Community

I’ll be leaving Afghanistan and heading home to my family fairly soon; while I’m excited about seeing my family (pets included) and friends, I’m going to miss some things here.  While there are obvious cons to living on a FOB in the middle of Afghanistan, there are pros as well.  One of the good things about living on a base is the community.  Here we are a giant community where we know all of our neighbors; we hang out and smoke and talk, drink tea and coffee, go shopping and eat meals together.  Everything is in walking distance and there are always people around doing something.  Several people recently moved out of my building and the whole place feels completely different.  We went from 30 people to 9 in our building and it’s a different atmosphere.  This type of community is totally different than when I’m at home on a farm where nothing is in walking distance.  Living on forward bases for the last couple of years has been nice, while I will certainly enjoy the peace and quiet of the farm I know I will miss being in a place where I can just walk outside and see the gym, store, restaurant (chow hall), church, and a myriad of other places to gather.  I think this type of community is what comes naturally to most people, the feeling of being a part of something.  It’s a wonderful feeling to have when you are so far away from family; it’s going to be one of the few things about Afghanistan I will actually miss.  I will go back to living on a farm and loving every minute of it, the woods and wide open space are probably my best environments, but every time I get in my truck to go to the store or visit friends part of me will be missing the community here.