What better proof than a chance meeting in Djibouti with a stranger from Atlas to prove true U.S. Navy Cmdr. Chris Hodrick's axiom, "You'll find coal crackers in the strangest places"?
Hodrick, a 1991 graduate of Shamokin Area High School, is deployed in the African country as an engineer attached to Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa.
John Bartos, a 50-year-old Atlas resident and former sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps, had been in Djibouti as a war fighter support representative
with the Department of Defense's Defense Logistics Agency.
The two were unfamiliar with one another during a meeting at which they both spoke of prefabricated construction materials.
The next day, they were together on a trip to Lake 'Assal - a saltwater lake and the lowest point in Africa - when Hodrick asked where Bartos was from. The reply: a small town in northcentral Pennsylvania. Hodrick prodded further.
"I said 'Mount Carmel,' and he asked, 'Well, what street?' I was like, 'You're kidding me, right?' " Bartos recalled with a laugh.
Having traveled the world throughout their military careers, neither were particularly shocked to learn they grew up just a few miles apart. But the surprise remained a pleasant one.
"It's funny. I've run into people from that immediate area in stranger places," Hodrick, 40, formerly of Coal Township and now living in Rhode Island, said of the coal region. "The world's a small place, especially in the military, you run into people all the time."
Stabilizing region
The task force's mission is part military, part humanitarian, and focused on stabilizing the region and preventing the spread of Islamic extremism. It operates in at least 10 countries, including Somalia, Ethiopia and Rwanda, and has interest in another 11 countries.
Hodrick, who has been in Africa since January and will remain there another eight months, oversees all U.S. construction and engineering efforts in the region - building bridges, medical clinics and schools and drilling water wells, not to mention building a whole lot of latrines.
The results of projects such as these extend beyond the obvious.
"If we drill a well here," Hodrick said of a water well project in Ethiopia, "not only do we produce water, but now farmers in this immediate area have water to produce their crops. They can hire local labor and it may allow their children to go to school. That educated child then comes back to that community, maybe as a doctor. This just improves the overall quality of life."
Bartos arrived in Djibouti in October and returned stateside at the beginning of April. His role in Africa was to support military logistics, ordering and tracking materials, as he said, "anything from bullets to band-aids."
He spoke of leftovers, such as abundant care packages and food, even brass bullet casings, that U.S. military personnel shared with the locals.
But in Djibouti, Bartos said, water is desired above all else, and so Americans took cases of water everywhere they went to share with others.
"They prefer water over money," Bartos said.
Apart from building infrastructure and sharing whatever they could, Bartos said opportunities were taken to teach about the perils of malaria and the benefits of irrigation.
Both spent ample time off base interacting with locals, whom Bartos described as equally talkative and friendly. Learning about the local's culture, they both said, was encouraged as part of the task force mission.
'Brilliant, resourceful'
Hodrick remains impressed by the creativity in technique and material employed by locals while building infrastructure.
He spoke of watching as workers hung by rope from a helicopter to be transported from one tower to the next as they strung power lines. He wasn't sure, but figured it was a way to avoid the threat posed by lions.
"I've learned more here than I've taught," he said, citing their techniques for using lumber and concrete as well as their thrift in reusing materials like rebar. "They're very industrious and have very unique ways of doing things."
"You think of Africa as really being underdeveloped; however, it's populated by really brilliant and resourceful people," he said.
Of his time spent so far in Africa, Hodrick spoke most glowingly about its children, which is perhaps why the construction of a school in Rwanda remains his favorite task undertaken to date.
The science and technology school sits high above a village, literally, he said, the proverbial shining beacon on a hill.
A local contractor designed the facility consisting of seven buildings for classrooms, dormitories and a dining facility.
A water well was drilled and a line installed to pump it up the hill to the school, which will also serve a displaced village nearby. Power lines were run to the school, too.
"The real value of it, what really bring this all together, is they actually have a PTA just as we've seen in the states," Hodrick said of the school's Parent Teacher Association.
The PTA, he said, acquires supplies for the students and has plans to rent the dining facility as a banquet hall on weekends to raise money for computers, uniforms and such.
"To see this beautiful facility and know that background in a country such as Rwanda which has overcome so much in the last 18 years, that is my favorite, by far, story here, and that might be in my career, 20-plus years."
Bartos is home now and has accepted a new position as a supply management specialist, working with mine resistant vehicles at a facility in New Cumberland.
Hodrick continues his mission abroad. He maintains a blog with a great many photos detailing his experiences at www.acoalcrackerinafrica.blogspot.com - as appropriate a blog name as any.