Smells Worse Than the Food ...



The home of our new septic tank.  Right next to the pizza joint.

  Walking around camp is an assault on the senses. Namely the sense of smell. For some reason, there's no central plumbing in Afghanistan. I suppose waging 30 years of jihad makes developing a sewer system fall down the list of priorities, but really, it's no excuse. And even though we've been here for almost 10 years now, pumping billions of dollars into building this country's infrastructure, we're still pumping out all of our poo. Including here at my camp, which I'm thinking is really just an assortment of buildings and converted shipping containers designed to hide the many septic tanks just below the surface. And trust me, they are just below the surface -- you can see the wavy stink lines rising up out of the gravel pathways.

There's only way to get stuff out of a septic tank, and over here it comes in the form of large vacuum trucks. The trucks roll around camp about three times a day. These three times just happen to coincide with meals. And naturally, the two main septic tanks just happen to be located right outside of the dining facilities. I came upon this unfortunate marriage of time, location, and sewage on my first day here. I grabbed an ice cream bar on my way out of the dining hall and, just as I was about to bite into the rich chocolate-coated vanilla goodness, I got a face blast of sewage odors. The smell was strong enough to almost taste. And it completely ruined my ice cream bar experience.

This diagram really needs to be put in use here.

Unfortunately, the ice cream bar isn't the only thing that has been ruined -- just about every breakfast, lunch, and dinner has started with an unhealthy appetizer of poo whiff. Sometimes I try to hold my breath, but just when I think the worst has passed and finally inhale, I'm greeted with an especially long lung-searing reintroduction of Eau de Sewer. I guess it could be worse -- the other day I had to relieve myself in an Afghan port-a-potty over at the Ministry of Defense and what I saw and smelled in there gave me PTSD. I'd just like to know who decided to put the septic tanks right by the dining facilities. I'm not entirely sure, but I think it was the Taliban.