The Long Walk to Glory

My team and I have been waiting for tools for weeks now. They were supposed to be shipped out at the end of October, and whoever was responsible for it must have gone on vacation because they just sat in the office while we started doing installs with bubble gum and hundred mile an hour tape. However, last week someone finally got their act together and FedExed them to us. They arrived yesterday, but FedEx couldn’t find our building so I got a ride out to their on-post office to pick up the package.

While I was there I gave the FedEx folks my phone number in case other shipments arrived for us. After we got back to the office and unloaded the tools, it only took an hour for them to call and tell me that a packaged had just arrived, personally addressed to me. Contents? “Brownies and cream cheese bars.”

Holy smokes. For those that haven’t had the pleasure, my mother’s cream cheese bars are a diabetic coma in a 9x13 pan, and her brownies are legendary. When I heard the Thai FedEx worker mangle the word “brownies” into my ear, my mouth began to water and my eyes glazed over like a Krispy Kreme Doughnut. With little time left before closing, I couldn’t pick them up yesterday, but I vowed to make it by today and bring my bounty back to the office for all to partake.

My plan was to go during my lunchtime trip to the gym in order to balance out any health benefits I might accidently receive from a midday workout. Only, when 11:30 rolled around, all of the people I know with a truck or keys to a truck were nowhere to be found. While the FedEx office is conveniently located right near my tent, there is one barrier that gave me pause—a KAF landmark. That’s right, the only thing standing between me and my brownies was the Sh*t Pit.

Throughout history and literature are examples of men who faced great risk for great reward. Theseus solved the labyrinth and killed the minotaur, for which he was rewarded with Ariadne and the goodwill of Crete; Harry Potter faced down a three-headed dog and sacrificed his friends in a game of Wizard’s Chess for the Philosopher’s Stone; and Tim Robbins crawled through 500 yards of human waste to gain his freedom in the Shawshank Redemption.

With these heroes of old in mind, I girded my loins and set off on the long walk to glory.

Just beyond my tent is the laundry, and past that is no man’s land as far as I’m concerned. The scent of fabric softener was still in my nostrils when I beheld the Great Beast. At first I stayed on the opposite side of the road, preferring to skirt around it as much as possible, but I noticed some soldiers walking right along the edge and I figured if they could do it so could I.

I was not prepared for what I saw. The whole thing is probably 100 yards across and separated into quarters. The section nearest me, while nowhere near its capacity, still contains an impressive mound of poop. Workers are busy every day emptying the Pit and moving its contents to some other desecrated hole in the ground, so right in the middle of this section was a backhoe which was shoveling out excrement into a waiting phalanx of dump trucks. I walked between the trucks, careful not to step in their leavings—the dark track which leads like a perverse trail of breadcrumbs to some other Hell.

At this point, with the wind at my back, this was no worse than any other day living in the shadow of the Pit, but as I walked past it and down across the road I was right in the line of fire. This was really the worst I have ever experienced it. The air was palpably filled with that awful stench, in much higher concentrations than I have ever known. With FedEx within sight, I thought I was going to throw up. I tried breathing through my jacket, but that didn’t help. A cravat held in front of my face was no good either, and in the last few steps I actually started to gag and ran the remaining 20 yards to the safety of the office.

Once inside, the nice Asian workers remembered me from yesterday and gave me my package, all smiling faces and laughing comments, unaware of the gauntlet I had run to get to them. I was tempted to open the package right there and share the bounty with the nice folks who were holding it for me, but the thought of walking back with the box in any way compromised made me sick all over again. I will have to pay them back later.

With my treasure secured, I started the walk back, this time staying safely in the outside lane. Somehow it went a lot faster than the first pass. I managed not to be hit by either the dump trucks, passing tactical vehicles or the occasional ATV and reached the safety of my tent. Once inside, I doused my hands with Purel, cut into the box and tasted the delicious heaven within.

It had only taken four days to get here from the states and the treats were almost as good as the moment they came out of the oven. My parents had been careful to seal them in Rubbermaid containers, and layer them with wax paper, holding in the moisture and keeping them fresh. Once that first cream cheese bar hit my lips it was like a trip back home. These were the treats we made for bake sales, for teachers at Christmas—a lifetime of sweet memories in a little yellow bar.

With my quest complete, I hid the booty under some dirty clothes, and marched off to the NATO gym to earn some of the 5000 calories I was about to eat.

Thanks, Mama.