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.
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