deal with serious topics. This particular “commercial” was actually pretty interesting and dealt with boxer Joe Lewis who joined the army during WWII and how he recruited other high profile black men and helped them get into Officers’ Candidate School. While the segment was playing, one of the guys in the room said something like, “I don’t understand why those famous guys give up everything to go to war- they usually end up dead.” No sooner did he say that than CNN cut into the Lewis profile with “Breaking news!” that Prince Harry had been here in Afghanistan for the last 10 weeks. I never did catch the end of the Joe Lewis story. Leave it to British royalty to upstage a black man- and on the last day of Black History Month no less.

I showered, packed and checked email until 4:45, at which point I learned that the flight was delayed and the next check in would be at 9 am. That turned into 3 pm. In the meantime, I hit the Bagram bazaar and bought some worthless junk- but at great prices! At 6 pm we were finally ushered into the customs area. In Customs we had to empty everything from our bags into little cubicles.

On each cubicle was a list of forbidden items and one in particular caught my eye- human body parts. I just love that someone thought that needed to be mentioned on the list. Maybe there was an incident where some guy had an extra head in his bag and he argued that “It wasn’t on the list- how was I supposed to know I couldn’t carry it with me?” and they had to let him go. They offer ten minutes of amnesty for disposing of illegal items and I asked if that applied to the human body parts and I was told it does, so keep that in mind- if you ever need to dispose of a body, save yourself the hassle of digging a hole and bring it to Customs instead.

After the inspection, we were sequestered for eight hours before our flight. A half an hour after our planned departure time, we were told there was another problem with the plane and we were released until later that afternoon. It seems like half my time in Afghanistan was spent at the Bagram air terminal. And compared to the soldiers, we had it pretty good. Because of our civilian ranking we were considered “distinguished visitors” and therefore did all our waiting in a private room with comfy couches, a color tv and a private bathroom. Most soldiers dealing with delays had to sit in the general waiting area on regular chairs. They did have a flat screen tv on which to watch movies, but it seemed like all the movies they played were war movies- as if they need that constant reminder!

Well, after two days of delays, we finally boarded a C-17 plane to Kyrgyzstan (to which everybody I know says, “Kyrgy-where?” It’s the southern part of the former Soviet Union). I thought my waiting days were done and I was on my way to Paris but little did I know the waiting had just begun…

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