LIFE AS A HUMAN

A Year of Living Dangerously?

By Allan Cram | Thursday, April 15, 2010 at 12:01 am | Leave a Comment

I have been in Afghanistan for a year now.

Well, let me amend that — Molson Air has been in Afghanistan for a year, and I have spent exactly 197 days in the country. That’s because I work 35 days on, 35 days off. If you do the math I should be away from home for 182 days a year.

But starting a base always takes more time, plus our travel time is robbed from our days off. It takes two days to travel there, and two days to get home, so that’s an extra 24 unpaid days spent in airports, airplanes, taxis and hotels. Such a glamorous life — 221 days away from home.

Usually that time is filled with new and wondrous sounds, smells, sights and languages. International contracts provide me the opportunity to experience new cultures, try new foods and meet people who are exactly like me — working stiffs trying to pay the bills, put food on the table and provide for a family.

They may be from the Nuer tribe in southern Sudan whose economy depends on cattle and maize, or Bosnians recovering from a brutal and savage war, or East Timorese struggling for independence and recognition, or Ecuadorian craftsmen, or Haitian artists and voodoo priests, or Yemenese goat herders wandering the arid wadis and jebels, or Buddhist monks in Thailand.

All these people have one thing in common — they are as curious about me as I am about them and it often leads to interesting sign language conversations. Occasionally a translator will help out, a bystander who knows as much English as I know Farsi, Malay, or some obscure tribal language of Chad. Often my meager language skills are tested to the limit as I dredge up a bit of French and Spanish and get my hands and fingers kneading and stirring the air in front of us.

Sometimes there are long awkward silences, and we nod — our eyes expressing mutual respect and reluctantly we depart on our separate ways. This is most common in the large markets where all kinds of strange and wonderful fruits and vegetables are sold, and agreeing on a price or even knowing what some things are is as challenging as deciphering some ancient code.

For $2 US I was once offered the opportunity to see how a local butcher burns the fur off a monkey, guts it and places the “fresh” meat on the counter for sale. The idea, of course, was for me to buy the entire monkey after the demonstration. In the heat of Western Africa, no butcher was going to kill a perfectly good live monkey if no one was prepared to buy the meat.

I wasn’t vegetarian at the time, but I’m certain that planted the seed in my head.

But after a year in Afghanistan, I know very little about the local people, their culture, their land or economy. We fly across lush green valleys and terraced hillsides where agriculture appears to be the primary industry. We see miraculous drainage projects that direct what water there is in this country to the fields. Sowing, reaping, threshing and drying of crops is all done by hand.

Occasionally we see a community tractor, but usually the parcels of land are small, surrounded by a rock wall, and from the air we can identify corn, or maize, rice, wheat, and apparently the largest cabbages in the world. But I can’t be certain.

We never get to wander through the markets and meet the local people here. We live “behind the wire” in a US Military camp where the greatest threat to our health is the deep fried food.

We work with Americans who are curious about the Canadian “70% tax rate” because of our “socialist” health care system, who shake their head in disbelief when I tell them that yes, the homeless family in the park would not be turned away at the hospital, that very few people have a hand-gun in their glove compartment, and that we don’t consider President Obama as the resurrection of Joseph Stalin.

Many try to convince us that every Afghan is a threat; that they all want to kill us. Even the ATIS (Automatic Terminal Information Service), the frequency all pilots monitor prior to entering a busy control zone, warns us of the dangers:

This is from a video we made over here. An ATIS normally isn’t entertaining….

For those new to flying overseas, an ATIS like that may be a bit concerning, but the real danger in Afghanistan lies outside the wire. The real danger is on the roads and trails of the country where strange, desperate people place IEDs to blow up coalition forces convoys and foot patrols, and very often their own people.

I’ll never understand that mentality. I’m a great pacifist, but I respect the soldiers who drive the convoys and walk the foot patrols, and if they come back after a close call and feel that everyone out there is trying to kill them, then I’ll just keep mum. They’re doing a tough job — like it or not — and they’re not here by choice.

In 2007, I lived in Kabul for a short time — by choice — and I walked to the local Burger Chief (their translation of Burger King), frequented a Mexican restaurant near our crew house and shopped in some local stores and markets. I flew to small villages in the north to meet with the local elders, and enjoyed a feast of flat bread, grilled goat, fruit and nuts and fresh yogurt.

Like most people I’ve met around the world, the Afghans were kind and generous and just like me — working stiffs, plying their fields or their crafts, hoping to put food on the table and provide shelter for their family.

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