Project upgrades quality of life at Bagram

  • Published
  • By Master Sgt. Andrew Gates
  • 455th Expeditionary Operations Group Public Affairs
BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan (AFPN) --  Innovation and initiative by 455th Expeditionary Operations Group Airmen upgraded a temporary living area into a cheery, hospitable cyber café.

“Our new café projects a welcoming feeling,” said Staff Sgt. Tina Ross, a services representative with the 455th Expeditionary Mission Support Squadron and one of the driving forces behind the new Air Force recreation area here. “It’s a place that people will want to use a lot.”

Previously, the morale computers and phones for e-mail and phone calls home were in the basement of a Soviet-built air traffic control tower on Camp Cunningham, the Air Force’s “home” here.

“It was gloomy, dark and smelled pretty bad,” said Sergeant Ross, of the previous location, which was set behind a Cold-War era heavy airlock door. “It wasn’t very nice, and people didn’t use it much.”

The new café should have more use. Two weeks ago, the building was a billeting area for transiting Airmen. After removing the beds, Sergeant Ross contacted civil engineers to start the renovation process.

“Once I got CE in the picture, we discussed floor plans and exchanged ideas,” she said. “I told (Staff Sgt. Robert Fleming) and (Airman 1st Class Jason Saari) what I wanted, and they helped me figure out what was possible. Once we determined the layout, the two of them went to work.”

“She told us what she needed, and we ran with it,” Airman Saari said. “We came up with our design and expanded on that.”

“It started out as a small project, but once we realized the café was going to be helping people at Bagram for a long time, we decided to add some elements to make it comfortable,” Sergeant Fleming said. “We knew that there would be a huge morale boost if we could make it nice. Once we got started, we kept getting new ideas to improve it.”

Space in the new 40-by-20-foot structure is at a premium, so much of the new café was designed to save that valuable commodity. For instance, the crew built bookshelves right into the walls, instead of building independent shelves. Another space-saving technique helped put in more computers -- the “cyber” part of the cyber café.

“We built the computer desks with slide-in keyboard holders,” Airman Saari said. “We saved about 10 inches on each computer with that particular design.”

Extra space meant extra machines -- four more machines, in fact. Since about 150 people use the computers each day, adding four more machines means that people wanting to use those machines will not have to wait as long.

“At times, we had people waiting 15 to 40 minutes for a computer, especially in the morning,” Sergeant Ross said. “Now, we anticipate much less [of a] waiting time.”

Saving space was not the only concern for the cyber café team.

“We built enclosed phone booths to give people a little privacy when they call home,” Sergeant Ross said. “That’s a big plus.”

“You can call home and talk about your children or finances without worrying if the whole base will find out about it,” Sergeant Fleming said.

A lot of people pulled together to make this project a success, Sergeant Fleming said.

“We couldn’t have done it without the help of all our volunteers,” Sergeant Ross said. “We had a lot of help from civil engineers, communications and our third country national escorts as well.”

Knowing the project would bring a lot of happiness to the people deployed here was only part of the enjoyment workers said they got from building the cyber café.

“It was a lot of fun,” Airman Saari said. “I was sort of sad the project came to an end. It was great to get an opportunity to be creative. This was a blast.”