First Taste

Driver: Is that a dog?
Gunner: Uhhh.... Yeah, part of one. It's the bottom half of a dog.
Driver: Oh. Fuck that.

This short exchange took place not five minutes outside of the base as I rode along, leaving the wire for the first time in the deployment. I know, took long enough huh.

It was an extraordinarily brisk morning in the elevated bowl that we resided in, the mountains of Afghanistan. Riding in the vehicle, there was Taj Mahal and B.B. King featuring The Allman Brothers playing over the headsets, the volume low enough so that all radio traffic could still be heard. A pine fresh air freshener was hanging by the driver seat and we were passing around beef sticks and other goodies.

I had hitched a ride with another platoon on mission, getting my first taste of the real country. We were to hit up a few villages, do our thing. Crowds of people, men, women, children gathered on the side of the streets like we were a parade, waiting for the handouts. They had grown accustomed to our charity and support, I suppose.

There are few enjoyable roads in Afghanistan, only a few main ones that were actually paved. Otherwise, the best you could hope for were ones wide enough to fit our uparmored vehicles, and routes without deep gouges and steep hills. We maneuvered our way through various villages, had to creep slow a few times just to make sure we fit. Twenty minutes after I had left the nice little bubble of near safety we called BAF, and I called home, we were stopped and I was stepping foot out into the world. The real Afghanistan.

More often then not, when we dismounted in these villages we were swarmed with children, all begging "bakshish?", meaning gift. We were expected to carry santa sized bags of candy and pens and other assorted little gadgets. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I have a little distaste for children in general. I'm sorry to say, if you think the pity that these poor kids evoked in a person would change how I reacted to them, you are wrong. After shooing away a few right off the bat, I seemed to have been labeled as a prick by the locals and the kids kept away.

Walking ahead, scouting out the village and searching for information with the LT and interpreter, I saw livestock roaming uncaged, sheep, goats and cows. I swear the cows speak different languages over here as one mooed in a strange fashion.

We stumbled upon a group of adult men digging a ditch, for one reason or another. The LT had the terp ask them where we could find the Malik, local leaders of the villages. In a genuine smart ass reply, one man said, through the terp, that they were all Maliks, that they took turns on a weekly basis speaking for the village. Holy shit, we've got a town full of Noam Chomskys.

The LT grew tired of the lack of co-operation, and we shared a laugh as I compared the incident to the scene in Monty Python's Holy Grail when King Arthur comes up to a pair of peasants digging around in dirt and introduces himself. At one point, a woman says "I didn't know we 'ad a king, I thought we lived in an autonomous collective."

We pushed through the village after standing around for another half an hour, and stopped at the edge of another village a few clicks away. As I was standing there, admiring the country side/pulling security, a few local children ran up to my team leader, demanding bakshish. After a few minutes of trying to shoo, he pointed at me standing fifty feet away and told the children I had all sorts of shit to give away. A funny little trick that left me speed walking around, attempting to shake the bastards.

Once again nothing really happened, so we mounted up and headed to a school just a stones throw outside BAF to check on the status of the place. One soldier in the platoon became my savior of sorts as we dismounted, when a dozen small children came to hit each vehicle up for freebies. This guy was a kid person, I suppose, and as soon as the children saw his generous and playful attitude they ignored everyone else, myself included. He spent the entirety of our time at the school picking up little kids, handing out chocolate and taking turns pouring water into the kids mouths.

One remarkable thing I have to say about kids in Afghanistan is a lot of them seem mature for their age. Little kids are left to watch after the even younger kids in their family, I saw a girl that wasn't a day older then six walking around carrying who I presumed to be her two year old brother. They watched after each other, and protected each other.

After a long conversation with the guy in charge of the school, a teacher of sorts, we mounted up and headed back into BAF. A short, uneventful first day out, which I suppose was for the best.

Let's hope the same for next time, eh?

In the meantime, I'll do as you should. Keep on keeping on.