Three Countries, Two Continents, One Whirlwind Weekend

Packed in tight for our first C-130 flight!

This past weekend we had the privilege to travel down to the country of Niger to conduct and audit and meet with one of Leah's Paying Agents along with many others stationed there. What a trip. Niger is located in the Sahel region of Africa, along the southern part of the Sahara desert. We were supposed to only spend about 24 hours there, but the flight was delayed a day, so we got a bonus day! We flew down on a C-130, our first flight on that type of aircraft. It's loud, so earplugs or headphones were definitely necessary (for the humans of course, I'm a Pineapple, I don't have ears 😋🍍). The first leg of the flight was about 4 hours, a stop for gas, then another 4-5 hour flight. Africa is huge, so traveling down there takes a long time. Especially on a "slower" aircraft like a C-130. We finally landed mid-afternoon. It's hot at that part of the day! Once we got off, we had to wait for all the cargo to be off loaded, then other cargo to be loaded onto the plane. After about an hour of standing around in the 95+ degree weather, all of us, including our security team, loaded into vehicles, and took a big caravan drive to the base.

Ready to go!

Since we were "transient", we only had to do a quick check in and then we were off to meet with Leah's Paying Agent. She greeted us, we got our bags and headed to the tent we'd be sleeping in for two nights. Everyone sleeps in big tents that hold about 8-10 people. Our tent only had two others, so it was quiet. Leah had a cot with a thin mattress on it. Not quite ideal, but it would work fine for the short visit. Good thing she had a pillow! After dropping bags off, checking out the Finance/Contracting tent, we decided to go to dinner before starting the audit. The food was quite good and Leah was able to maintain the vegan lifestyle! Hooray! Once dinner was complete, the work began.

The main objective for the visit was to verify all the funds the agent had on hand. This meant counting cash. It was more than we expected, so it was going to take a while. We were counting it all by hand.....it takes for.ev.er....Leah has asked about a cash counting machine, but the agent thought it didn't work. After 2+ hours of counting and only being half way through, we decided to try it out anyway. Of course it worked perfectly.....there went over 2 hours of my life. Why didn't we try this earlier?! How come the agent hadn't tried it like 4 months ago? This would have saved her countless hours of work. Neither here nor there at this point. The counter worked great and 2 hours of counting turned into 20 minutes. Which was great because Leah had now been awake for about 20 hours. Once the counting was done, we headed straight for bed.

Pine Supervising a Cash Count

The next morning, Leah went to the gym for a run. They had quite a nice cardio tent with a bunch of treadmills, ellipticals, and stationary bikes. There was another weight room tent and an outside gym area as well. Two other people were running on treadmills at the same time and at one point we tripped the circuit breaker and all our treadmills stopped abruptly! One of the other folks went to flip the switch and we were up and running again. Well, I was. The other two decided that was enough of running for the time being. After the run, we ran into our agent and she informed us the plane was delayed a day. "You're joking, right?" "Nope." OK, well, no big deal. While we were talking about the delayed flight, one of the Contracting Officers and one other person came up to us. They had just finished a run. We all got to talking and decided that we'd go on a 9 mile run in the morning. Yay! Better than a treadmill. The morning/evening weather was perfect for running temperature wise. 7 am the next day was set. (Turns out one of the guys grew up in Milwaukee. Small world, right?!) Once Leah was all cleaned up from the run, her agent took her on a more extensive tour of the property the base was on. We saw some of the projects that we are funding and talked to some of the folks making that work happen. It's great to see the end results of where our dollars are going. It puts it into perspective and is more exciting than just a piece of paper that talks about said projects. It takes a lot of work to establish a base!

Sunset in Niger

Life on an un-established base in the middle of the desert is quite interesting. Every building is a tent except for the bathrooms. That's a big trailer. You lose almost all privacy in this setting. You don't have a private bathroom for a shower. You get a shower stall and curtain and a toilet stall with a curtain for a door, but everything else is a common area. You can't brush your teeth with the water from the sinks, so you have to use bottled water. There are pallets of water everywhere. You share a tent with a handful of others, so the most privacy you have are walls of sheets dividing beds. The desert is dry. Super dry.  Chapstick was a lifesaver! EVERYTHING has a thin layer of red dust. My backpack, suitcase and running shoes are still dirty. Baby wipes are necessary. They are used  to clean desks, computer screens, everything. Everyone of age is allowed two drinks in a 24 hour period if they'd like and if it's available. Mail and deliveries take a long time and can be sporadic. It's hard to get stuff down there. If a shipment gets delayed, it could mean food gets delayed by two weeks. Then they have to be careful how much the serve to everyone.

It sounds grim, but for the most part, spirits are pretty good. You form quite the sense of community when you're all going through it together. There are a few forms of entertainment on base like an MWR (Morale, Welfare, and Recreation) tent that has video games, movies, comfy couches, board games, etc to use. They made an escape room for Halloween that sounded like it was pretty neat. When we were there, one of the enlisted groups held a social where they had music, giant jenga, and free beer (two drink max of course).

Representing "Westallica"!

The day we left was the morning of the 9 mile run. The temperature was perfect, but it was windy. We tried to minimize running into the wind, but we did run three loops, so it was inevitable. Leah had dirt in her ears for two days. Aside from the run and lunch, there wasn't much else to do except get on a plane! Getting back to the airport for our flight was the same process as when we landed. Gather all the people and bags, get in a big convoy, get to the plane and wait. The military is always about hurry up and wait. This time we sat in the vehicles before we drove to the plane. 6 people crammed into a beat up Land Rover with no air conditioning in the middle of the day is not ideal. It's just really really hot. But we managed and found out the guy sitting across from us grew up in Elkhorn and had a grandma from West Allis. How crazy! We finally got to the jet and loaded up with some special cargo as well. We were headed to Italy for the night.

Our ride

Seems like that should be the end of the adventure, but nope, not quite. Upon landing in Italy, we found out another crew needed our airplane because theirs was "broken". This meant we currently didn't have a ride back to Germany. We had to wait until the morning to find out if we had a flight or if we had to secure another method to get home....great. No one really want to try to get a commercial flight booked. We've already been delayed a day and were missing an extra day of work. Everyone got their room keys and decided, even though it was almost 9, that we'd go get some pizza for dinner. We got enough to have leftovers for breakfast. Yum! After a quick dinner, we headed to bed. The pillows at this base were far superior to the ones in Germany! Leah almost "acquired" one, but decided that was a bad idea. They were so fluffy and comfy!  Which lead to a great night of sleep compared to the two previous on a slightly uncomfortable cot and very cold tent.

Mount Etna off in the distance (View from lodging)

The next morning, three of us met up to walk back to the terminal to check on our flight status. During the walk we ran into two other passengers and heard it was delayed until noon, but we have a flight. Better than no flight! We hung out for a few hours, enjoying the beautiful day, made it back to the terminal, and eventually got on one more flight back to Germany. It was a lot colder in Germany than in Africa or Italy! A bit of a shock even after only two days. We got back just in time to make a quick call to home, then jump into bed.

Sunset over Planet Earth

During the flight, it was not lost on me the uniqueness of the entire weekend. Flying C-130s to go visit Africa for two days along with a bunch of other folks, while hauling a wide variety of precious cargo is pretty cool. Not something you get to do everyday. I appreciate the opportunities I've been given and am lucky to have more of them in my future. Stay tuned!

Stats of the Trip:
Miles Run:14
Flights taken: 3
Books read: 2 (One Second After, One Year After)