Week Five/Stuck

The majority of week five was spent being stuck. Our trip out to Husaybah was supposed to take about three hours. It ended up taking three days. It ended up being an unforeseen camping type experience. The purpose to the trip was to perform routine monthly maintenance on the equipment we support. This consists mainly of blowing out all the dirt and dust that equipment manages to collect from month to month. It is a long process, there is a lot of dirt and dust in Iraq. Once all the dirt is blown out, everything is plugged back in, powered up, and tested. When we plugged everything back in I plugged one thing in to the wrong place. My bad. It took us a while to realize what had happened, and by then the convoy we came out on had already headed back to AQ. The next convoy wasn't due for another three days.

Camp Gannon, the base in Husaybah, is tiny. It is about as far west and remote as you can get in Iraq. I was able to see into Syria if that tells you how far west. The facilities were the bare minimum. Food on most bases here is generally served in the traditional cafeteria setting. You have a main line with various entree choices and a short order line with fast food type dishes. This was not the case in CG. There were two choices: take it or leave it. My favorite meal was breakfast on the last day; ham and cheese omelet and chili? CG is where I had my first cold shower since being in country. Since I was covered in dirt and dust, I didn't mind at all.

On a church retreat I attended recently, I was introduced to the concept of a 'composting toilet'. It is an environmentally friendly toilet that uses bacteria in the place of plumbing to dispose of waste. It was quite fascinating, if you could get past the smell. Camp gannon also had its own environmentally friendly toilet called PETT( The Portable Environmental Toilet). I hoped that I would get by with out finding out how to use a PETT, but alas three days is a long time. The PETT system consist of a tent similar in size to a porta-potty, a toilet with a net where the bowl usually is, appropriate reading material, and a bagging system. There were also tubes buried in the ground for urinary usage. I am sure that that was way too many details for some, so I will leave it at that.

Most of our time in CG was spent entertaining ourselves by watching movies, reading, or playing video games. When is was time to go, I was not at all sad. We convoyed back to AQ and got on a flight back to Al Asad. The flight to AA was horrible. I forgot to get ear-plugs and we ended up going way out to another base an hour away before heading up to AA. At least I wasn't freezing at the same time thanks to my new neck scarf. Lesson learned; don't forget your ear-plugs.

I am back in Ramadi now, and am glad to be so. It almost feels like 'home'. My little safe haven. Eleven more months to go.