That Just Happened...

The title of this post is inspired by what was going through our heads... all day

The Scene: Ambassador's Day Trip to Gardez
The Reason: Open the Gardez Lincoln Center and an Education Complex
Date: October 8, 2009
Cast: Bev (Trip Control Officer), Dave (Staff Assistant), Ambassador Eikenberry (U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan), Mrs. Ching Eikenberry (Ambassador's wife), Ambassador Wayne (Chief of U.S. Development in Afghanistan), Dawn (Senior Civilian, RC-East), Brian (Press Officer)

0600: Bev greets trip members and press at Cafeteria for breakfast.

0620: Protocol office is informed that the Afghan Senator who is supposed to travel with us will "meet us there". Where and how we are supposed to find him is not stated in his voicemail.

0625: Protocol assistant checks her Blackberry (she is the only person in the party with a Blackberry) and sees an email that says Ambassador Eikenberry is not coming. The email was sent at midnight. It is not addressed to anyone else. NO ONE on the trip or associated with the trip, including security, heard this news.

0628: Bev and Dave are scrambling to find out what is going on. Planned departure is 2 minutes away. Bev does not want to have to give the speeches.

0630: Executive assistant arrives with a bag of gifts for people we meet and the news that Ambassador Wayne is coming in Ambassador Eikenberry's place. She is surprised that none of us knew. Security Agent in Charge (AIC) needs to switch to Ambassador Wayne's guy. He is looks shell-shocked. Ambassador Eikenberry's AIC looks gleeful.

0635: Mrs. Eikenberry walks outside dressed to travel. It turns out she's coming with us anyway. Ambassador Eikenberry is not coming because he was on a conference call with Washington until 0400 and has another one that night.

0645: Ambassador Wayne comes out. He has the briefing book but has not read it yet. He found out in the middle of the night too.

Next: Go to airport, check in, get everyone on the right helicopter (there are two), etc. - we manage to take off only 10 minutes late.

Next: Land. Bev is on first helicopter. Bev runs up to guy on the landing pad to meet with coordinators on the ground.
Conversation:
Bev: "Hi. I'm Beverly. Are the others on their way out?"
Guy: "The others?"
Bev: "Is the Colonel coming to meet the Ambassador?"
Guy: "The Ambassador's coming here?"
Bev: "Are we in Gardez?"
Guy: "You want to be at the FOB, don't you?"
Bev: "We're not are we?
Guy: "No." (Bev watching the helicopter fly away as he speaks)

Next five minutes: No cell phones work. No one is sure if the other helicopter went to the right place. It didn't. It lands in the wrong place too. There isn't enough room for all of us to get back on that one and fly to the right place. Our convoy is called to come pick us up. It's 20 minutes away.

Next: People where we did land bring us to their rec room and bring us coffee. Some bright person ran for the base commander. He looks pretty surprised, but is very friendly and gives Amb. W an impromptu brief on training local cops. Mrs. E and Dawn find automatic MASSAGE chairs. They're happy to wait.

Next: Convoy arrives. People we were supposed to meet look very happy to have found us.

Next: Programs for the day somehow happen mostly on time and are incredibly good. Highlights: 1) A speech by an Imam who had a list of at least 5 demands each for several different entities. He was very organized (American Govt.... Afhgan Govt.... Governor..... Religious Scholars....). 2) The little boys who had absolutely no idea what to do with the western women. They could not stop staring. One little one finally got up the nerve to shake my hand. 3) Ambassador Wayne gave his own remarks, including stories of using his public library when he was a little boy at the Lincoln Center opening instead of giving the canned speech. 4) Ambassador Wayne presented two local staff with awards for finishing the furniture installation at the Lincoln Center while there were suicide bombers and rockets going off on the compound around them. It was one guy's first day on the job when that happened.

Next: Helicopters know the right place to pick us up (not where they dropped us off), but they can't leave Kabul because of weather.

One hour later: Still no go.

One hour later: Different helicopter ready to take us. It can't fit everyone. We play Survivor and two people are chosen to stay behind, possibly to leave later, possible to stay the night.

One minute later: No one is going anywhere. The weather from Kabul is now in the pass. We're not taking off.

Next hour-and-a-half: Dinner and waiting. Agence France Presse reporter shows Bev and Brian short-hand.

Next: We all go to landing zone. There is no moon and there is no electricity in Gardez. Base keeps their lights off to not be the only lit thing (i.e. target). We can see the Milky Way.

Next: Two Black Hawk helicopters land using night vision. It's bad ass. We can hear them a LONG time before we can see them. We can barely see them on the ground.

Next: We get to take a night flight back. There is NO electricity. There are maybe 50 lights on the ground until we get to Kabul. Kabul looks like some kind of futuristic metropolis in comparison.

2130: We get home.

2140: Dave and Bev run into Ambassador Eikenberry's AIC. He laughs at us.

Super Cool: The Agence France Press reporter wrote this story about the meeting we had between Mrs. Eikenberry and the female soldiers.

US ‘Band of Sisters’ hopes to inspire Afghan girls
Tuesday, 13 Oct, 2009 | 11:02 AM PST |

This handout picture released by the US Embassy shows the wife of US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Ching Eikenberry (L), talking to female US military personnel at the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) camp as US Staff Sergeant Quitze 'Kitty' Garcia (R, foreground) looks on in Gardez on October 8, 2009. — AFP

GARDEZ, Afghanistan: Staff Sergeant Quitze Garcia and her colleagues have a potential solution for Afghanistan, with the conflict now in its ninth year and mounting concern about a bloody Taliban resurgence.
‘We say that if this was left up to the women, there would be peace. There wouldn't be this sort of fighting,’ said Garcia — or ‘Kitty’ to her friends.
The 36-year-old US Army officer is one of only eight female military personnel stationed at the heavily-fortified Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) base on a desert plain in remote Gardez, southeast Afghanistan.
The base can seem a lonely place, particularly at night, when the stars in an endless sky shine like diamonds on black velvet and the shadows of the mountainous border with Pakistan close in under the full moon.
But these women feel the isolation more than most.
Garcia, a divorcee, has three children aged six to 17; Technical Sergeant Michelle Mason has two daughters aged 14 and 21 months; while First Lieutenant Margia E. Brito was married five days before her deployment.
Hosey Rehmat, the PRT's Afghan-American translator, has six children and a husband suffering from stomach cancer.
First Lieutenant Lauren Johnson has no children but still wants to be with her sister, who is eight months' pregnant with twins.
‘I've enormous respect for these women,’ the public affairs officer said on her 26th birthday Thursday. ‘I can't imagine leaving my family or kids.’
The women are on deployments in Afghanistan ranging from six months to a year.
Over tea and plates piled with cookies, muffins, sweets and fruit, the women spent several hours recently chatting with Ching Eikenberry, the wife of Washington's ambassador to Kabul, who was in Gardez to open a new US cultural centre.
With men, the talk would most likely be about careers, their achievements or favourite sports team, but the women bond over children, family and feelings.
Ching Eikenberry reminisces about how she met her husband, Karl, the letters they exchanged while he was in the military and their two children, then opens up the floor for debate like a seasoned television talk-show host.
Many of the women get emotional as they talk about their families.
Garcia worries about her 13-year-old daughter, who wants to go snowboarding, and her 17-year-old son, who has just split up with his girlfriend and bought a new car.
‘I'm out here in Afghanistan and I'm more worried about my children's safety,’ she said.
Others are more matter-of-fact.
‘It wasn't my choice. The military has always been part of my life and that was something I had to do,’ said Mason on leaving her children. ‘It's hard. But this is a good mission and what we're doing is important.’
Family and motherhood become a metaphor during the talks for US and Nato involvement in Afghanistan, which has received 20 billion dollars in western aid since 2001 but where there is concern about rampant corruption and waste.
‘I'm not going to take care of my kids for the rest of my life,’ said Garcia. ‘At some point they're supposed to take over.
‘My job is not to tell my son, 'You're going to be a banker when you grow up'. It's to teach my children the right choices. I'm not telling them what to think. I'm telling them how to think.’
A similar approach should be employed in Afghanistan, she added.
Her colleagues agreed.
‘When you give your kids too much, they don't appreciate it. If they earn it for themselves, then they appreciate it,’ said Garcia.
The women — ‘we band of sisters,’ according to Garcia — are firm believers in empowering Afghan women because of the influence they have on their sons.
Garcia, born and raised in New York, the daughter of a Puerto Rican father and Guatemalan mother, said Afghan girls especially respond well to them.
‘I'm the same skin colour. I've got the same hair colour. I can see it on the little girls' faces. They're looking at me and saying, 'You're strong' and I'm saying to them, 'No, you're strong',’ she said.
Paktya province, of which Gardez is capital, was once a former Taliban stronghold and is near the Tora Bora mountains where al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden fled in late 2001.
Along with cutting high maternal mortality rates, one of the PRT's main aims is education, particularly of girls, who were banned from attending school when the Taliban held sway.
New educational facilities for boys and girls have been built with US help.
But Garcia said the presence of female soldiers could be just as effective.
‘We hope that we leave behind an impression on the girls,’ she added.
‘They see us jump out of these huge MRAPs (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected armoured vehicles) with these huge guys, wearing the same stuff and doing the same stuff. We're working side by side.’
On patrol, she says: ‘I tell the girls, 'Don't be afraid of the Taliban. The Taliban are afraid of you because you're opening your mind.’