Humanitarian Projects - Damerdjog Soccer Field

Very recently the Company was involved in a small humanitarian project to help a local Djibouti village clean up their soccer field.

CAMP LEMONIER, Djibouti, May 18, 2006 — Fifty U.S. Marines with the 4th Provisional Security Company here helped rebuild a soccer field recently at a small local village.
The company, stationed with Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa, has been deployed in Djibouti since March and provides force protection for the camp.“We noticed the soccer field needed a little help,” said U.S. Marine Corps Capt. Garth Massey, 4th Provisional Security Company executive officer. “And we decided we were up for the challenge.”The project, which involved removing trash, smoothing and marking the field and adding nets to goal posts, took the company about four hours to complete. It was four hours well spent, according to the Marines.“We needed to do this,” Massey said. “When you see people who can benefit from small things it is only right to provide what you can when you can.”

You can read the full article here. Yep, that is me in the center of the photo. It was not a very pleasant task picking up all the trash. It stank badly in the 100+ degree heat (we started early, but it gets hot early) and there was some nasty stuff in the garbage. Thankfully we all had the gloves and were very careful, I heard of noone getting cut.

Here are some more pictures that did not make the article itself.

Picking up trash, licking the persperation off my lips!

Leveling the field. The Marines used rocks at first to put weight on the section of chain link fencing that they dragged around the field. However they kept falling off, so two Marines hopped on and it worked well. But did anyone do the ORM (Operational Risk Management) for this? I'm pretty sure this isn't covered in any field manual! (I talked to the HMMWV driver & the two Marines...)

And here I am shoveling dirt & trash. We all quickly sweated through our utilities, but we brought lots of cold water. Its not very obvious in these pictures, but the local Djiboutians helped out quite a bit. There is an Army post located in the town and they eventually came down with a bulldozer to remove the largest concentrations of trash, this really helped out a lot!

All in all, it was a good experience and we helped the town out in a small way. Hopefully their opinions of Americans went up.

DominicsDad, in Djibouti