Tent Living [Part 1]

Hey everyone, Matt here this time. It's been months and months since I've written my own post on this blog, and I think it's time that I finally catch you all up on what's been going on over here for the past 8 months. I'll try to break the posts up into interesting categories over the next few weeks. I have quite a few photos to share, most of which are of Blackhawks, and I look forward to sharing them with you.

For this first post I'm going to show you what my living spaces have been during this deployment. Things have gone from not-so-great to it's-so-bad-it's-funny, but they've finally settled at a point where I can honestly say that I have more than I ever could have expected.

This first photo is from my original bed after arriving to Afghanistan. I only occupied this from mid-July until mid-August when we moved away from where the rest of the brigade was located and out to our remote site to set up medevac operations. As you can see, I had a top bunk. I didn't mind living here and the month went by very quickly. The worst part was that there was not much space due to packed tents (they're still packed, a lot of people have lived like this the entire deployment).

After leaving MES for our remote site in Meymaneh, I found myself in a huge tent known as a DRASH tent. Here's what the outside of it looks like:

These are actually very high quality tents that came from the Air Force. When we arrived to Meymaneh there were three of them set up, two of which were designated for our use. At this point we thought we had it made as we had a lot more space, but instead of beds we were downgraded to cots. Here's what my space looked like (most people had two cots -- one to keep their stuff off the ground, and one to sleep on).

The DRASH tents were nice but they weren't a long-term solution. The generators that came with them and corresponding HVAC units were excellent machines, but we had no one to service them or fix them when they broke. The result was a few weeks without air conditioning, but at least the nights were fairly cool.

Some time in October we moved into tents that were built for us by local Afghans. The contract was part of an "Afghan First" initiative which, from what I understand, is a program designed to pour money into the local economy by awarding contracts to local contractors using locally made products and materials. The idea is probably a good one, but these tents were a several hundred thousand dollar disaster. Nevertheless, they would become our home for the next four months.

Check back in a few days for more details on the places I've lived so far...