Be Glad For What You Have

Ok, I don't no where this one is going but if you could start out by clicking on the photo so it will enlarge for you that may help. Once you have done that just look at the photo for a while and take in what ever you can from it. Let it sink in a bit. I know the quality is not that good but it will due.

This is a transient tent at KAF. I was there looking for Chandel after church as he is still down here a week after a training class we sent him to ended. He is staying in the top bunk on the left. This tent can hold up to forty people if it were full.

Chandel was not there so I stood and spoke to the Tent Manager a bit. He is the Tent Manager because he has been there the longest, seven weeks. Now I have been in Afghanistan for three months and have been in two different Camps thus far. He has been waiting for an assignment so he can be sent to his permenant location. All of the men that stay here are waiting also.

If you couldn't tell from the conditions, it is bad. Each bed has an old mattress on it, most with broken springs and tares in the fabric. None have sheets so the matresses have been used by hundereds of people and never been cleaned. The top bunks have no ladders to get up and down and are within inches of the ceiling. Those mattresses are generally worse then the lower ones.

The floors are dirty, really dirty as they also have not been cleaned. Each man has a little area in which they keep their belongings, maybe a suitcase or bag of some sort. Wet towels and clothes hang from strings or wires so they can dry. The smell is strange as it is a mix of many things but the uncleanliness is the most noticible.

The tent is dark and depressing. Men sleeping all day long as they are not allowed to leave this compound. There is a picinic area outside which is the social area and also where they are given their food. They do not have ID's you see so they can not travel freely around the Camp. They are not alowed into the DFACs for dinner so all food is brought to them there and placed out in pans buffet style for them and the flies.

The outside is dirty also from the food and from the hundreds kivibng in a small area. Trash and bottles overflow the garbage cans creating more filth. the dust is everywhere and shade is at a minimum unless you are back in the tent. Not a nce place at all. In essence this is the slum of the Camp and this is where many of the men first come when they arrive in Kandahar. It is so crowded now that anyone below a Manager comes to these tents when they stay in KAF.

I had you look at the photo so you would not pass it by. I wanted you to think about what men will go through for work and survival. I also wanted you to imagine yourself, coming here for a job, thinking that your prayers were answered and finding this as you place to live for a month or more. I wanted you to have a feeling in your stomach of dusgust at the thought of this for others.

These are the conditions for which many are put here. Life has different meaning here I think then other places. It becomes expendable and not as valuable to those in authority. Men become bodies that need to be delt with. No emotion in the decisions that keep them in these places. Just move them in and move them out, feed them because you have to.

Anywhere else and we would want to help and improve their lives. We would come and assist them in bettering their situations. Here it is ok. Here it is war and human life doesn't matter as much.

I know I have said it before, but be glad for what you have. Be glad that this place was what you needed to look forward to to better your life.