Well, this picture is a good synopsis of my past five or so days. Let’s see–I started on Tuesday morning, when I dropped by base to see if there was a hat for me in the Unit Deployment Manager’s office. (There wasn’t.) After much cell-phone calling, I managed to make it over to clothing sales and pick up their last lonely desert camo hat, even though it was a shape that people aren’t wearing anymore. Then I went by the rental car place to drop off the car (all of this was in the midst of a torrential downpour, mind you), and lugged my two enormous bags and two carry-ons into the place. I was shuttled to the airport, and after some minor confusion because I didn’t realize they’d opened a new security checkpoint, I made it in to wait for my plane.
I transited through Charlotte, which was providential considering Atlanta was running at least 2 hours late by that time, and made it to Baltimore to catch my military rotator flight. I had to pick up all my checked bags and redo all of the security stuff and check-in procedure, as well as separating out my weapon and checking it separately, but there were tons of other people there going through the same thing. Around this time my too-tight boots (that I’d gotten the day before and hadn’t had time to try on) started really hurting.
I waited for the flight and we headed out from Baltimore to Germany. I took my boots off for the duration of the flight. It was long and I slept fitfully, the way one naturally does on a transatlantic journey. Before long it was morning and we touched down, and we were hustled off the plane so that they could clean it and get a new crew. I tried to put my boots on and nearly couldn’t walk . . . I’d gotten huge blisters on my heels at this point. So in my time there I drank the free coffee and bought band-aids that I plastered over my heels as a stopgap measure.
Then the flight from Germany to Qatar–Al Udeid air base. The sun set, it seemed, almost as soon as it had risen, and we arrived to blackness nearly unbroken. After waiting around for hours, it seemed like, and being herded around in lines and briefed and given countless bottles of water, we were ushered to our transient quarters–tents where there were about 50 people in bunks and a 24/7 quiet hours policy–and told to check the board for our flight information (it would be sometime in the next two days). So all through the rest of that night and most of the next day I slept. I tried to walk to get food and use the restroom and found that it hurt so badly that I was tiptoeing inside my boots in order to avoid trying to shove my feet into them. However, most of the day I lay in my bunk either dozing or reading with my flashlight or by the reflected glare that is everywhere.
Al Udeid is fearfully bright by day. There is nothing for the eye to see except white sand, white gravel, and pale tents/trailers. Every woman in my tent commented on how when she left it for the first time at daylight, she was blinded and thought she burnt her retinas. It was really bright. I unearthed my sunglasses and they were a good thing . . . Anyway, the food was good there in the dining hall, and it was interesting to see the lifestyle there. I assume because it’s so hot, everyone emerges at sunset and then there are people around at all hours of the night. It was interesting. All the same, due to the flatness and bleakness of it, I’m rather glad I wasn’t deployed there as I’d originally put in to be.
As for my feet–a major who was traveling to Baghdad with me loaned me her running shoes that last day, and I wore them with my uniform, which helped tremendously. That, combined with the layers of band-aids and duct tape that I had plastered over my heels, contributed to a comfortable walking situation from that point on.
We finally gathered to get our chem gear bags and then to wait for our military flight to Baghdad. It took a long time, but the flight came when it was supposed to and we all loaded in and sat, knee to knee, inside the C-130. We were just about to take off when it turned out we had to wait for a DV (distinguished visitor–meaning VIP for the military), and we sat out there for an extra hour until he and his entourage eventually showed up. Sigh. Oh well, it wasn’t like we weren’t used to waiting around at that point!
Finally we got to Baghdad. After what I’d seen of Qatar, it seemed practically a metropolis! You could tell there were lights all around and it seemed more . . . inhabited . . . than where we’d come from. It was odd to have to wear our just-collected body armor and helmets, however. All the same, the armor wasn’t as heavy and bulky as I thought it would be, and after my training I’d sort of gotten used to the feel of it and my helmet anyway.
We took a bus (after having to lug all our many, many heavy bags by ourselves for what seemed miles but was probably only 100 meters or so) to a little stop-point where we’d catch the bus to the other “good” part of town, the International Zone (where the Embassy is, and where four of us were going to be stationed). We had to wait there until the wee hours of the morning when an armored bus convoy arrived, because ground transit through the parts of Baghdad where we were going could be risky. I wanted to watch all this process carefully but I fell asleep almost as soon as the bus started. I guess it was all just too much.
We met up with our sponsors when we got to the other end of that trip, and signed up for transient quarters (teeny rooms in trailers with a communal bathroom a short walk away). The selling point to this was that the rooms were ALL TO YOURSELF, which after that dreadful tent in Al Udeid was thrilling. I slept through the morning and got up at noon today to do a tour of the Embassy area and my office and to meet with some of the people I’m going to be working with. I wrote a couple emails, called home, and attended a commander’s call where I had to stand up in front of everyone, blue tennis shoes and all, with the four other new people, and say where I came from and what I’m doing.
Anyway, I’m excited. The food here is wonderful, the Embassy (one of Saddam’s old palaces) is a beautiful place to work, there are actually trees around here–important to me–and my job sounds really interesting. It’s going to be a lot of work–apparently 14-hour days are the norm, not an exception–but it’s going to be really interesting, and that’s something I haven’t seen a whole lot of yet.
And there you have it! I’ve kept myself up tonight so as to better acclimatize to the local time, but now I should probably be heading to bed. I’ll keep you posted.
Posted by Kjirstin 
