Letter From Afghanistan #07

Another week has finally come to a close and all I can say is thank God.  We are quickly approaching the half way point and that is always good news.  A lot of the Army people that we work with are jealous and often tell us that they wish they had joined the Air Force instead of the Army simply for the shorter deployments.  There are always pros and cons to every decision we make and we have to learn to live with them.

Last week I talked about how Megan and I got engaged prior to me leaving for this deployment.  After I had finished the letter I remembered that Rosemary inn Idaho had had emailed me with a couple of questions about Megan that I intended to share with you all.  She was wondering what she is doing currently.  Well, she is still living in Washington and she works at the State Law Library in Olympia, Washington.  She has been working there since just before we met.  She is originally from Michigan and came out to Washington for her job.  Asides from working and planning the wedding in May she has also decided to go to graduate school to get her Masters in Secondary Education with the hopes of becoming a High School History teacher.  This career will work well with the military since teachers are something that are needed everywhere and with moving around it will hopefully make it a little easier to find jobs in the different places that we will live.

I also received an email from Mel in Iowa a couple of weeks back and he was wondering a few things about the FOB and the local area that I thought that I would share with everyone.  He asked about the construction of the buildings here on the FOB and whether they were constructed specifically for us or if they were already here when we built the FOB.  The buildings that are here on the FOB were actually constructed for our arrival.  There are actually quite a few tents in the area but they have been built up slightly with plywood and so they have the feel of an actual building.  There are some actual hardened buildings and some of them are where some of us sleep now.  If you look on Google Earth you can look at satellite pictures of the area and you will see buildings that look like they are made of cement.  These are actually the homes of the Afghani people.  Many of them are constructed from rocks and baked mud.  We have a couple of walls here on the FOB that are the remnants of some of those homes and thought you would think that the mud wouldn’t make them very strong, they are actually quite solid. 

Mel was also wondering about the power here on the FOB and whether it came from off base or if we generated our own.  We generate our own power here on the FOB as is common on most FOBs.  There are generators that are scattered throughout the FOB and as I sit here and type I can hear the one outside of our tent humming away.  One of the problems with using power from off of the FOB, especially in third world countries, is that the power can be rather unreliable.  The other issue that we would have to face with power from off base is that it more easily interrupted by those that want to stop our operations.  By generating our own power we have more control over our power situation.  Many times while I am walking to work at night I look out at the village outside of the FOB and depending on the day you can tell if they have power or not, but it is completely random.

Now that we have power in our rooms and I have finally been able to move back down there, I have been enjoying the increase in privacy and the increased efficiency of the air conditioning.  The one thing that I have not been enjoying is the increase in noise.  One of the down sides to living in an area with a large group of people is that you will often run into people that have no consideration for others.  The problem that we have here is that the rooms have hallway running in between them all there is a roof over the top of the whole thing that causes a really bad echo.  The walls of the rooms are rather thin and so generally you can hear everything that is said in the hallway.  The real issue is that since we all work different shifts there are people that are sleeping during all hours of the day and though the people who work during the day, and sleep at night, know that we are trying to sleep, they don’t make any effort to minimize the noise.  On an almost daily basis we have to tell at least some one to be quiet so that we can sleep.  I have resorted to sleeping with earplugs in, which will work well until I sleep through my alarm.

Before I sign off for another week I would like to thank a couple of people for sending letters and care packages.  First, I would like to thank the Brandt family for the card and the package that they sent.  I always love to hear from people back home to hear how things are going back there.  I would also like to thank Sue Bicknell and the staff at the State Library in Bismarck for the boxes that they sent.  It took only a few minutes for everything in the boxes to disappear as everyone.  I was especially excited to see the new Brad Paisley CD.  Since we only have a limited PX here that really only carries a limited supply of a few items, we don’t really get a whole lot of anything for entertainment and this CD was one of the many on my list that I want to get when I get home.  I also want to thank everyone for their emails and for keeping us all in their thoughts and prayers.

I would love to hear from all of you.  Please feel free to email me at john.iraq@hotmail.com or you can send letters to:

SSgt John B. Ferderer

Task Force Pegasus

HHC 2-82 (SWO) Task Force Corsair

APO AE 09355

If you have any questions please feel free to send them to me and I will do my best to answer them.  I always enjoy hear from people back at home.  For those of you that would like to send care packages, you are more than welcome to do so.  Everything that is sent to me is shared with everyone here on the FOB.

Have a great week and a great Air Force Day!