In Kuwait
Dear Reader, this blog did not exist before the second week of September 2006. What follows is an email I sent my family on the date of the post.
Writing to you now from not-so-sunny Kuwait. After a 28-hour ordeal on the airplane (including very brief stops in Indianapolis, Indiana; Shannon, Ireland; and Budapest, Hungary) we finally made it into Kuwait City. Quite unexpectedly, it’s been raining the last few days.
After landing, we were met at the airport by some military representatives who put us all on buses to go to our new temporary home at a camp approximately two hours away. The buses had their windows completely covered by curtains (not sure why - security?) and each bus had to have several soldiers with live ammunition. Again - just in case someone attacked us.
After arriving, we were put up in a tent that had good heating - which was good, because it was cold with the rain. The bathroom facilities consist of a semi-permanent rig that has two toilets and two urinals in it. The showers are in a separate trailer. All the water for this camp has to be trucked in, so showers consist of getting wet, turning off the water, lathering up from head to toe, and then turning the water back on and rinsing off. All the drinking water here is bottled. I guess, like Mexico, you don’t drink the local water.
The facilities here are interesting. There’s a PX that’s basically an oversized Circle K in a tent. There are also a couple of smaller ones made from running two tractor-trailers backed up end to end. In addition, there’s a Burger King, Taco Bell, Subway, Pizza Inn, and a couple of coffee shops I’ve never heard of in trailers. Also, there’s some local jewelry and knick-knack shops available. Some of the guys are already buying souvenirs to send home - including Arabic clothing. I looked at the clothes and said - “Would my wife really want to wear that outfit?” and promptly decided she wouldn’t.
The chow here is pretty good. Wednesday nights are “surf and turf” nights where they serve crab legs, lobster tail and steak. Not exactly Red Lobster - the steaks are too well done and the presentation isn’t the greatest. The rest of the nights have a pretty good variety and I really can’t complain - hey, it’s free. Bunch of Pakistanis working in the place.
Communications with the rest of the world are also interesting. To make a phone call, you stand in line for 20 minutes and pay about $0.30 a minute. Or, you wait in an hour-long line and call for free on government phones. Internet, at the pay site, is $5 per hour or $1 for 12 minutes. You can also stand in line at a different location for an hour to get 20 minutes on line for free. Given that scenario, I wrote this email in Microsoft Word, put it on a thumb-drive, and then copied and pasted it into the email - rather than sit there burning minutes as I wrote this.
We are expected to be here for the next couple of weeks, and then we will be flying north. Supposedly, we will be flying straight into our Forward Operating Base (FOB), so we won’t have to worry about getting shot at along the way. We’ll be doing some more required training while in Kuwait. Once that’s done, we go north. We hear our shipping containers with all of our equipment are “somewhere in Iraq”, but no one can tell us exactly where. Nice.
While here in Kuwait, everyone is armed and provided ammunition (same as in Iraq). You carry your weapon and ammunition around with you everywhere you go in case something goes down - that includes going to the latrine. There’s several small bomb shelters scattered throughout the area, and I’ve learned to look for them wherever I go. There’s some only about 40 meters from my tent, although, if we were mortared, I think I would be planting my face in the dirt before I ran to those shelters.
I continue to be amazed by Kuwait. During the drive in, all I could see was sand. There were a few trees in built up areas, but the rest of it was just flat sand, rock and dirt. Not a bush or a blade of grass to see. On the flight in, I saw some stunted brown grass in one little patch, but that was it. So far, the only animals I’ve seen have been some sparrows that looked amazingly like the ones in Arizona. I’m told there’s rats here too, but haven’t run across those yet. But, hey, it’s only been a couple of days. I’m sure they’ll pop up eventually. The really amazing thing is how cold it is. I’m thinking Phoenix is warmer that Kuwait, and we are only at about 400 feet above sea level here.
I’ve heard there are cell phones available here in Kuwait and in Iraq. I’ve also heard they run $0.63 a minute to call back home. Not sure if I want to do that. The calling cards are actually cheaper. Of course, with the cell phone, you don’t have to wait in any lines. I think once we get settled in up north, I’ll be able to call once in awhile using the military phone system for free. Plus, I’ll have regular access to government email, so I won’t have to pay for that either. I may still consider going in with some of the other guys on a wireless satellite Internet service once we get to Iraq, which I could access anytime I wanted to. Of course, I’d have to buy a laptop first. Hmmm, wouldn’t that be a great Christmas present from someone? 
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