Sandstorms and Toby Keith

The sand/dust storms here are something fierce. And they happen so suddenly just out of nowhere. One minute you’re standing there in the middle of conversation when a gusty breeze blows up dust and sand in your face. Then the gust settles and you open your eyes and can’t see a hundred feet in front of you (typically, although they’ve been much denser than that). It’s like being in a brown hazy fog. Working at night (as I often do) everything in your immediate area may still seem clear so if you’re not paying attention you may not make much notice of it until morning light. I discovered that first hand. It was the middle of the night so I didn’t notice when I walked for about 5 minutes from one building to another. When I got back inside and saw a mirror, my eyelashes and eyebrows where white and my hair looked as though I had put in blonde highlights. The hair on my legs was white. Now that’s a scary sight. It’s especially bad when we’re stuck working outside in it for hours on end. The dust is so fine and gets in EVERYTHING. It coats the insides of your ears and turns nose hairs that you didn’t know you had white. We look especially funny walking around in full camouflage from head to toe with bright blue or white surgical masks on. We can only pray that our touchy plumbing is working when we get a chance to go shower that day. No one wants to be the person still wearing the previous day’s dust highlights the day after. It would be kind of hard to play that off.

In other news, Toby Keith was here last week. He was actually scheduled to do a meet and greet autograph signing right here on our camp. That’s notable since our camp is so small, discreet, and highly secured due to the nature of our work. One could easily walk between the two furthest points of the camp within 20 minutes to give you an idea. I wouldn’t be categorized as a country music fan for sure but I do like some of it. In fact I’ve had two country songs on my computer and both happened to be by Toby Keith so I was kind of excited to hear about the signing. Unfortunately, it was cancelled. He did however, perform a free concert the next day at a neighboring camp. Of course I had to work so was unable to attend. Some of the other guys managed to get someone to cover their shift for them so they could go. Of course for most all of them there was some price to pay since nobody is particularly eager to work during their precious off time. But who could not be won over by some of Toby Keith’s moving patriotic songs like American Soldier and The Taliban Song? As you might guess, there are some (and by that I mean A LOT) avid country fans and certainly among those are plenty of Toby Keith fanatics. So it was a big deal and a serious morale booster for a lot of people. Especially since someone in my unit had connections with the people providing Keith's security and was able to get everyone from only my unit a special trip after the concert to meet Keith and get autographs and such. That was surely awesome for them.

 Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers and wives out there nurturing and upholding your families. You've got the most honorable job in the world if you ask me.