I was told it would smell better here?

So I haven't written a blog in a while.  This is probably obvious to you as you have not read one in a while. So we are even.  I have to come to realize that I am trapped in prison on planet bull-shit.  I will try not to bore you with politics, but as most of us know, nurses have a tendency to be terrible managers, and I am experiencing a tsunami of micro management here in the smelliest place on earth.  Digressing.

We last saw our hero in Germany with his friend Joe, wildly drinking cheap German beer and screaming poorly accented words at locals.  Unfortunately, that is where our civic ambassador-ship (not a word, I know) ended.  We piled on a transport plane and came back home here to Qatar.  By now, all the different crews have arrived, and were are all split up based on experience, rank, and random acts of chance.  Luckily for me, Joe is still on my crew.  I also have a nurse, Bart, and two more techs, Cam and Dianna.  The five of us get along pretty well.

We didn't fly again for almost 10 days.  Not that there weren't missions, there were plenty of those, we are just unlucky and didn't come up in the rotation.  The overwhelming, soul crushing, life stealing, hair splitting, Vogon-esque, bureaucracy that is the Airforce just got in the way.  We have rules for everything like I said, and we are either available for a mission or not, and we just kept missing our time slot.  We finally went back to Germany after almost two weeks of sitting here.  Much like the time before, we got alerted for the mission at 9 at night.  Brief, get our equipment, go the plane, get out patients, and take off around 0030 in the morning.  The flight takes about 8 hours.  With 11 patients or so.  I am going to skip the parts about the medical care for my own career safety, but some of these folks were pretty sick. 

Germany this time was way different.  Bart lives there as he is active duty air force, so we had a tour guide.  So we drank our beer off base instead of in our rooms.  Well, we did that too, but we started off base at least.  Also, Donner Kabab.  The most amazing thing since Jesus.  Shaved Lamb over french fries with cabbage and a yogurt sauce.  Sounds amazing right? It is if you eat where I do every day.  So we ate 6 in 2 days.  My GI tract was never happier to leave a place. 

Unfortunately we were only there for 2 days, and we went to the nastiest place on earth.  Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan is the land that time forgot.  The Russians had an airfield there back when we were helping the Afgans kill them, and now we have taken over the same place.  It looks like you took a bucket full of military supplies, buildings, rocks and mud, and threw it on the ground.  We have been there for more than 10 years, and everyone is walking on mud paths, to mud huts, wipe their boots on mud before walking through mud.  Everything is grey with the stuff.  Its depressing.  Its also winter there.  We did go the Bazaar and see what there was to buy. 

Everything there is a con.  All the goods are being advertized as the "best most amazing high quality product ever made by man" and this is for a scarf obviously made from the leftovers from a bandage factory.  Or trinkets no one would ever buy, old military surplus, or counterfeit goods.  You can get a pair of "Beats" headphones there for 20 bucks.  They work too! For a while.  The DVD market is truly something to behold.  No such thing as copyright laws here.  Every movie the sell is from some guys phone as he sat in a theater.  People literally walk across the screen during the movie, or cough, or ask the guy why he is filming the movie.  You can get the entire Big Bang Theory box set for 20 bucks, and it is quite obviously recorded from TV.  Even has advertisements for other shows. 

We were stuck there for 3 days, sleeping on cots, no access to showers, trudging to the chow hall at weird hours because we were on a different schedule.  Everyone there is carrying a gun too.  Every once in a while, an Afgan just starts shooting people, and everyone else shoots back.  Its a gas!

We finally got back after about 6 days gone.  Never been so glad to be back in the desert.