SGT Major, are you going to eat that cake all by yourself?
I woke up energized and motivated for today’s tasking. We have been planning for weeks to open up a new library for the ANA soldiers and relocate the literacy room to a larger room. I attended our morning meeting and the Sergeant Major unveiled a large chocolate cake. Not sure if he was planning on eating the whole cake by himself or not. If so, he will have to do a lot more running than he has been doing … lol.
After the meeting I went to my metal storage container and loaded up 18 boxes of English books varying in difficulty. Originally I was planning to give them to the village schools, but this act of generosity makes them a target for the insurgency. The insurgents have already burned a lot of schools the US helped build, so instead of making them a viable target, I am going to donate them to the ANA library to assist with their English classes and literacy programs.
Teammates celebrate the last time ammunition has to be inventoried.
After loading the books, I visited my teammates who were still segregating ammunition for the final time. Our property book is almost clear except for the ammunition. Unbeknownst to us, the ammunition is tracked by lot number. The problem is we have been consuming the ammunition at the firing ranges and weren’t tracking the lot numbers. We tracked the number of bullets, but not the lot numbers. So now we have to submit some expenditure reports for the missing lot numbers. The garrison has agreed to take the excess ammunition off of our hands. After this transaction, we won’t own anything and will have to borrow MRAPs, crew serve weapons, and ammo for our missions.
Army SPC leads his ANA soldiers on a run.
I drove to ANA land and hundreds of soldiers were running off the hill sides with their US Army mentors practicing drills with their newly issued NATO M-16 rifles. In my opinion, the ANA soldiers seem more receptive to their military partners training them instead of their overweight and overpaid US contractors. Seldom have I seen a contractor train the ANA soldiers outside a controlled classroom environment and I have never seen them run with their trainees. But I have witnessed the effectiveness of the Marine ETTs and Army mentors in the field with their ANA recruits and observed them on joint patrols together. I also read recently where XE (formerly Blackwater) lost a 1.1 billion dollar contract to
New ANA soldiers practicing patrol drills.
train the Afghan National Police recruits. Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) made a valid point when she said, “We’ve got 2 kinds of organizations that are performing the same functions, one responds to money, and the other responds to duty.” Note: As I mentioned in the past, I am not opposed to contractors being well paid, but I am flabbergasted when the parent company charges the US taxpayers double and triple that amount. I suppose its pure coincidence these large companies who receive no-bid contracts also contribute heavily to certain party’s campaign coffers. Taxpayers should be appalled and CEOs should be ashamed or at least feel guilty when they are tallying their profits!!
As I got closer to the old library building, I suspected the ANA were not ready to relocate the existing library books, tables, and chairs. I didn’t see a truck to move the items and there were very few soldiers standing around. While I waited for our interpreter to sort out the details, I entertained the soldiers milling about. They were curious what was inside the boxes and one soldier who spoke broken English understood my purpose. I handed out a few books and the soldiers paged through them staring at the pictures, while others practiced their rudimentary enunciation of the words on the page. It didn’t take long before a dozen soldiers were swarming around my vehicle intrigued by their peers activities. One soldier quietly stuck a book in his pocket and I had my interpreter Omid approach him. The soldier proclaimed I gave it to him as a gift. Omid explained these books were for the future library so all of the ANA soldiers could enjoy them. The soldier was embarrassed and returned the book.
After about 20 minutes of waiting, the ANA officers decided it was better to wait until after the Afghan New Year before relocating the library and literacy room. They tried hard to persuade me to part with my books, but I chose to keep a hard stance. The deal was after the tables, chairs, and books were relocated, then I will donate these books to the library. I want the ANA soldiers to operate on their own instead of us having to do everything for them. So now we rescheduled for next week. I am not holding my breath, but will wait and see.
ANA Canteen to buy snacks and goodies.
While at their building I walked inside and took a picture of their canteen. This little store sells nuts, candy, soda, potato chips and other snacks to the ANA soldiers. Outside the building there were several soldiers and Afghan civilians planting pine trees. With the upcoming New Year, the country traditionally plants trees and this might be part of the government program similar to Arbor Day in the US. Last year, 35 million trees were planted. This year the plan is to plant 25 million saplings and fruit trees. Hopefully they will fare better than last year, in which 30-40% of them were destroyed, used for firewood, stolen, etc.
Planting saplings before the New Year.
I returned back to camp and watched Old Glory flying freely in the wind. It made me stop and think. We are so blessed to live in the country we do. Not only do I miss my wife, family, and dogs, but I miss the freedoms associated with being in America. We take so many of our basic freedoms for granted and until you visit a place like this and see people basically struggling for survival, you can’t really appreciate what we have or have been given. God has blessed America!
Old Glory flaps freely in the wind.
Filed under: Mentoring ANA Tagged: | Afghan National Army, Afghan National Police, Afghanistan, ammunition, ANA, ANP, contractor, Deployment, ETT, inventory, library, literacy, Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO), war, XE (formerly Blackwater)
