account of my journey home, part 1 of what seemed forever

I just typed this on my blackberry so I could send it to Michael for him to post since I don’t have internet access right now. Unfortunately, I was too quick on my blackberry trigger finger and accidentally deleted this...so this is from memory and I hope I captured everything I initially wrote. This is just par for the course for how the last 24 hours have gone...keep reading.......

Our journey home seems never-ending and we haven’t even made it half way. Last night (Wednesday) Chris and I reported to the passenger terminal at our base in Iraq to catch a flight to Kuwait. The rest of the team had already left earlier Wednesday morning so it was just the two of us sitting on a wooden bench outside the holding tent along with a flurry of military personnel walking around waiting for their outgoing flights. It started raining a little at first and then it got a bit windy with larger raindrops. After waiting about 2 hours and seeing the lightning we heard the weather was to the point that outgoing flights were grounded. A couple of hours later our flight was given the okay and we grabbed our luggage and made our way onto one of 4 buses taking passengers to the aircraft ramp. We boarded a C-17 with over 100 other military personnel. Less than an hour into the flight, the message on the loudspeaker informed us that the plane was being diverted to Al Udeid, Qatar because of the poor visibility in Kuwait. Apparently Chris had slept through this announcement so when the plane landed and people started standing up, he asked someone if this was the Kuwait stop (the plane was supposed to continue on after stopping in Kuwait).
Not much after 3 am, we arrived in Qatar and dumped our luggage in a holding tent waiting to hear the fate of our night. We learned that we could get onto a flight before lunch....we would spend the next few hours in a crowded passenger terminal on non-ergonomic rows of metal chairs. We went across the street to the grab-and-go trailer where we were each issued a brown paper bag and allowed to choose 2 sandwiches, 2 drinks, 2 snacks, 1 bag of chips, and 1 piece of fruit. We returned to the pax terminal and wedged ourselves into some of those uncomfortable metal seats. A couple of hours later, we heard a message over the loudspeaker announcing that the flight would be delayed until after dinnertime because of the weather. Ugh. Unwilling to stay here for another 12 hours, we called a couple of our co-workers who are assigned to Al Udeid. Audrey and Tom (from my February Iraq trip) came and picked us up and drove us over to transient housing. It was so good to see familiar faces through our exhausted eyes. They dropped us off and we checked in where we were each assigned a tent and bunk number. At this point we were hot, sticky, exhausted and just wanted a place to sleep horizontally. Unfortunately all we had with us was our computer backpacks, our helmets and our vests. Since we were originally supposed to leave earlier in the day, we had already turned in our baggage to be palletized. This was a blessing because we didn’t have to keep track of it and haul it around, but it meant that we didn’t have access to any of our clean clothing or toiletries. I couldn’t think of a shower now anyway, I just wanted to lie down.
It is so bright here that it is blinding when you enter or exit a building. I was blinded by the dark contrast of the dim lights inside the female tent. It took me a minute to make out the numbers on the bunks. I walked all the way to the back right and found I had a top bunk. I put my bags down, removed my shoes and crawled up. Oh, the construction I had seen upon arriving at the transient tents....just happened to be right outside the back of my tent. It was tough to get any kind of uninterrupted sleep. I remember waking up once, actually paying attention to the loudness and wondering how in the heck I had actually been able to fall asleep to begin with. It’s crazy what your brain allows when you’re exhausted. After falling asleep and waking up a couple of more times I finally decided to wake up at 3pm. I got up, put my shoes on, got my toothbrush and toothpaste, pillowcase and walked to the “Cadillac” (latrine). The tent was cooler than the outside, but it was still warm so that I was still sticky and sweaty. I brushed my teeth and took a rinse shower (no soap, no shampoo), dried off with the pillowcase and put my old clothes back on. I surprisingly felt better at least being able to get rid off of the top layer of ick.

Chris and I met up and walked to the dining facility. It was so hot that neither of us felt much like eating. I mostly ate my salad and downed a couple of cold drinks. Speaking of cold drinks, Al Udeid is an R&R facility for the military in the Middle East so there is a pool here and personnel are allowed to have 2 alcoholic drinks per day. Issuing the drinks is highly controlled and the rules are very strict. When you arrive, you are issued a drink card which is stamped when you get a drink and pay for it. So, after dinner Chris and I thought we’d each get a drink and chill out. I haven’t had a drink since New Year’s Eve so I actually didn’t even want one; I was worried that even a single beer would affect me given the heat and probable dehydrated state I was in. My worries were quenched when we got the door of the club and saw that it was closed from 4:30 to 5:30 for cleaning. It was 4:57. This place is open 24/7. Would you believe that it is closed for 1 hour per day and that is exactly when we showed up? Did I mention par for the course? We wouldn’t have time to wait until 5:30 and then have time to get back to the pax terminal to check in for our flight. We hung our heads, got our bags, boarded the crowded bus and are now sitting on those darn metal chairs again watching ESPN. I don’t really watch ESPN so it’s just on in the background. Chris found a couple of books to read. Well, actually, he found one book to read and another one was a prop for a picture (which i accidentally deleted...or Chris purposefully deleted)...a cheesy romance novel with a pink cover and a Fabio look-alike on the cover. It’s funny to think that this book is in a military passenger terminal...I guess to some folks, this kind of reading makes the time pass quicker. It’s been about an hour so far and we’re still sitting here hoping that our flight will actually leave tonight.

Sorry, no pictures to post with this one....pretty miserable so not feeling as hammy as usual for the camera.

Erika is on her way home

She has had one helluva time getting where she needs to go these past few days due to events that may or may not have included sandstorms and runway lighting failures and nearly two days worth of waiting to get on a flight to get to the right country, but she should finally be home this weekend. Oh, and she was just hanging out with JP at whatever place they may be that I can't say that's on the other side of the world and is very hot. Such a small world! Of course, he's on his way to fight for the next year and she's on her way home (for a few weeks at least), but how neat for good friends who live right down the street from each other to be able to cross paths on the other side of the world and spend some time together.

May 2006 Sunday, continued

this is old...from May 2006 and it's part 2 of the blog called Sunday. It's not that interesting, but sometimes work in Iraq is just that, work.

We had another tour of a big airfield hangar still here from when the base was built 25 years ago. Pretty cool. Then, we had Taco Bell for lunch. Yep, there's one of those here, believe it or not. Although, they are out of lettuce so all the soft taco supremes were missing the whitish-green shredded lettuce they typically have; no big deal, I don't think that adds much nutritional value anyway. We've been sticking in the conference room working most of the afternoon and evening and the rest of the team left to go eat dinner while I stayed behind to get some work done....and type this on the blog. Before dinner we took a few minutes of respite and Mylinka wowed us with a couple of card magic tricks and we shot some photos. I think we realized that we had a lot of pictures of things, but not many of us actually being here. So, here are a couple pics of us.

Sunday Morning

Here is our team: bright and early on a Sunday morning...well, not early really, but very bright.

Take care of your Mom's and grandma's today and make them feel extra special. We have 2 mom's on our team here and although we can't take them out for a fancy dinner here, I think we may go to the Turkish Restaurant on base.

Happy Mothers Day, Mom!

Saturday 12 May 2007

Not much going on for us this Saturday night. We had more meetings and site visits today. We met some really good people today handling some of the operations. It's really good to meet people who are really trying hard and want to do a good job (and are not here just because "it's good money").



There was just the noise of the fighter jet thrusts overhead for the last minute as I'm typing this. It is so cool to hear them, but maybe if I lived here longer it would get old. However, I am pretty fascinated by them and I don't know if I would ever get tired of seeing them in the skies.



I forgot my camera in my room otherwise I would post a picture from today, instead here is a picture of Al Faw Palace in Baghdad that I took about 1.5 weeks ago.

11 May 2007

Last night I went to bed pretty late (early in the morning). I creeped into the room I'm sharing with my two team mates, changed in the dark and pulled myself like a cat up to the top bunk. Luckily it's a wooden bunk bed so it doesn't creek and squeak. I crawled under the covers so exhausted and as soon as I did all I could hear was deep, loud jet blast overhead. It seemed like it lasted for a few minutes, but my exhaustion blurred my sense of time. I think it only lasted a few seconds and was then followed by a second one. In that foggy state of mind I couldn't distinguish if the sound was of a fighter taking off or of a projectile overhead. I remember moving closer to the edge of my bunk and surveying the floor below planning my landing stance if I had to take cover. What a crazy thing to have to think about, but when you're over here, you have to be aware of the possibility.

We had more meetings today. This morning Mylinka and I tried to get some coffee and Grean Bean and we were denied when we walked in and were told the power was out and the coffee machines couldn't function. What a shame.

It actually rained a little bit today and it was cooler than usual, although somewhat windy and overcast. What this means is that it was probably only 100 degrees today instead of the 110+ degrees that it has been. We welcomed the respite from the pounding sun rays...especially when we ride in the back of the pick up truck.

On another note, our living trailers are pretty nice. We have to walk through gravel about 200 feet to the shower trailer and pretty much the same distance to the toilet trailer. Although it's cumbersome at first, you get used to having to get dressed just to get to the shower. You also get used to showering with flip flops on, not shaving, getting dust on your flip-flopped feet as you walk back from the shower, and just simplyifing your morning routine. It's all about function and time efficiency. There's no room for excess over here, and one finds a much higher priority in sleeping a couple of extra minutes than performing non-essential grooming. It's always a culture shock to go from this mode of operations back to the corporate life in Atlanta; wearing high heels, putting make up on, and walking through a stone-tiled office building to arrive at my cube. I like both, but can only take so much of either at a time.

Wed 9 May

We had a brief today which went well. The team got to check out the air traffic control tower and see a few fighters take off along with a few cargo planes land and take off. The control tower visit is always a highlight when the runway is active.

We were invited to have dinner at the facilities of a Turkish contractor on base. They had quite a spread for us. The menu was chicken kebab and lamb with flat breat and two tomato accents for the meat. Although I'm not much of a lamb eater, it was quite delicious. We had Turkish Baklava and chai tea for dessert. Delicious. (That's me on the left in the blue shirt.)

The young man waiting on us looked so young and was very efficient and on top of his game. I wondered where he was from and if this was just a temporary job and if he would be able to go back to his home country and go to college. I was very impressed with him and my impression of him was that he was very quiet, smart and did his job well. You could just see his desire to do well in every way he performed his job; he was just so meticulous. His uniform was starched white and it looked like he had just gotten his hair trimmed. I wondered what he would be doing now if he had been born into a family in the States. I doubt that he would be in Iraq serving food in a Turkish dining room to foreign contractors like me. Sometimes I focus on people who would normally fall into the background of daily life. I mean that I don't know if anyone at that table was wondering about this young man or really could even describe what he looked like. For some reason, I just got to thinking about how different our lives are.

On the way back to the office we thought we were going to be able to see some Jackals, which I guess are kind of like a cross between a fox and a dog...well, i don't know what they are really other than they are considered a pest. Anyway, I can't describe what they are since we didn't see anything.