Greetings from Afghanistan

 

After a week at Camp Atterbury, IN and a couple of miserable days in Kuwait I finally made it to Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan. So far (3 days) this place is pretty much what I expected. Large, overcrowded, noisy, and waaaaaaaaay too much traffic. Luckily I have found myself on a quiet part of the base, which I'll get to shortly. But at least I have internet in my room...for a price.

I had forgotten about the dust. Bagram sits in a bowl so the dust is everywhere. Thick brown stuff that gets into everything. At least the mountains are beautiful...when they aren't obscured by the dust.

Camp Sabalu-Harrison is where I will call the next year or so home. I don't have my access badges yet so I can't start work yet so I've been spending my time exploring our little corner of Bagram and figuring out the bus system. I was lucky enough that there was a spot open in one of the CHUs when I arrived here so I only had to spend my first night in transient housing.

As for what I'll be doing: I'm working as an analyst in the prison helping to build evidence packets on the detainees to help determine which detainees should remain and transfered over to Afghan custody and which ones should be released. From what I can gather it's a lot of research, which is what I'm good at so that's a plus. Unfortunately, my job may not entail a lot of knowledge of the overall happenings in Afghanistan so my posts may not be all that interesting or useful to the daily goings-on here, unlike my posts from my previous deployments.

Still, I'll post what I can and try to keep it interesting, even if it's just me griping about the horrid Afghan winter and then the horrid Afghan summer.