Diary from Kabul

7-11-2011

One Shoe Tapping: I heard a fact here recently, that I have tried to substantiate, but have been unable to do so. And it goes like this. There are apparently 10,000 single amputees in Afghanistan, those who have lost a single leg from landmines left over from the Russian Occupation, and those who have lost a leg from injuries caused by IED’s during the present struggles. I find this figure conservative, not because I have empirical evidence to the contrary, but simply because every day in Kabul I see dozens of single amputees, supporting themselves with homemade wooden crutches. Or indeed shuffling on their bums or slumped on the floor. Whatever the facts, the proof is that too many lives have been irrevocably undermined.

When you travel in Afghanistan you appreciate that they are a resourceful people. They may not solve problems with quite the keen sense of detail that we have come to expect in the west, because they have no tools and no monies, but often they have the same needs. There is an innovation that we have lost because we have everything, and if it’s broken there is a person who can fix it for us. I am not sure that I can remember how to use a bicycle puncture kit anymore, but if your lorry has a blowout in Afghanistan, every village it seems will have someone who can mend it without any tools at all.

Well they have put this capacity for problem solving to good use for those single amputees. There is a factory in Afghanistan that does not make pairs of shoes anymore, it simply makes a left one, or a right one. You can chose depending upon your needs. Genius!

Zoo Nuts: I expect on reading the title of this little subsection, that you think you are about to read a piece on chimpanzees, but you're not. Well you are in a way, but you are not. Further to my piece on the choice of reading material here at Bastion, I have to report on an incident that would have put W.F. Deedes in his grave, but for the fact he died five years ago. We have a little communal area here that sees a continuity of hospitality throughout the day. As one person leaves, another pops in. I sit there sometimes to write, but always achieve zero because the company is good and ever-present. Scattered on the table are boundless copies of Zoo and Nuts magazines – essential reading here.

Well I confess I have never read any of these titles in my life. I am sure I could make a stab at the contents, but they bring a smile to many a face, and are the source of much debate over whether Jessica-Jane Clement or Alice Goodwin is the more bonny lass – metaphorically speaking. Apparently neither would drown in a shipwreck. An esteemed correspondent from The Telegraph has been staying in the media tent on and off for the past two weeks. He will remain nameless (don’t tell ‘em your name Tom). He is the very essence of erudition and savvy, a man who would know his way around a stately home. On Saturday morning I woke, strolled out to our little communal area, cup of tea at the ready, picked up Thursday’s Telegraph and sat down to peruse the world. Fifteen minutes later ‘Don’t tell ‘em your name Tom’ wondered out, picked up a copy of Nuts, started pointing at the pictures, guffawed and slumped in a happy and contented repose. I presumed it was an antidote to his day job, but maybe it was just Alice!

Shitting in a Bag: Well I want to give you the impression that shitting in a bag is a messy and undignified business, that somehow on first attempt I got it wrong, and sheepishly headed for the laundry. But it was annoyingly easy and hygienic. I do love this bit about it though. You sally with great vigour to a plywood hut erected in the corner of the compound, this is it, the moment you have been waiting for, finally nature and geography have conspired in a neat ‘confluence of ablutions’ and you are ready. Outside is a receptacle full of plastic bags that contain all necessary items. Ripping it open like a child on its birthday the contents explode everywhere, but after retrieval you lay them out in order of size. Firstly you have the bag itself, made of silver foil, the size and shape of a toilet bowl, and with a drawstring handle for tying. Then you have a little packet of neatly folded toilet paper, followed by a hygienic handwash and towel for drying. God bless the army.

The hut itself contains a toilet seat attached to a plywood shelf, with a hole cut where the toilet would be, and you slide you’re your bag over this seat and, well, squeeze. When you look up from your seated position, and the blood returns to your head, you spot a sign on the back of the toilet door, telling you with a ‘ten point’ plan, exactly how to do this. It’s rigorous and forceful and with an already admonishing tone. Whatever you do don’t skip No 5 and head straight for No 6, because the signage suggests that you will be breaking Military Bylaw 276 Subsection C, and a Swat Toilet Team (STT) will abseil from a hovering Apache crashing through the roof and shoot you dead. Well I complied like an unthinking conscript, almost as though it had been written for me. Which I think if I was an unthinking conscript it would have been.

Job done, you retrieve your bag, tie it tight and stick it in a bin outside. The following morning you see a man burning 300 silver bags, and you realise that the world really is full of…

Is a Camel an Option?: There is a team staying here from Land Forces, but they are mostly civvies. They are the Army’s News Team and a fine bunch they are indeed. We had hot chocolate together last night in a Bastion café, and for 45 minutes I felt civilian and normal. When you arrive in theatre you must undertake and complete the R.S.O.I course. This is a five day course that teaches you everything you need to know about eating rice and sewing your own arm back on – it’s wizard I can tell you and each evening at 7pm, exhausted, the News Team files back in looking like Mr Sandman with sunburn. I don’t know of a colour that is a deeper red than crimson, but last night, Derek, their team leader was that colour, and more.

As we dreamed of cream in a can and a flake to complete our Hot Chocolates, we discussed their days training. They had been Valloning, using your metal detector to find IED’s. There was a generally held consensus that things would have gone seriously awry if on a patrol, accompanied by 8 heavily armed professional soldiers, the only two remaining who were able to clear a ‘safe path’ were a middle-aged bloke from Sky with sunburn and a bonny lass from Cyprus. There was a palpable sense of delirium at the thought and we discussed the options. Initially we agreed that we would all just sit down exactly where we had been standing, survey this scene of obvious devastation around us, count the bodies, and cry like babies until our mother’s came and picked us up from school. Then we discussed option two which involved a silver foil bag. Option three initially appeared to be a winner but we dismissed that also. Option three was my suggestion and it’s based upon the theory of ‘fright and flight’. I said that we should just ‘*%&@!*€^ leg it’.

Derek came up with option four which we all agreed was a blinder. Before leaving for Bastion he had very nearly purchased a natty watch from Breitling, that if you pull or push or press something on it, alerts all major search and rescue teams around the globe, helicopters would be scrambled, precise coordinates provided and they would have you out of their before you can say ‘cherry on top’. Unfortunately Derek decided not to buy this watch in the end and here is the reason why. Recently, in London, a friend of his whilst very drunk at a party had decided, ‘Johnny English’ style, to activate his. The authorities in London deduced that a very big plane indeed had crashed in some leafy suburb and emergency services were dispatched in significant numbers. It resulted in a £10,000 fine and a suspended prison sentence. So option four was dead also.

Option Five? Well we are still working on it but it possibly involves three camels!

Desert Rose: At CP’s and PB’s you wee, not in a toilet, but in something called, I think romantically a ‘Desert Rose’. This is a piece of drainpipe, inserted into the desert at 45 degrees. You aim roughly at it and assuming you hit the target the whole thing acts as a ‘micturation’ soak away. It’s very effective though, and a tad smelly, but I do believe it is where the term ‘taking the piss’ comes from.

Whilst staying in a PB last week, I woke in the middle of the night, in need of a middle-aged pee. The tent was pitch dark and cluttered I had no head torch, so I banged and crashed my way out, always teetering on the edge of toppling as you do when the only bit of you that is awake is your bladder. I sleepwalked my way half way around the camp until, in the gloom I finally located the two drainpipes behind the ISO Containers and went about my business. So far this was an incident free process. Curiously though I must report that my return journey of perhaps 80 yards was the most scared I have been since arriving in Afghanistan. I do not jest. I really do not jest!

It was dark and I was still dozing when I started my epic yomp home, and I really couldn’t see where I was going. Soon a silent, threatening silhouette appeared behind me. As I moved to the left so did it, the right, the same. There was no one else around and I couldn’t make out anything in front of me. I felt that certain terror you feel when as a child you get out of bed, place your feet on the carpet, and imagine that someone is lying under the bed waiting to drag you screaming to your death. Your skin crawls and you shiver. So I quickened my pace, and so did it, whatever I did I couldn’t shake my nemesis companion. And this is what I imagined. Within a few hundred yards of our compound were plenty of insurgents, and on an earlier walk around I had spotted several places where a reasonably committed bogeyman could get in. So in my moment of increasing panic my synapses told me that this shape was definitely Talib, and by the morning I would be gone. There would be a cold impression in my unmade bed where I used to be, my possessions would still be neatly arranged where I had left them, and my colleagues would be standing around scratching their heads, trying to put all the pieces together - the missing man. I then imagined the the mocking look on the Navy Seals face as they retrieved me from the Well next November and I knew I was doomed.

I was practically at a gallop by the time I neared my tent, I pulled back the canvass opening, stumbled and crashed my way across bodies and rifles, and fell breathlessly into my sleeping bag at the far end of the tent. I tell no lie when I say I wish I had had a silver foil bag!

Photo of the week: I just report the facts - Nuts!