two column from my deployment in Panama

Wife finds comfort in my lack of it

Whoops, I did it again.

I volunteered for yet another overseas deployment with the Air National Guard.
By the time you read this, I should be in Meteti, Panama.

"Wasn't Iraq enough?" my wife asked.

"This is kind of a break from that," I said.

She looked puzzled.

"This isn't a war zone," I said, uncharacteristically cheerful. "The only bombardment I'll face there is from the mosquitoes."

Her puzzled look told me that this explanation still fell short. So, I voiced a more academic explanation.

"I'm going there for three months with more than 250 service members in an annual military exercise called New Horizons. The exercise is designed to strengthen ties with partner nations in Latin America and the Caribbean through combined quality-of-life improvement projects."

She looked at me as though she knew my reply was scripted by the Air Force Public Affairs Office. Of course, it was. So, I took a more heartfelt tact.
There is more to this exercise than good public relations, I assured her.
"I'll be the camp pastor for service members who are doing some genuinely good things."

We're going to build four schools, two clinics and community centers. In the midst of all the building, we'll send medical outreach teams of ophthalmologists, surgeons and dentists to provide free health care for the local people.

She seemed to be warming to the idea. Still, she never likes me to have too much fun by myself.

"Are you going to be in one of those beachside tourist hotels?" she asked.

No, Mrs. Chaplain. Unfortunately.Meteti is four hours outside Panama City and is at the end of the Pan American Highway on the edge of the famed Darien National Forest.

As a World Heritage Site, this forested area likely will provide some beautiful sights, but our conditions won't be touristy.

I'll be living in a tent, sleeping on a cot and eating one hot meal a day. The other two meals will be the prepackaged military meals called MREs -- Meals Ready to Eat, more commonly called Meals Rejected by Extraterrestrials.

I was hoping these austere conditions would draw the sympathy vote, but her smile told me she saw my discomfort as payback for leaving her alone with our teenager this summer.

Finally, I added, "I'll be there in the middle of the brutal rainy season. And do you want to guess when the little venomous snake babies are born? Yup, in the rain."

That's when my sweet wife closed the zipper on my mobility bag and added some excellent advice.

"Be careful."

Yeah. I'll do that.

I decided not to mention the possibility of the Dengue fever, aka break-bone fever. The mosquito-born ailment gets the alias from the bone-breaking headaches.

Maybe I'll mention it to her in an e-mail. After all, I don't want her to think I'm having too much fun.





Ah, Panama: Hot weather, cold tents
BY NORRIS BURKES • FLORIDA TODAY • JULY 4, 2010

If you missed last week's column, then you'll need to know that I'm deployed in Meteti (pronounced Met-et-tee), Panama.

I'm here with almost 200 service members as a part of a military humanitarian exercise called New Horizons. During our 90 days here, we'll work 12-hour shifts six days a week to build improvements for four schools and two clinics.

We started the project work on June 21, but our military has been here a few months setting up the base camp inside a compound for the Panamanian frontier police.

In some ways, we're like the kids who've set up a tent in the backyard of a friend. Only we aren't exactly in backyard tents. We are in two acres of tents, which house our dining facility, our headquarters, our supplies, and yes, even our showers.

The tents are fabricated by a company called Alaska Shelters and are aptly named, because we shiver under the air conditioning powered by our buzzing generators. The steady stream of air keeps the noise in the tent sounding much like the inside of a passenger plane at altitude.

Our chapel tent is about the size and shape of an old military Quonset hut. On our wooden floor, we've set up a pulpit and folding chairs for Sunday chapel services. Behind the pulpit, a blue tarp cordons off the sleeping area I share with my chaplain assistant, 30-year-old Staff Sgt. Christopher Fetters.

Bags are stuffed under cots, shower towels hang from a makeshift clothesline and malaria pills sit on the adjacent desk ready for a nightly dose.
Outside the tents, daily rain keeps the camp looking like a construction site flooded by a gully washer. Ruts are left where vehicles trudged through the two feet of mud. The thunder from some of the passing storms can sound like a hundred jets breaking the sound barrier.

Finding some quiet among this buzzing tent city is difficult, yet finding cool outside the tents is nearly impossible. Still, I manage to find some quiet in an overgrown area south of the camp where I look for birds, and I'm reminded of the 23rd Psalm that he leads me into green pastures.

Luckily, in the midst of all of this, hot food comes twice a day, "whether you're hungry or not" cracks a balding master sergeant. At the construction sites, under the oppressively hot sun, we eat Meals, Ready-to-Eat, washed down with lukewarm Gatorade.

Gratefully, nightfall comes mercifully quick to the equator and brings a respite. Airmen, dirty from their day's work, file into our chow tent and then off to the showers. Stomachs full and bodies bathed, 10 people file into our chapel tent, exhausted from their work, but hungry for a word of faith in a place so far from home.

I find myself feeling a bit intimidated by the fact that they're sacrificing their only free time with the expectation that I will provide something encouraging. There's no pushing a tired old sermon on this group, and they'll not tolerate regurgitated platitudes.

Wisely, my assistant suggests that we allow the men to take turns bringing the study each night. There is no preaching; thoughts are shared and ideas exchanged.

We conclude by inviting each man to share the thing he is currently praying for. Most prayers are for their families left behind during this voluntary deployment. After prayers are done, they leave the tent with a few quiet handshakes and go back to their cot for the night.
And tomorrow, we'll do it all over again.