The Kandahar Kid

This is a story I helped write!  (and I took the picture).  It is on USO's homepage.  It is about a soldier who got to witness his first child being born in the states via Skype.  So far it's been my proudest moment of working for the USO.  :)

Here is the link: The Kandahar Kid

REPRESENT

Through the four years of my education at Central Catholic High School a few things were repetitiously ingrained in my brain:

1. The sun shines inside you and me.
2. Always leave enough room for the Holy Spirit while dancing
3. You represent CCHS when you are in uniform, no matter where you are, so do us proud.

While working as a recruiter at Marshall, the same mantra was in place.  I represented Marshall to students who may have never even heard of it, so I needed to make Marshall proud.

Now in Afghanistan, I represent so many things.  I represent the USO.  Even when in a PX buying laundry detergent, someone will say, hey USO girl.  I represent WV.  Countless soldiers have told me they have never been to WV, and they’ll ask what’s it like.  When I go to big social functions, a different nation’s DFAC (dining facility) or to the French compound I represent the entire United States!  It’s sometimes exhausting to constantly feel “on.” 

That’s why I’m so glad to have some genuine friends here.  That way I can belt out any song that pops in my head, or horribly imitate Shakira’s dance moves with some mangled gyrations, or wear bunny ears for no reason all with lots of laughter and little judgement.

In other news, I am SUPER excited to be going to Uganda at the end of this month to see Natalie Committee!  When Natalie first told me she wanted to go to Uganda I was so excited for her!  I told her I’d come visit, but at the time I thought, yeah I have no money to do that.  I’m so happy that I’ve been blessed to now be able to visit and see the work she’s been doing.  When Natalie was gearing up to go to Uganda and I was first going through my interview process for this position, my sister Gretchen was in India, and I was bursting at the seams to tell someone who would think what I was doing was sane!  Natalie was my go to gal.

I’m also looking forward to experiencing a new culture, possibly going on a safari and just playing with kids.  It’s kind of odd here to never see a kid, never hear a cry or giggle while at the restaurant or at the PX.  Most times I don’t realize it, but then after I call Ang or Erin and hear the chattering of kids in the background, I remember.  I’ve babysat all my life, then was a live-in nanny for Christian and Faith, and proceeded to live a block down the street from them for the past 2 years.  I miss chasing them, laughing with them, and hearing their crazy stories.

Three and half months in and it’s still super hard to say goodbye to people.  Since we are a large base, troops that are redeploying (going home) or just getting here before going downrange (out to FOBs or COPs) are usually stuck here for a week or two.  They usually don’t have missions to go on, so they are free most of the day.  Some will volunteer at the center.

So just imagine getting a new coworker, work directly beside them at a shared desk for 10 hours a day for 2 weeks straight, train them, develop a repertoire where you know what tasks they prefer and which you prefer, eat meals with them, joke together, talk about family, friends, and your favorite things, maybe even experience a bonding experience like a fire alarm (or rocket attack) where you have to stand outside in the cold for a half hour.  Now say goodbye and probably never see them again…EVER.  It’s a little jarring.  I always wonder who will stay in my life and who will slowly inevitably fade away.   What’s the quote?  Even though they may stay for only a moment they can leave an impression on you that lasts a lifetime. 

"Real life"

I believe that the kind of people you surround yourself with is the kind of person you want to become.  Obviously, you share some similarities with them, some common interests, or you probably wouldn’t’ have met them to begin with.  I look at my closest group of friends and not one of them is exactly like me, because I admire qualities in them that I don’t possess.  They all have qualities that I strive to obtain. 

In elementary school I was in a class of 10.  We were all friends; if not for any other reason than necessity, there were only 10 of us.  Then once we arrived in the big scary world of high school there were choices!  What lunch table you sat at became your label as flagrantly as if it were stamped on your forehead.  My girls were nicknamed, “The Jesusans.”  Now if we were nicknamed The Jesusans at a Catholic high school, you know we must have been some good kids.  Through those pivotal adolescent years they were my stabilizing force, my moral compass, my peer pressure, my sounding board, in short, my life.  They were my girls I went to with every question, and we experienced every coming of age moment together.  I am so thankful that it was those girls; I know I chose wisely. :)

Some of The Jesusans

Then came public university time.  Without knowing anyone but my sister, I was in a brand new world.  This was the time to truly “find myself.”  Without the preconceptions of my high school persona, I could invent myself.  The first two years I stumbled around with different friends, but I think I finally found my footing by Junior year and had my core group of close friends.  Again, they shaped and molded the person I became.

All throughout this time of course I had the constant encouragement and love of my mother, father, sisters and extended family.  More than anyone else, through their own example (and basically not putting up with any of my other bullsh*t) they have been the ones to keep me in check to ensure that I am open-minded, slow to anger, quick to forgive, caring, compassionate, happy, and humorous.

So now that I am in Afghanistan, thousands of miles from every single person that has shaped who I am…who am I?  I was eating brunch today with a new friend when he asked me, “So what are you like in real life?”  Real life…real life, what is that?  It seems everyone over here uses the term, it just rolls off the tongue when referring to life where you pay bills and live in an apartment where you have your own bathroom, and go to work during the day, and make dinner at night, and oh yeah, aren’t in an active warzone.  Anyway, I started thinking, am I different here than stateside?  If I am, then why?  According to all those pretty cards and magnets and calendars and facebook statuses, I should “be true to myself and not apologize” or some witty variant of that.

It’s just an odd world to be without anyone who knows me and more importantly has played an integral part in what I have become.  To add to that, the people that do know me are amazingly supportive, but they haven’t been where I am, they can’t truly 100% grasp what is going on.  So the question remains how do I stay true to my genuine self and not get lost by adapting in this crazy world.

Well, sorry, if you’re expecting a emotionally gripping Hallmark movie conclusion to this post, because I don’t have the answers.  I’m still trying to figure it all out.  What I can come up with so far is to surround myself with people here who mirror people I know back home.  It wasn’t a conscious effort.  It just sort of happened, but when I talk to someone and think, wow, they really remind me of Luke, or that sounded like Emily, or they just checked my attitude like Beth, that’s my reassuring sign.  For better or worse, I’m still me.

 And I choose to be the best that I can be.

I choose to be authentic in everything I do.

My past don't dictate who I am. 

I choose.

Because you never know where life is gonna take you 

and you can't change where you've been.

But today, I have the opportunity to choose.

Release the guilt about why things happen the way they did 

cuz life is gonna do what it do.

And everyday, I have the opportunity to choose.

-India.Arie “I Choose”

Love actually is all around.

I was feeling pretty down about Christmas.  Being in Afghanistan can do that to you.  I was missing my family and friends.  I was trying to decide whether or not to go to mass tomorrow morning.  Part of me wanted to go to experience Christmas mass in Afghanistan with other soldiers who are missing their family and friends and praying for peace and holding onto that precious glimmer of faith...while the other half (the louder more obnoxious half) was screaming: just try to forget it's Christmas at all and pretend it's just another day!  I knew that living and working here would be a lesson in selflessness, but man, I wanted to be selfish!  I wanted my parents to send me presents, I wanted some sort of surprise, I wanted a grand Christmas just for me!  With none of that occurring, I was feeling crappy and started getting ready for bed.  I also put, "I'll Be Home for Christmas" on repeat on my laptop.  Very bad idea, very very bad idea.  Have you really listened to those lyrics?  It's depressing!  I'll be home for Christmas if only in my dreams...I mean that's the stuff of popping some sleeping pills and trying to forget the next two days!  Anyway, I decided to check my e-mail and had one from my friend Steph.  She wrote the following:


I know you're probably having a really hard time right now with Christmas being tomorrow...I know I would be. But I'm glad you decided to work tomorrow instead of sitting in your room by yourself. I know you will make the Soldiers so happy on Christmas just by being your happy, bubbly self. And that's what they need now, but you do too. You guys need one another on the holidays.


She's right.  That line, "you guys need one another on the holidays," hit me like a sack of bricks.  I immediately thought of all my guys and how excited they'll be tomorrow and how I can't wait to hug 'em and give 'em a present from the USO.  I thought of how I'll wear some antlers and the Christmas trees I helped re-decorate today will be glowing.  I thought of how they would smile and then I thought of how it would make me smile.  Earlier today a soldier said, hey, can I have a hug, my sister told me I should get a hug for Christmas.  It was funny, so Cindy, my coworker and I gave him and his buddy a hug before they left and they were smiling from ear to ear.  These thoughts  started to reassure me, but not completely lift me out of my funk.


I closed the e-mail and walked down the hallway of my mod (modular housing unit) to the bathroom to get ready for bed and on the way back I saw a pair of combat boots outside a bedroom door.  I saw them earlier and thought why are those there, but ignored it.  This time it hit me.  I think I remember something about shoes outside doors on Christmas...something about St. Nick filling them with goodies!  After a quick google to make sure I wasn't making things up and this was a tradition, I started tearing through my drawers looking for treats from care packages others had sent me.  I found the M&Ms Lauren sent me, the peppermint patties Sarah Y gave me, the granola bar Sarah Y's mom sent me, the candy canes Sara D sent me, the chapstick Sarah R sent me, and the rice krispie treats Ang sent me.  The Rice Krispie treat wrapper had a section to write on it.  I scribbled, "Merry Christmas! Love, St. Nick."  I got so excited to fill those boots!  It filled me with so much giddiness, like a child opening their presents on Christmas!  I got to give someone else the feeling of Christmas.  They could've opened up their door to disappointment, but I got to help renew a lil hope.  

Now maybe I'm totally off course, and they really just had smelly boots, so they put them outside and they're going to say what in the world?! when they open the door and see the candy filled shoes, but maybe, just maybe, they were hoping for some sign of goodness and I confirmed it.  Maybe, God works in mysterious ways, and my horrible mood was first shifted by Steph's email that reminded me of why I'm here and then I was presented with an opportunity to fulfill that work.  Those boots had been there for hours, but I had been to ignorant and too self-involved in my own pity party to really see them.  


Life is full of boots in hallways, these signs that are unobtrusive in our world, but if we just quiet our selfish, busy, skeptical, selves for a little while we can truly see what they are there for.  


Merry Christmas!

Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around. - Hugh Grant in Love Actually

Young American Girl Lost in the Middle East

This would be the headline that would run across the bottom of the screen as the hunky Anderson Cooper would rattle on…from a small town in West Virginia where the local airport has only one gate to the streets of Dubai where she was never seen again…

Stuck in Dubai without a working phone, any of the local money or any idea of what was going on, I started to ponder, I wonder what Facebook profile pic my parents will chose to use on my missing ad.

It all started when I decided to be cheap.  I wanted a cheap ticket to Miami so I could go on a cruise with my parents and sister.  It costs $1000 just to get from Kandahar to Dubai alone, plus the flight from Dubai to Miami; therefore I was pretty dedicated to my mission of a cheap ticket.  I scoured the internet to no avail, until a Special Forces guy volunteered to help me and found a ticket for a really great price!  Mistake #1 NEVER trust a guy in the Special Forces.  The ticket looked simple enough: I’d fly from Dubai to Abu Dhabi then to London then to Miami.  I even read it aloud (Mistake #2 ALWAYS have someone LOOK at the ticket prior to purchasing) to my seasoned veteran world traveling coworkers to make sure it sounded correct to them.  I purchased the tickets and I’m on my way.

I fly out of Kandahar, no problem, get to Dubai at 7:30 pm. Then my Cheap Tickets Itinerary says and I quote:

“Etihad Airways 5529/Economy/BUS/1 hour 20 mins

11:30 pm Dubai

12:50 am Abu Dhabi

Your flight is confirmed.  The airline will assign seats at check-in.

Connect from bus.”

I assumed this meant I go business class (BUS) on a short 1 hour 20 minute FLIGHT to Abu Dhabi and then have to take some shuttle to a different terminal.  I follow the flow of traffic, I even double check with a woman worker at the airport who assures me to go to Abu Dhabi I need to go through customs.  I retrieve my luggage, go through customs, and WHAM!  I’m outside.  Ummmm wait, where’s my connecting flight?

There is no information desk, just some rental car hubs.  I suck in my breath, tell my self to stay calm and go up to the woman who looks the nicest, the Budget counter.  She looks at my itinerary and says, oh this is leaving from Abu Dhabi, you need to take a bus or taxi.  Say what?  (Mistake #3 BUS does not mean Business Class, it means literally a bus, that thing with wheels that transports people).  She said you need to call them.  I explain I don’t have a phone, she says okay I’ll call what’s the number, ummmm I don’t have a number to call.  (Mistake #4 ALWAYS have a phone number for your airline).  I open my laptop to try to google it, and there is no wifi in that part of the airport.  Thankfully, my phone works to text.  I text my coworker, Joan in Afghanistan and ask her to google the number to Etihad, my airline.  Meanwhile the wonderfully sweet Budget worker calls her personal friend who flew Etihad recently and said yeah, you have to take a bus.  Crap.  I don’t have that much time, I can’t miss my flight to London and then my flight to Miami and then I’ll miss the cruise ship!!!!  Deep breath, don’t go there, you can handle this, I repeat silently.

Okay, well where’s the bus station?  “Near Applebees,” she replies.  Dubai is huge, I’m pretty sure there is going to be more than one Applebees, hell there is more than one in the greater Wheeling area!  Budget worker woman lets me use her phone I call Etihad and they say that I don’t go to the bus station, I go to their headquarters on Shegzai Street.  All seems well, but I think more about it and realize, do I really want to jump in a cab with a driver who probably doesn’t speak English in a middle eastern country as a single female by myself and go to this “headquarters” to hop on a “bus” to go to an “airport” all because one strange voice on a phone says, yep that’s what you should do.  I feel like this is a lesson in How to Get Human Trafficked 101. 

I have my trusty coworker Joan text me the phone number of essentially our boss’s boss who lives in Dubai.  I debate on what is the best wording to convey, “Can you help me, I’m an idiot, who is totally screwed, but I swear I’m still a totally competent worker!”  Luckily, she assured me that what the Etihad woman had told me on the phone was correct and this was the correct procedure.  Good, phew, good to go.  Then Budget worker asks me if I have dimars to pay the cab driver.  What?!  I didn’t even think of that.  She assures me it won’t cost more than 100 dimars and shows me where the money exchange place is.  Money exchanged, address in hand, girl with a plan, I’m ready to go.  I look up to figure out the name of the Budget worker who has literally just saved my trip for me, “Grace.”  My saving Grace.  So I’m not so good at always realizing the blessings in my life, but I got the pretty blatant sign big man, thank you God!

In the end, I made the bus, and the connecting flights and spent a blissful cruise week with my mom, dad and Gretchen.  It was exactly what I needed and wanted. 

God Bless you and yours this Christmas season!  May you not ignore the blessings God has provided for you!

Hugging my family in Miami after almost 3 months in Afghanistan.

Three Cups of Tea

I just finished a book given to me by my sister once she found out I was going to Afghanistan.  It’s called Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Relin.  It is about an American mountain climber who failed to climb K2.  Injured and lost, a village in Pakistan took him in and nursed him back to health.  He asked what he could do in return to thank them and they said build us a school.  Since then he has built 131 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

I found the book slow to start and sometimes his tone seemed very arrogant to me, but overall the book was extremely interesting and gave me an amazing insight into this foreign land that I am living. www.threecupsoftea.com  

I am living in Afghanistan, but I feel so removed from it.  I’m not allowed outside the wire, and mostly no one is allowed in, so here I am in the middle of Afghanistan but in my own little world.  The first time I saw an Afghan child was at the bazaar last Saturday.  They looked so sickly.  The images still stick in my head.  If I’m in Afghanistan, and I can feel removed from the fighting, how do Americans stateside feel?

“He wondered how the distance that he felt in the Pentagon affected the decisions made in the building.  How would his feelings about the conduct of the war change if everything he’d just seen the boys who had lost their potato salesman father, the girls with the blowing-over blackboard, and all the wounded attempting to walk the streets of Kabul with the pieces of limbs the land mines and cluster-bombs had left them, were just numbers on a laptop screen.”

I think we can all feel this way.  If war casualties are just flashes on a ticker on the bottom of CNN or the fallen young men that gave their lives in Vietnam are just names on a black wall in the middle of Washington, we lose the meaning of their sacrifice.

We’ve been at war in Afghanistan for 9 years.  Before, during, and after this time, extremists are building wahhabi madrassas.  These are schools that indoctrinate the students with extremist ideas and raises them to only know hatred for Westerners and jihad as a way of life. 

Mortensen says, “I’ve learned that terror doesn’t happen because some group of people somewhere like Pakistan or Afghanistan simply decide to hate us.  It happens because children aren’t being offered a bright enough future that they have a reason to choose life over death.”

My friend, Natalie Committee, is volunteering for a year in Uganda to help the women there provide for themselves and their families.  Natalie mentions this same sort of theme in her blog that Mortensen does.  Natalie writes:  “The point is that many of us have been told since we were little that we could be anything we want to be.  Many of the girls here, on the other hand, have grown up seeing the other women in their lives treated as inferior beings, not worthy of a proper education, working hard their whole lives and still struggling just to survive.  In addition to that, their country and their lives have been ripped apart by the devastation of war and violence, leaving them with many bad memories and few opportunities for a productive future.  So when I ask them about their dreams, it is no wonder that I was met with nervous giggles and blank faces.”

http://thebusinessofgiving.wordpress.com/

All over the world, young men and women do not have the opportunities we do.  They have no hopes and dreams, because they can’t picture a future without war, violence, greed and destruction.  If you don’t care about the poor and starving children elsewhere in the world, if you would like to claim it’s just their problem, well then maybe you would want to help for even selfish reasons.  These children, the ones who are poor and suffering, who have no opportunities, are the ones who are going to take the opportunity to make $100 burying a land mine on a route for American troops.

Mortenson discussing the cost of the war in Afghanistan says, “for that much money you could build dozens of schools that could provide tens of thousands of students with a balanced nonextremist education over the course of a generation.  Which do you think will make us more secure?”

I’m not writing this to preach or to state certain views.  I'm writing this because this book got me thinking, and I wanted to provide an impetus for people to start thinking too.  Think about all the opportunities you have, think about the world you were born into, and think about the world you want to leave.  I'm over here because I support our troops and I believe that they are helping the people of Afghanistan.  I just hope that once the dust settles, we will continue to help them rebuild, so the cycle of intolerance does not continue it’s eternal spin of hatred and death.

“You have to attack the source of your enemy’s strength.  In America’s case, that’s not Osama or Saddam or anyone else.  The enemy is ignorance.  The only way to defeat it is to build relationships with these people, to draw them into the modern world with education and business.  Otherwise the fight will go on forever.” – Brigadier General Bashir Baz of Pakistan in Three Cups of Tea

Operation Christmas for Our Troops

We are so excited to make Christmas presents for our troops that come into our center!  Please help us make it happen by donating any of the above supplies!  I also have a flyer that can be used for churches or groups if you would like me to e-mail it to you, please don't hesitate to contact me: skemp@uso.org.

We need all donated items to be shipped on Monday, December 6th, to ensure they get here in time for us to give them out on Christmas Day. The cheapest shipping method is to use Priority Mail APO/FPO Flat Rate Boxes from the US Postal Service that ship regardless of weight for $12.50 each. Please send boxes to the following address (note there is no street address, and Kandahar and Afghanistan are NOT included anywhere in the address):



Sarah Kemp
USO
APO AE 09355

Our troops sacrifice so much and we look forward to giving them a sense of “Home Away from Home” as they open their Christmas present from all the men and women back home in the states who are thinking about them.

Thank you for being a part of Operation Christmas for Our Troops!