6) Traffic - I've never driven a car in a British colony, having to drive on the opposite side of the road. At Bastion the traffic rules were American and the Brits did most of the driving. They had some obvious problems, including one who put a truck into the moat surrounding the roads there, but by and large you could walk in the middle of the 'road' and not worry about getting hit. Kandahar, unfortunately, is exactly the opposite. I'm not sure of the official acreage, but I'm pretty sure I could walk across the whole base in about 25 minutes. Therefore the number of cars around doesn't make sense - it reminds me of Los Angeles where people drive two blocks to pick up gallon of milk. Don't even think about crossing the street without looking both ways - 10 or 12 times. Nothing should scare you more than a Third Country National (Pakistani, Bengali, Indian) driving a Toyota truck on an American Base in Afghanistan - perilous to say the least. And don't even get me started with the Armored Vehicle 'Student Drivers' - yes they exist and yes I get out the way quickly.
Bastion - 3.5, Kandahar - 0
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| Rows of cars as far as the eye can see. |
7) Efficiency - (Content has been removed for purposes of maintaining a career in the Navy and not being transferred to Adek, Alaska).
Bastion - 4.5, Kandahar - 0
8) Leadership - (Content has been removed for purposes of maintaining a career in the Navy and not being transferred to Adek, Alaska). As an aside, they have a program here called CO for the day where we can vote for a staff member to be the acting Commanding Officer while following the real CO. Apparently they were stuffing the ballot box with my name and by all accounts I should have won in a landslide. But alas, it wasn't to be - I smell a conspiracy here or just repercussions of my nickname here - AWM (Angry White Male).
Bastion 5.5, Kandahar - 0
9) Free Time (Morale, Welfare and Recreation) - Please see the GTL post for the things to do at Bastion. It was austere to say the least and the highlight was the nightly gathering to smoke cigars in between the concrete blast walls. As for Kandahar, there is Monday night yoga, Tuesday and Friday movie night, Wednesday and Saturday poker night, etc. They have official 5 and 10K races every week (yes I ran one and promptly coughed up a dirt ball the size of a watermelon at the end). Also, in their infinite wisdom, they also put in a football field with 'field turf'. FIELD TURF! Am I taking crazy pills - apparently so. They had an inaugural football tournament which was well attended. Unfortunately, as you might be able to tell from the photo below, the field has no easement so as you near the end of the turf there is about 3 centimeters transition of rubber before you careen off into rocks. Good news is that we've only had about five injuries so far - bad news is that there is another tournament coming up next week.
I'm gonna give this one to Kandahar, I do loves me some yoga.
Bastion 5.5, Kandahar - 1.
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| Field Turf and broken bones courtesy of the US Government |
10) Cafeterias (DFACs) - At Bastion I had only two choices - Curry at the British cafeteria, or walk 20 minutes to eat at the Marine side - which, ironically, served Mongolian BBQ every night. I did get a wicked case of food poisoning in October at Leatherneck, but beside that they had a good spread and you were able to take things with you - sodas, chips, cookies, milk, salmonella, etc. At Kandahar we have no less than 5 choices. They have a British cafeteria (no thanks), an Asian cafeteria (right next to the waste facility - again no thanks), Luxemburg (a fairly inaccurate attempt at European fare), Niagra (the American offering) and the Boardwalk - kabobs, pizza, hot dogs and the like. So many choices, so much crap food. This is a tough one, so I'm calling this one a tie, it was just the luck of the draw that I didn't get E. coli here as well.
Bastion - 6, Kandahar - 1.5.
Bastion in a Landslide!!
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| The BASTARDS of Bastion - British/American Surgical Team and Research Department |
192 Days BOG, 219 away from home.
All for now.
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