A break from regularly-scheduled programing to bring you "Uncle Si's Quick but Heartfelt Thanksgiving Message"

From inside a bread cornucopia in a chow hall on Fabulous Bagram, Uncle Si wishes all his peoples a happy happy HAPPY Thanksgiving! Oh yeah, and he also wishes he could carve him some fruit like whoever it was that carved up these melons!

Safely out of the latrine without being seen, Uncle Si is back on his journey around Fabulous Bagram, hoping to avoid any other latrines he might come across. Just in front of a place with a sign hanging above the door that says "USO," he finds a little garden area with flowers and a painted wooden structure. With the sunlight shining through Si thinks this could very well be one of the prettiest places on Fabulous Bagram. He has no idea where exactly he is on Fabulous Bagram, but he realizes while standing awhile in that garden, that everywhere he's been he can hear airplanes taking off and landing.

Not far from the USO, Si runs across more concrete wall paintings, the difference between these and the others he's seen so far is that these paintings are huge and cover three or four sections of T-wall and seem like they are a hundred feet tall, at least.

Uncle Si stands admiring the second painting of a Uniform for a few minutes, and then heads away from the paintings and the USO, having made two quick decisions: First, he needs to get up on a roof, like he did in Kandahar, to see what else he's missed from the ground. And second, with the sun  getting lower in the sky, he knows darkness is coming pretty soon and he will need to find a place to spend the night. 

So he finds the tallest building he can find and starts up the stairs in hopes of finding his way onto a roof. With every stair as tall as Uncle Si, by the time he gets all the way to the top he is tired, for sure, but excited about the possibilities of what he might see. 

Uncle Si's explorations of Fabulous Bagram continue: painted walls, trees and bathroom signs

After narrowly escaping from the PX (a Non-uniform had picked Uncle Si up and looked him over like she wanted to buy him but put him back on the shelf next to the calendar of the old guy with the beard), Uncle Si continues, carefully, on his way, seeing what there is to see. He stops for a moment in front of another painted concrete wall...

... then climbs on top of a pole to see if there's anything more to see from up there, which there wasn't. Except, of course, for the trees. This is the first time Uncle Si has seen trees since coming to Afghanistan, and he never knew how exciting something as a tree could be!

Not too far from where he stands on top of the pole is a small building with no fences or barbed wire around it to keep people out and Uncle Si decides to have a look inside. Once there, he knows exactly where he is and wishes immediately he wasn't.

Until now, standing on the smelly floor of one, Si didn't know that there were other latrines (as the Uniforms call them) on Fabulous Bagram aside from the little green houses he's already seen and tried to avoid. As soon as he realizes where he is, he turns to head back Outside but has to stop. Footsteps in the rocks mean someone else is coming, and not wanting to be seen, Uncle Si picks the nearest toilet stall and hides. Luckily, the Uniform chooses a different stall and as soon as the Uniform's business is done, Uncle Si runs out wondering how a guy his size, four inches tall, would ever be able to reach the toilet if he wasn't able to stand on the seat?

Si continues to find cool things at Fabulous Bagram

In all his travels around Fabulous Bagram, Uncle Si begins to come across interesting sites, sounds, people and things.  Like this bumper sticker, stuck to the window of a bus stop the Uniforms and Non-uniforms use to get around Fabulous Bagram, which Si knows from experience is a huge place, especially for a man of his stature. Judging by the mountains Si can see all around him, Afghanistan really does seem like the perfect place to do a little skiing, even though Uncle Si has never been skiing and doesn't even really know what that entails. As long as it's something he can do with his glass of tea and plastic legs, he figures he's up for giving it a try.

Not far from the bus stop with the ski sticker, Si stumbles by pure luck into the PX. This is his first time in a PX, but he already knows all about the store because he'd heard the Uniforms talk daily about going there for soap or candy or pillows or Palpitation H (which must be some kind of heart medicine, Si thinks). While wandering the aisles, he comes across a calendar with a photo of a fellow with a long beard and a camo hat, and Uncle Si thinks there's something strangely familiar about the old guy, but can't quite put his finger on what it is.

Si finds even more shades of tan and brown and gray at Fabulous Bagram

And so Si keeps wandering and looking for those splashes of color, quickly learning that for all the colors he's seen so far, Fabulous Bagram has many, many, many more shades of drab, like this yellowish tan behind him...

...or this yellower-tan, than any other color. Even though these are the same colors he wears every single day, when he pictured Outside while living beneath that computer screen, he always thought there would be so many more colors than the brown and tan and gray and the occasional green that he keeps seeing everywhere he goes. 

There are, however, two great things about all the low key colors around him here at Fabulous Bagram: First, Uncle Si blends right into his surroundings and can go almost anywhere without being seen by the Uniforms and Non-uniforms. And second, when he does finally run across another bright splash of color or something to contrast with all the light tan, like the bright white at the top of the mountains way off in the distance or a red and white pole, it makes him smile beneath his tiny plastic mustache!

Si starts exploring Fabulous Bagram

The concrete wall is pretty high for a man of plastic who stands four inches tall, but Uncle Si really isn't able to see much from up there other than concrete, buildings, tents and a whole lot of brown and gray. Anxious to start seeing what else there is to see in Fabulous Bagram, he goes down the T-wall the same way he climbed up and starts on his way, taking care to watch where he's going since being so small in such a big world can be hazardous. At first, the only color Si sees matches the tan on his camo hat, but the more he keeps wandering, the more colors he starts to notice.

He sees various shades of sandbags on top of and all around bunkers similar to those he walked through in Kandahar his first night Outside. But Si also finds here and there colors that contrast brightly with the surrounding browns and tans, like yellow painted around the opening of some of the bunkers.

Or the blue of this big metal shipping container.

Or the green of these little houses that Si sees regularly as he walks around Fabulous Bagram. Si remembers hearing Uniforms talk about these when he was living beneath the computer screen and knows what they are and therefore chooses to not get any closer (He knows what the Uniforms call the tiny houses but prefers not to say the name since this is a family blog and such words would not go over well with parents!). 

Or the bright red of this road barrier. Once he gets past all the drabness of the dominant hue and tries to find other colors, his eyes are opened to just how many different colors there are here in Fabulous Bagram, and he can't stop seeing them. And what's more, seeing one bright color among all the light tan only makes him want to find more.

Uncle Si lands in...

Uncle Si doesn't know how much time goes by as he waits in that pouch, but after what feels like days, Uncle Si is jostled around. When he's finally able to peek out of the pouch, he's outside. It's dark now, but he recognizes that they are going through the exact gate he'd thought about bypassing earlier that evening, and they are heading for the very plane he'd stood there watched.

When the Uniform whose pouch he's taken up residence in sits down, Si can't see anything because he's wedged between the Uniform's side and the seat. After quite a bit of commotion and noise, Si feels the plane lurch forward. The lights go out, except for a few dim green ones, and now all Si can do is sit and wait and enjoy the ride.

But it's hard to enjoy a plane ride with so many turns and quick ups and downs, especially from inside a pouch, and Uncle Si quickly begins to feel a little sick and though the flight turns out to be pretty short, he's glad it's over once they land. As everyone gets off the plane in the darkness and heads toward lights in the distance, Si gets more and more excited even though there's nothing much to see.

When the Uniform finally drops his bags and heaves his vest up and over his head and drops it to the ground with Si still hanging out in the side pouch, he knows now might be his only chance to get out. As soon as he thinks no one is looking, he climbs out and runs away from the group of Uniforms he came here with, keeping to the shadows. Once he's sure no one has seen him or is after him, Uncle Si finds a safe place to wait for morning.



As soon as the sun is up, Si decides he needs to get a better view of his surroundings to figure out where he is and where he wants to go next. He sees that the big building he spent the night next to is actually a giant tent and though it would a perfect place from which to scope out the surroundings, there is no way to climb to the top of it. Not far from the big tent Si spots another good option for an observation point in the form of a T-wall, which he recognizes from things he'd heard the Uniforms say back when he was living beneath that computer screen.

As Si gets closer to the concrete wall, he sees something written or painted on it and before he starts to climb up the crack between the sections of T-wall, which is just the right size for climbing, Uncle Si is happy to learn that he has come to Fabulous Bagram.