Happy New Years. This holiday season has been anything but jolly. I don’t remember anything special this time around. I think it gave me a new perception of Christmas and New Year’s. I remember getting my guitar out and started strumming annoying chords, screaming Happy New Year’s. A Sea Stallion flew by then and that was about it.
CPT Guardiano needs to calm down a little. He’s takling about having us go on leave and we can all tell he needs one pretty badly. If anything, this Djibouti thing has been a lot of blessing, mostly because CPT G took himself out of our tents, the 3rd PLT from KNB and Arifjan is again reunited, the workload is much lower, there is no HQ element bothering us about the smallest thing, there is no politics here because it’s a CJTF (combined joint tast forces) base and specializes in being the safe haven for Special Forces, the bathroom is across the road and the post office isn’t a mile and a half away, the chow is great although now we don’t have Subway or Burger King but then that means we’re saving more money, and I’ve finally been to a new continent Africa, which my mother had always dreamed of coming as a missionary.
On the 5th, Roberson took off with Perez and Tayo to go on leave. Well, couple hours before that we had a chance to go to a party that the special forces guys invited Fitz to. They wanted to see more girls there, but Perez and Lopez were busy on the phone at the post office and never showed up. I never thought I would have a beer with special forces guys and just hang out with them, but it was a cool experience. It was probably the only time that I will ever do anything like that. Talked to Ryan of Seals Task Force, and I could tell this was one of those people I didn’t want to mess around with.
On the 6th, I got to go on a ‘force protection’ mission. On a MWR trip, they needed 2 armed soldiers and 1 medic to go on this boat trip. Well, I was one of those ‘armed soldiers’. All I had was a Berreta 9mm pistol and 30 rounds in 2 magazines. Well, after we got on the boat, me and Fitz quickly realized there was very little force protection to do. So we pretty much put our weapons in our backpacks and dove right in. There was a couple scares. I think it was the French Army helicopters on that island we had ‘sailed’ to that was practicing taking off and boarding soldiers on it, with AA guns on the island, too. At one point the helicopter just made like it was about to straff across our boat and me and Fitz were saying to each other, ‘you ready?’ It was cool seeing that helicopter up there like that making a pass at us, but at the same time it wasn’t. Then we just said fuck it and dove right in. Fitz took a little bit to persuade, but it didn’t take long before both of us found fins on our feet and snorkelled to the beach about a mile away. There were so many corral reefs and beautiful fish vivid in the green waters in the likes which I haven’t seen since Hawaii. Came back, had some bread and salad for lunch, and just baked in the sun till it was time to back home again. I had a great talk with Fitz there and back, and we felt kind of guilty we got to go on the $35 boat trip for free because we were ‘force protection’ except we didn’t really do too much of that. I got sunburned for the first time in about 5 years and I thought to myself, wow, maybe this isn’t so bad after all. I was actually happy that I got sunburned. 2 days later today it still hurts, but I’ve become much more content with my life. On the way there and back, we had to go through a couple Djiboutian cities. It’s only about 20, 30 minute drive away, but I saw what Africa had to offer: nothing. There’s nothing there but poverty. The only building of any significance was the soccer stadium that was torn up and surrounded by acres of trash ridden fields, itself not void of huge bullet holes and obvious buiding deterioration. There was a huge water flooding in the streets on the way there, and it had grown to a larger proportion on our way back. The roads were obviously in need of serious reconstruction, there were chidren running on bare foot playing soccer in the dirt with cones serving as goalposts, and the school was not so much as a school but a haven for kids to grow up together in an environment. Seeing how beautiful the beach of Djibouti is, I seriously think that if they had been of better fortune, they could have been very profitable with just tourism alone. I heard from some people that it’s one of the top 10 diving places in the world and very high on the hottest place on earth list. Not only is it HOT, but it’s humid. I mean, we’re only 20, 30 minute drive from the beach, going through the bad road and cramped neighborhoods as we did, but it’s 85, 90 degrees out in JANUARY.
We share the airfield with the French air force and well, they’ve been using it quite often lately. It gets really loud during the nights and we can barely talk to each other while it’s going. There’s always a wingman that takes off shortly afterwards, so for about 2, 3 minutes, we can’t really talk any sense to each other.
Sooner or later, I want to go on the Sea Stallion helicopter ride, go on the plane ride with Special Forces doing HALO jumps, shoot a 50 cal sniper rifle, go on a few ranges, go and fight like a man and die like a man at the kill house, go to the beach again a couple times, visit Ethiopia and Kenya with CA (Civil Affairs) and Honor Guard, and visit Qatar to ake money exchanges with Finance. Honor Guard is already in both places, B Company anyway, and they’ve come to be really cool with us. Since we’re postal and EVERYONE needs mail everyday, we get to know everyone or key contacts well.
Helicopters have been flying by more often lately, too. It’s exciting to hear them, but seeing how they’re parked so close to our base less than 600 meters away from where we live and 200 meters from where we work, it’s been pretty loud. There’s everyone here. Navy mostly does EMU, or TMC counterpart of the Army, but there are SEALS at work here, too. Air Force is here, too, but I think most of them are Controllers, special forces. Army is here, of course, with us and Honor Guard doing the only on call threat response team in camp, and Marines are in control of most of the base, although it’s mostly a joint task force. Even the CO and the XO are Marine officers.