This is the name that I have given to this day – the first day of my contract here at Camp Gibson for Dyn-Corp.
And I must say that I believe that I have some sort of mental overload shock. This city, this area is overwhelmingly third-world that I was unable to take it all in. That is coming from the guy who takes pride and security in seeing as much of the big picture as possible. There were very few roads without huge speed bumps, large craters and random kids chasing soccer balls across the path of our speeding SUV. Operational protocol says drive as fast as possible (not as fast as is safe) to avoid security issues.
The guns are real and they are everywhere. Security forces at the airport were holding A-4′s, but outside the airport, the standard slipped down to AK-47′s and then some carbines that looked like they would have been a bit outdated when the Korean war started.
My favorite setup was a troop transport with a gun turret on the top – a turret made of nearly invincible plywood. I couldn’t have taken pictures if I wanted – there was too much to see. A quick glance past a barricade and some razor wire and there was a field full of children – two games of cricket overlapping.
Several “checkpoints” were huge cement barricades with a correct path, and a blind path with a gun emplacement at the end. It was crazy beyond crazy.
So call me a pansy, but at the end of the day, my brain shut down and I slept for three hours and now I think I’m a bit more ready to accept this whole situation.