No, I don't work in the kitchen

Veersen Bhoolai expected challenges as a United Nations journalist working in Afghanistan in 2009 and he got them. Missing a suicide bomber by mere metres, dodging rockets; sleeping in tents in sub zero weather with no heat; sleeping on his office desk to avoid sub-zero tents and trying to use toilets with about three inches of shit piled up all over the floor.
What he did not expect was to have to tolerate static from the very people with whom he worked. Despite being a Canadian citizen, he found himself occasionally looked down upon or spoken down to due to the colour of his skin. Many soldiers apparently too fixated on his face to recognize the Canadian ID on his chest. Being shouted at, having his bed kicked at night and a flashlight shone in his face in the early morning was just some of the ignorance he had to endure. Sometimes the lame response was "Well you know what the enemy looks like."
Some people have spent six months in Afghanistan and come back with stories to tell. This Trinidadian Canadian spent three years, most of it in a tent filled with farting, snoring men. This is his story from fog filled tents to waking up to the sound of bombs to watching a friend's body parts shovelled into a garbage bag after a suicide bombing.
Contrary to popular belief, Veersen Bhoolai never worked in the kitchen.

Veersen Bhoolai is a journalist who has worked for TV and Print in Toronto, Canada as well as an Editor for the United Nations in Afghanistan.
Bhoolai was born in Trinidad and Tobago on November 19, 1967. He attended Fatima College, one year ahead of the famed batsman, Brian Lara.
He then furthered his education in Canada, attending high school in Guelph before moving on to Humber College where he graduated as a journalist with a major in Print & Broadcasting in 1991. He later obtained a Post Graduate Diploma in International Marketing from Humber in 1994.
Bhoolai was a beat reporter for Cable 10 Etobicoke and Cable 10 Mississauga in the early nineties before writing for two major Caribbean publications in Toronto, Caribbean Camera and Indo Caribbean World. He was also Editor for Hail, Canada's only Caribbean Sports Publication from 1995-1997.
For the last twenty years Bhoolai has spent most of that time as an English teacher, ten years in Istanbul, Turkey and six in Colombia. He took a break from teaching to be a journalism Editor for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, working in military bases in the north and south. His responsibilities were the writing and editing of English articles for the ISAF publication Sada-e-Azadi.
The son of two British educated lawyers, he has four siblings. He maintains his own website https://www.hail-caribbean-sport.com/ dedicated to the West Indian sports fan with occasional articles picked up by the TT Press. Bhoolai is an avid traveler and in addition to Trinidad and Canada has lived in Colombia, Turkey, Afghanistan and the Solomon Islands.
https://vbhoolai.wixsite.com/veersenbhoolaiauthor