Thursday, November 12, 2009

A rollercoaster I never want to ride again and a bright idea


So, Halloween. I'm sure everyone had a good time. Its that fun time of year where you can dress up as the latest pop culture icons (I saw that Jon and Kate were popular this year) and go out and party and search for candy. I personally went as a paratrooper deployed to Afghanistan. Well anyways, my Halloween will now be forever memorable because I was involved in my very first (and hopefully last) vehicle rollover. Now you have to understand, Afghanistan doesn't have a very good infrastructure. One of the signs of the a good infrastructure is the development of road. We, however, were travelling on one of those "nondeveloped" roads. We were heading out to a checkpoint to train some of the Afghan National Police. This checkpoint is on top of a hill that overlooks a large portion of the Helmand River valley. Mind you, my truck is a 19 ton Mine Resistant Vehicle. The road we took was fairly narrow and up hill and our first two trucks made it up slowly. As we moved up, the road started to give way and we were stuck. We attempted to push forward a bit, but that was a no go. It was at this point that we got our gunner down and we moved a bit in reverse and then it just all went to hell. We were already carrying a heavier than normal load of equipment and call it momentum or whatever but the end result was the picture you see above.
I was seated in the corner nearest the ANP vehicle you see. Now, we didn't roll that much, just a 90 degree roll and I was strapped in real tight. I hardly moved. Hats off to our driver for tying everything extra that we had down. Could be a different story today if he hadn't. Myself, the medic, and the gunner all got out of the vehicle within a minute. The great thing is that the MRAP has doors that open outwards in back, so it was just a matter of getting enough strength to push them open (they are 500 pound doors). Yeah, with all the adrenaline I had at this point, it wasn't much of an issue. The rest of the platoon was on us within 10 seconds and we then worked on getting our driver and truck commander out. Since they had regular doors, it was a little bit more difficult to pull them open but we were able to manage. Once everyone was out, I immediately grabbed my radio and headed up the hill that you see the picture taken from in order to get comms and let our higher know what was going on. All told, it was a pretty long night. I was able to get a couple of helicopters to provide some overwatch for us during the recovery effort. Once we got our company headquarters there to help pull security as well as bring a wrecker, it was just a matter of time before we rolled out of there. 16 hours after we went over, we were able to refit and head back out to Charlie Mike (Continue Mission). I'll be the first to admit, however, I get a little nervous anytime we are driving and we start to go up a hill or incline.
As for my bright idea, I'm sure many of you who read this have heard from my parents about the idea that I came up with. As a back story, we went into the town of Deh Rawood and conducted a canvas about how people felt about the election being cancelled and other issues they might have. I made the mistake of making an off hand comment to my lieutenant that I had done something similiar when I was in college and spent the summer of 2004 registering people to vote. He looked at me and smiled and said "well, you'll get a chance to do it again today". One of the men I talked to told me that his biggest issue was the schools. He said that they didn't have enough educated teachers to properly prepare all the students in the school and that there was also a lack of materials. What really struck me, though, was that villagers with very little schooling were offering to be teachers even though they didn't have a formal education.
Apparently, my LT heard some of the same sentiments from the elders that he talked to. They said that they wished for their girls to be educated but that there were no female teachers available. The overarching issue was being able to provide security for all of this (something that we are handling) but the underlying issues were lack of supplies, teachers, and facilities. I'm not sure at what point it hit me; it could have been something I had been dwelling on for awhile or maybe when I was gathering up all these interviews and assessing them and prepping them for higher, but an idea hit me. Why couldn't we start some sort of campaign to help these kids out. If we can get them educated, they will be less likely to fall prey to the preachings of the Taliban.
All of this was inspired by the book "Three Cups of Tea" by Greg Mortenson, now head of the Central Asia Institute, which builds and develops school in the Northen Pakistan/Afghanistan border area. I listened to it as I was driving back to North Carolina from Iowa following my block leave this summer. If you haven't read it, I urge you to. While I am, self-admittedly, a large advocate for raining some serious hatred and discontent on those that attack us and target innocent civilians, I have also bought into the policy that we need to arm the younger generations of Afghans with knowledge from schools not sponsored by religious zealots.
There is a real opportunity in Deh Rawood. If we can get this district headed in the right direction, I have no doubt that outlying districts will get the picture. We are wrapping up the security here. The Taliban have already proved that they don't want to fight us here. Here is my pledge/idea/challenge, call it what you will: We need school supplies. Notebooks, papers, pens, pencils, backpacks, etc. I know that there are several student organizations at Central College (my alma mater) that are ready to start collecting and sending supplies. If they get a chance to read this, I say thank you and to contact me on Facebook so I can share some more ideas. I also ask that people begin a letter writing campaign to the Central Asia Institute, urging them to take a look at this district and possibly begin some sort of program to get educated teachers here. It might be a tad ambitious but it also could be the start of something special. Deh Rawood could begin to be a beacon for the rest of the country to follow.
Reaper 94, out.