I’ve been here almost a month, here being that enviable place – Afghanistan. I say enviable with one part jest and one part truth. I’m based in a valley overlooking mountains on three sides and it is a beautiful sight to wake up to in the morning when the air is clear enough to see to the top. Enviable too because the company I am keeping among my compatriots and fellow wanderers is some of the most engaging I’ve had in a long time. My career is young, even though I’m considered a ‘mid-level’ professional now (whatever that means), and yet I’ve already seen how easy it is to become stale, complacent, and comfortable when you have all the trappings of first world life around you. Washington, DC is a refuge for the hungry, ambitious, and determined – but it is also a haven for the stale, complacent, and comfortable. I choose to remain the former so I’m determined this will be the first of many forays into the unknown, the uncomfortable, the persistently vexing.
It has been almost a month and everyone has been asking me what it’s like out here and what I’ve been doing. The truth, it is like nowhere else I’ve ever been. You spend your life in a box and the repetition of the day can be mind-numbing or invigorating dependent upon what awaits you when you step beyond the guards and gates and flash all your badges to get to work. I spent four years in a bubble while an undergraduate so you’d think a box would be easy. However, it is infinitely more difficult to process then that. There’s a rhythm here. Perhaps it comes from working so closely with the military – with their discipline and order. But there’s also a sense of being bound by time and unbound by time. I’ve forgotten which days of the week it is, which holidays have pasted, which holidays are coming up, how many celebrations are in order to ring in the New Year. My connection to it all comes from social media, that lively invention that keeps us all connected which I’ve yet to become jaded or cynical about. I like hearing about people’s dogs and kids and daily troubles. It helps me to unwind from my day. The hyper-readiness, the waiting for bad news – no news sincerely is GOOD news; I’ve learned that here.
In the almost month I’ve been here I’ve learned the following:
1. Completely inappropriate mascots coupled with completely appropriate mottos make for the best office spaces
2. Sometimes riding in the middle is the best seat in the house
3. Vaccinations are the devil in disguise
4. An earthquake can feel like a gently rolling tide
5. Air quality is nothing to joke about or muck around with
6. A Polish priest is my favorite comedian
7. There is more than one universal language
8. Every woman needs a stabbing knife and slapping glove
I’ll get to the stories that brought about all these learning experiences – under the moniker I’ve adopted #StanStories – and more. This blog will be about many things. My time here, tracking my resolutions for the New Year, and other things that interest me along the way. Almost one month down and five more to go.
Signing off,
Coco, Nata
p.s. one more thing, the name of this blog comes from two things, a nickname of sorts a little boy I met in a hospital in Honduras years ago, who I promised never to forget, named Kennedy who couldn’t say my full name so he called me ‘Nata’ instead and a random incident that occurred between some of my best friends where we mistook ‘xoxo’ for ‘coco’ and it has stuck ever since. So when I sign off, Coco Nata….that’s its origin it means a great deal to me.
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