Afghanistan kind of…sucks. If you’re reading this, and you’re there, I feel your pain. The heat is unimaginable, and the cold is just as bad. There’s “moon dust” that floats through the air coats everything in sight, and the food will have you hunched over a hole in the ground praying for death. But chances are, you’re not there for the food, or the dust, or the heat. If you’re like me, you’re there because your job told you to go and now you’re thousands of miles away from normal. Your new home is a steel sweat box surrounded by sand and mountains, and your morning alarm is an arabic prayer song that you’ll remember for years to come.
What does it take to get you through the “Groundhog Day” deployment life, where the days bleed together, and there seems to be no end in sight? How do you deliver yourself out of the fear, the homesickness, the boredom, the frustrations, the exhaustion? What brings you peace in this far away land, if only for a minute?
Some I know would escape through video games or movies. Others through instagram or workouts. And a few found their escape through a good novel. But the greatest escape I found wasn’t through a screen or pages in a book. It was through coffee.
In Helmand, my coffee shop was called “Dobie’s Dojo.” When you came into the Dojo, the first thing you saw was a warm, glowing display of Christmas lights dangling in front of an American flag. Willie Nelson sang from a sound bar I waited a month to receive in the mail, and a tiny Christmas tree sat next to a pour over coffee set that I had put together over the five months that I had been deployed. The coffee shop had an inviting smell to it; a cedar scented candle was constantly burning and mixing with the smell of freshly ground coffee. Black yoga mat tiles lined the floors, covering the harsh concrete barracks floor and bringing the Dojo closer to something that seemed like an actual storefront. This was a coffee shop. And for some it was a deliverance.
The coffee shop opened when I started playing music. I’d turn on the Christmas lights, start my Outlaw Country playlist, and begin grinding the beans. As people woke up to the smell of coffee and the music, they grabbed their cups and started lining up. The room itself was as big as a walk-in closet, but that didn’t stop them from coming in to enjoy their cup. Four or five at a time would stand inside with their coffee and talk as their barista cleaned his equipment or went to work on another pour over.
The conversations were never work related. They were about hunting, or asteroids, or conspiracy theories, or people would talk about home and what their first meal was going to be when they got back. The coffee put you on a plane and took you wherever you wanted to go. It helped you feel at home in an inhospitable place and it’s the greatest gift I’ve ever given anyone.
One of the benefits of learning how to make coffee well is that you get to make it for other people. You can create community wherever you are, you can start profound conversations, you can make someone’s entire day. It’s something I’ve done throughout my time in the military and it’s something I’ll continue to do for the rest of my life. But it doesn’t have to be coffee. It could be banana bread, or roast beef. If it brings people together or delivers them out of whatever they’re going through, if only for a second, it’s inherently good and you should do it. Send them to the moon. It’s the best feeling in the world.
