It’s election day in Iraq and the day is beautiful and sunny Vehicle curfews are in effect in cities, airports are closed and borders are sealed. Polling stations are ringed with razor wire and under 24-hour police guard. All stations have security checks one has six that voters will have to pass through before they can cast their ballots. There have been 10 election related deaths reported and on polling place was hit by three mortars.

At lunch today the cafeteria was crowded because none of the security details could go out. Yesterday I ended up rearranging my room I moved the bed once and every other piece of furniture twice and in the end the desk, the wardrobe and the drawers ended up on the same wall on which they started. Oh well, it was good exercise. Friday nights is BBQ night and they served grilled tenderloin, chicken and Brats. Yummy. I have been and hopefully will continue to exercise everyday with Friday off; although the cardio equipment in the gym leaves much to be desired.

Last night I tried to watch the movie 7 Pounds, but it cut off halfway through the show so I have to return the DVD and get a new one. I also need a flyswatter.

Today, January 30, Iraq’s international borders are closed, the airports are shut down and traffic across Baghdad has been halted. All in preparation for the elections that will take place tomorrow. 14,000 candidates are competing for 440 seats on provincial, district and sub-district councils in 14 provinces. Due to unresolved issues in the remaining 4 governorates the elections there have been postponed. Three Sunni candidates were killed two days before the provincial elections, one in Mosul, one in Baghdad and one in Diyala, which brings the total number of candidates killed to 6. Different from the last provincial election, the candidates actually have their names on the ballots, their are election posters with people’s photos on them all over the place and the Sunnis will participate, they did not participate in the last election in protest.

Meanwhile back on the base, life goes on. Today is Friday, my half day off. I woke up at 6: 57a.m. to what sounded like someone tromping around on my roof. I went back to sleep and woke up to a downpour. I had plans to go to brunch at a restaurant on base and was worried that we wouldn’t go because of the rain. When I stuck my head out of my trailer it was raining sideways.

Brunch was still on and I went with my colleague Java and another humanitarian aid worker Fabiola. We walked over to a restaurant. After brunch I had a vanilla latte at the specialty coffee shop. We did a little shopping at the NAFI store and I learned there is an American APO address here which I’m very excited about. I might try and organize my room today.

The base where I live is huge and there are different compounds on it. I live in the B & B compound. Walking around the compound is like walking through a mouse maze with all the sandbags and high cement blast walls. The blast walls are about 20 feet high and they are placed around the common trailers. The living trailers are not usually surrounded by blast walls, but are sandbagged up about six feet. The sandbags keep shrapnel from penetrating the trailers.

All over the place are signs about IDF (Incoming Direct Fire). When the siren sounds you drop to the ground wait three minutes and then run to the nearest bunker. The bunkers are like sandbag forts with benches in them. I hope if I have to spend time in a bunker it’s with a bunch of good looking Brits. Once the all clear alarm sounds you can go about your business. The reason you drop to the ground is because shrapnel explodes upwards.

I regret to inform you that due to security rules that I will not be able to post photos from my current location on my blog. However, I will post them from my R & R.

I arrived in South Iraq on January 26, I’m living in a compound for contractors on the military base. When I arrived at the airport in Basra I was surprised at how nice it was, but it was odd because there was only one plane and very few passengers. Only the women were patted down coming off the plane it was weird. We were three women in the room, two Americans and one French woman. The American woman’s husband was Iraqi and she was wearing a hijab — crazy. I wonder if she knows what she’s getting into.

There were two incidents during the security search, the French woman had a tampon and then as the woman was patting me down she gave me a mischievous smile and then squeezed both my breasts. When I got out of the room I asked the French girl if the same thing had happened to her and she confirmed that it had along with an uncomfortable moment at her crotch area.

Going through a second security point once again they were stymied by my six boxes of tampons; then the guy was having trouble closing my suitcase, he looked to me for help, but I just looked at him and didn’t move a muscle. Hey you open you close it, those are the rules. My colleague Java showed me around the compound and got me settled in my trailer and then we hit the 9mm bar to celebrate my arrival with a bottle of Shiraz.

I had planned on being in Iraq for Christmas, but due to circumstances beyond my control I was not.  My job as

The Great Sock Caper

PWD and Gender Program Manager went away due to a change in the grant.  Now I’m on my way to Basra to be the Monitoring and Evaluation person.  I think I’m still mourning my program.

With the thought that I would be in Christmas for Iraq and due to a lack of work I started plotting and planning a Christmas celebration.  I went on a robbery spree, stealing people’s socks.  Not a pair of socks mind you, but one sock.  A lot of things went missing in Iraq so people weren’t duly concerned, but I had to plan my thefts carefully.  Special thanks to Liza and Vicky who skillfully distracted some of my marks during the thefts.

It was difficult getting a handle on who was going to be around for Christmas, I did have to return a couple socks and I did have one pre-Christmas confession to a colleague who was leaving the program, but other than that my plan was scheduled to go off without a hitch until . . . on I learned on December 5, that I would be going home.

My flight was scheduled for December 13th so on the evening of 12th, supervised by Liza I stuffed the socks and left them in my soon to be vacant room.  Earlier that evening I had gone out to dinner with Vicky, Scott, Alex and David.  As we passed the new store in town I commented and David said,  “I’ve been there.”  I asked him why and he preceeded to tell me it was to buy socks.  “It appears I did a poor job of packing I only packed one pair of black socks and one blue sock,” he said.  I was trying so hard not to laugh, I had stolen his blue sock.

On December 12, I wrote my colleagues this message:

“Dear all – I don’t know what my future holds, but I wanted to thank you so much for everything it has truly been a pleasure working with you.  And I will miss cooking for and with you.  As I thought I was going to be here for Christmas I was planning a surprise for all of you who I was going to spend Christmas with. I’ve been stealing your socks, ever since Sherizaan’s birthday party; to surprise you on Christmas morning.  Since I won’t be here on Christmas and I know that some of you have been wondering where your socks are (I’m really sorry David had I known you were so low on socks I would have improvised), I wanted to make sure you get them back.  You will find your socks, in the second cupboard on the right in my bedroom.  So a few more confessions:

Sherizaan you have some of the sorriest socks I’ve ever seen.

David, so sorry you had to buy a new pair of socks but now at least you have three pairs with you.

I did originally steal socks from Claire and Kathryn, but had to return them, Claire’s I returned without her knowing with Kathryn it was a bit of an embarrassing conversation.

I’m not sure if I got Scott’s and Steve’s socks mixed up, but Scott’s has a dark chocolate bar in it.  Any sock disputes should be resolved by Liza as she was a co-conspirator.

Vicky’s sock is on the top shelf the red one, I know it’s bigger but there is something in there for all of you to share on Christmas morning.

I didn’t get around to stealing Alex’s sock so his is the disco sock also on the top shelf.

So from left to right it goes, Tash, Sean, Sharizaan, Steve, Scott and David E.  And on the top shelf Vicky and Alex. Please forgive me my brief foray into petty theft.

I wish you all the best. The work you do is very important and I admire you for doing it.  I want to apologize that Santa was more generous to some people than others, I didn’t have as much time to shop as I would have liked.  And I hope when you think of me it will be about the good times we shared and the differences that we made in peoples’ lives.”

The Gang with their Christmas shot glasses from Rome.

It’s been a long time since the state of my body bothered me, but all this walking and nightly pain has reminded me just how messed up my body is. I watch everyone around me get through the day with ease or wake up in the morning with nothing more than a hangover and am reminded about just how broken I am. Staying in hostels I keep meeting young people doing the grand European tour and it reminds me that I would have done it too, if not for one man’s decision.

But I’m managing, barely. Hostel life is very interesting. I came back from the day at the Coliseum, Trevi Fountain, Pantheon and Spanish Steps at around 6:30 p.m. to a dark room full of nappers. I had three new roommates. I met Erika and Aimee who are from Minnesota and studying in London. I didn’t meet Gabriella from Brazil until the next day. I went out to dinner down the street and tried Saltambanco, veal with proscuitto in gravy, it was fine, but now I don’t have to have it again and then I returned to the hostel to hang out.

My new roommates Erika and Aimee had gotten up and Erika was dressed to the nines. I hung out with my roommate Rebecca and the two Australians I had met Pam and Cam and the bartender, who was also from Australia – Adrian. Rebecca and I had planned full days for the next day so we headed to bed around 11:00 p.m. As I was limping out through the reception, a tall rugged, dirty blond, turned and said, “What did you do?” “I was run over by a car when I was 20,” I replied with a smile. I introduced myself and learned that his name was Quinn and then headed up to bed, but sleep was elusive that night.

I had just dozed off to sleep when the door opened and Erika (who will from now on be referred to as drunk girl) stumbled in. She tried to use the ladder up to her bed and fell off. So then she just climbed up, fully clothed, in a brown dress and got into bed. We settled in to go back to sleep and drunk girl started snoring. After we finished complaining about that there was a commotion in the hall, slamming of doors, and someone using the F word as an adjective, noun, verb and conjunction. I thought it was a fight so I got out of bed to see if I could help, and was confronted with an Indian guy. I said, “What’s going on?” He said, “I don’t know.” So I went downstairs and the receptionist Jamie told me it was a lover’s quarrel.

Rebecca and I were reciting our litany of issues that night including drunk girl when Jamie told us that she had come on to every single guy in the bar. One of the guys had been nice enough to walk here up to the room, but that explains the whining we heard outside the door, drunk girl didn’t want to sleep alone and was trying to prolong her interaction with the male species that had been kind enough to ensure she got her drunk ass to bed. I might be more forgiving had it just been the falling out of bed, but she snored and not lightly I might add. When the time came to get up the next morning Rebecca and I had gotten maybe four hours of sleep. Rebecca turned on the lights, after all if people are going to be inconsiderate of you, why should you be considerate of them. As Rebecca was organizing her suitcase, she is a neat freak; drunk girl got up and went to the bathroom. She was still drunk, on her attempt to get into bed again that morning she fell out. She giggled, “I fell out of bed.” Rebecca, a short, curvy, red-head, looked at her in total disgust. “Do you know you fell out of bed last night?” she asked. “I did not,” drunk girl protested. “Yes you did!” Rebecca insisted. “Also you snored all last night.” Drunk girl denied it all like a practiced alcoholic denies his drinking. I just hid under my covers.

Leaving drunk girl and the other two sleeping roommates to their dreams, Rebecca and I went across the street for eggs and bacon. I was headed to Trastevere, a picturesque medieval neighborhood characterized by a quirky Bohemian atmosphere, and Rebecca was going to meet me there later to check out this Pizza joint I read about. When I got there it was pouring so I took refuge in a church. After the downpour stopped I walked around the neighborhood, checked out the local market and finally ensconced myself in a coffee shop and read for a couple of hours. I met Rebecca and we spent about an hour searching for the pizza place which was touted by some magazine as the “best pizza in Rome.” When we finally found it they weren’t serving pizza for lunch and the waiter actually told us where to find the best pizza in Rome. I had great Lasagna though. If I go back I won’t spend time looking for restaurants because almost anywhere you sit down has good food. From there Rebecca and I went back to the Hostel, Rebecca went to look for a hotel because there was “no way in hell she was spending another night with drunk girl.” I took a nap.

That evening I limped across the street bought pizza and then sat down in the common room of the hostel. Quinn was there with his traveling companions Jared, his 22 year-old brother and Wills, sweat 18 year-old from Australia. I spent the evening watch the brothers, Jared and Quinn check out and flirt with every girl in the room. In between watching the brothers search and conquer mission, I talked with the people around me. Wills and I talked about his travel and we were both astonished at how quickly the people we met could see things. At the hostel, people would come back with a list of the places that they had seen that day and I was astounded that they could see so much in one day. When I expressed this to Wills he said, that he had told the brothers that he was going to do Rome on his own because the brothers went through everything so quickly. Wills and I both need more time. I also met Anna from Spain and a bunch of other people. The brothers were getting a bunch of people together to go out and every so often they would get up walk around the room, stop and flirt with some girls and then join other girls to invite us at our table. Both of them ended up in conversations with drunk girl. Quinn sat down I gave him the eyeball and I said, “That’s your sure thing.” He said, “No shit!” But I think he wanted more of a challenge. Currently both the brothers are fire fighters they work the summer season in California, Quinn wants to be an environmental engineer, right now Jared is working on being Casanova. All three of them were very nice and funny. They made me laugh. I left them downstairs partying at around midnight.

As I watched the 20-somethings mill around the room, in the thrall of their tours on the continent I wondered if I had ever been that young. I don’t think I was, at their age I was dealing with doctors, medical bills, surgery and rebuilding my life. As they all encouraged me to stay up and go out with them I felt a little bit jealous and sad, sad that I had missed out.