So last night I was laying in bed, when I heard a sound like an ambulance and then a loud explosion. It turns out that it was incoming. However, no one recognized it as such, because when the Brits were here the IDF alarm was one long siren and no one was briefed that the alarm had changed.

I heard a ton of running and it sounded like everyone was vacating their trailers, which is the wrong thing to do because once the alarm goes off you only have four seconds if that to get to a bunker. And this time I heard the explosion as the alarm was going off, but as I didn’t know what was going on I stayed in bed.

After the pandemonium, the announcer, who I swear is Charlie Brown’ss father (wah, wah, wah) gave the all clear. My mate Will knocked on my window to see if I was o.k. I was.

But I guess that after the all clear was given around 9:30 p.m. or 10 they hit us again at midnight, I didn’t hear a thing and slept right through it, as a matter of fact several people slept through it. But now I know what the alarm sounds like I will be hitting the deck. I also just recently became the proud owner of a kevlar vest and helmet which I will be taking to my hutch.

Geez, where was the memo?

The Flamingoes

Originally uploaded by The Toze

they forgot to send the legs. Ever since I’ve arrived in Iraq and been living in a trailer I have been asking for a pink flamingo, because nothing says class like yard ornaments. So finally, the Portland MC team sent us four of them. I opened the package with my colleague Jill only to find that the flamingos had not been sent with their legs.

So, I have one outside my trailer held in place by a brick and the other three were donated to the office beautification project. Our regional director kept asking for a vine to wind around this pole, I like the flamingos. I thought my colleague Ali did a great job improvising.

Well I think I finally hit my wall here. I’m a bit tired and bored. R & R isn’t until June 15 and I’m also not excited about traveling by myself. Still in the same routine, living in the same trailer, but my support system is getting smaller. Jasper isn’t coming back, Will looks like he can barely support himself and Russ is MIA.

I need to regroup.

There have been a couple of breaks to the routine in the past couple of weeks.  The first is yoga, which my colleague Jill, who is only here for one more week has been teaching.  We had one person dropout of the class and two join.  Two of the guys Will and Ron are pretty funny and sometimes it’s hard not to laugh when they are making fun of themselves and each other at their lack of flexibility.  They pick on Russ a lot who has the most natural yoga ability.  Russ used to be the favorite student, but now it’s Dan because he doesn’t talk during class.  Russ was actually trying to convince us to make him a sash that said “Best in Show.”  He is longer and leaner and more flexible than the other guys so has an easier time getting into the poses.  So, I usually make breakfast right before it closes at 8:00 a.m., then work, lunch from noon to 1:15 p.m. and maybe a nap, work until 5:00 p.m. then work out, then work on my book and maybe a little T.V. before bed. 

I did have a trip into Basra last week to see the training that was happening unfortuantely it was all in Arabic so it was difficult to follow. We had to go out the Delta Gate, so we had to walk about a 1/4 of a mile to get to our cars that take us into Basra.  The path out is narrow and uneven and has razor wire on both sides, one missed step and I would have been razored.  What made it worse was on the way back in you have to fight with all the Iraqi’s coming out and the Arab Culture is very pushy.   I actually have been to Basra twice recently, once to visit a PWD project that is not being used and the second for the training.  Everytime I go in I have to cover my hair, it is very hot here at the moment.  Anyway, we made it out the Delta Gate on the first day of training, I dropped them off at the Alpha Gate, which is primarly a military and PSD gate the second day of the training and then we tried to get our trainers out the Delta Gate on the third day and the military wouldn’t let them out without body armour on, which just makes them more of a target walking past all the workers and truckers, anyone who could make a phone call to a militia member. 

So I also spent the last week talking with the Battlion Commander about permission to go out the Alpha Gate which is easier to get out than the Delta Gate.  The parking lot where our drivers pick us up is a lot closer.  After about three trips to see the Lt. Col. I finally got that resolved.  The military has for the most part been very accomodating and willing to work with us.  But one of the issues is we never get the memos that change the rules and the rules change often so we are always dealing with the changes after the fact. 

All the PSDs are reporting that Basra is becoming more dangerous, but so far we have not had more IDF, incoming direct fire, but we keep hearing predictions about how the violence is going to increase with the American prescence.  As they prepare for the scale down, the PSD teams are worried about their jobs, their companies have let them know in no uncertain terms that they can be fired at anytime for any reason.  I’m not impressed with the way the PSDs run they need non- ex-military managers.  The smaller PSDs seem to run better.

What is disappointing about the American take-over is there is still no coffee shop and no Burger King or Pizza Hut.  In addition the PX is always out of stock, but I think that is because the Americans are such consumers, we never had that problem under the Brits.  It was funny, I’m also in charge of the badging and I was speaking to the Lt. Col. about getting a badge for one of the expatriates, the badges are required for base living and allow you to pass through checkpoints and give you access to gyms, the PX and DFACs.  The Lt. Col. was contacted by a Congressman because a woman had written a letter taking him to task because some solider she knew couldn’t buy shampoo.   I wanted to ask him for her and the Congressman’s contact information, to tell them that these men are adults and maybe they need to start acting like adults and plan a little better.  I after all brought my shampoo and all my prescriptions with me.  Duh!  The issue is that the soliders buy two or three of everything. But it’s actually not an issue for me because I brought a year’s supply of shampoo, and the other things I felt I couldn’t live without, like my favorite toothpaste. 

So life goes on.  The book is getting editing, I have one book proposal currently being reviewed by an agent and 18 query letters that I’m still waiting for responses too.  I’ve been reading a book called “If Life is a Game, These are the Rules, Ten Rules for Being Human” I’m trying to master Rule 6, “There is no better than here.”  which talks about living in the present and is about learning gratitude, unattachment, abundance and peace.  Unattachment, not being attached to a certain outcome is the most difficult for me.  Which takes me back Rule 4, a lesson is repeated until learned.

The springtime has always been difficult for me.  My father died on March 22, 1983, my grandmother committed suicide shortly after my father’s death the same year.  My Auntie Gay died in the spring at the age of 39 of a brain tumor and my crash happened on May 14, 1988.  I was so young, just 20 and I remember how beautiful the day was and I remember how much homework I had and how I was procrastinating.  I was wearing white shorts, back then I had great legs, my tie-dyed rugby shirt from the Maggotfest and white tennis shoes.  I had been applying for summer jobs, trying to figure out what I  was going to do for the summer.  At that point in my life, I was planning on joining the peace corps and having an international career.  I remember being so full of hope and potential like life was just waiting for me and the best was yet to come.  It seems like every spring I get nostolgic for what might have been.  In the hospital they call it the “What if?” game, but sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like, if certain choices hadn’t been made that day.  The hardest part after the crash was rebuilding my dreams.  I thought I would never work internationally, but now here I am and then sometimes I think to myself I should have been doing this type of work when I was a lot younger, but then again if I had been doing this when I was younger I wouldn’t have been in the Paralympics.  It’s funny how life turns out.

As Garrison Keillor said,“Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have got it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known.”  Was being disabled what I wanted? No? Is it what I would have wanted had I known? No?  But almost everything in my life has worked out for the best or as best as it could.  While I was in the situation I couldn’t see the forest through the trees, but looking back on times that I felt really down because of changes in my life, they were for the best.  Relationships that didn’t work out, were definately for the best, jobs I didn’t get, hard times that made me re-evaluate where I was going and what I was doing. 

For me what is the most fortunate thing, is that I have this incredible group of friends, without whom I would not have made it through those times.  I know that I get so caught up in where I’m going that I forget that right here, right now, going what I’m going through is where I’m supposed to be.  And that sometimes we get so caught up in what we think our lives should be like, that we forget how much fun and how good they have been just the way they are.  I forget all the time about the blessings in my life and the people that I’m fortunate to call my friends and in the end the most important things are the relationships we develop along the way. 

In a lot of ways I’m very much that same naive girl with the best yet to come and yet still I’ve experienced some incredbile times, had incredible experiences and been truly blessed in my friends and family.  My love to you all.

My colleague who is visiting is a yoga instructor and she got six guys to do yoga with us yesterday. It was funny because as we were starting she asked the other guys in the gym if they wanted to participate and they responded no, with a look of utter horror on their faces.  She had asked a couple of other guys too who also turned her down, I think they were afraid of what their mates might think.  It’s amazing I was very naive about this type of living situation the rumors run ramped, if you are a woman and you are even seen talking to a guy, the rumors start to fly.  It’s extremely immature, but I don’t know what I was expecting from men who think that the F-word is a noun, adjective, verb, and expletive and who have pictures of naked women all over their walls.  SIGH.  So back to Yoga it was mainly my mates on camp who partcipated the usual lot and they were such good sports.  A lot of them are really muscular so they are not that flexible particularly through the shoulders so some of it ended up being very funny, but we all kept on each other to do our best and agreed to another sesssion on Friday.  For me, it really kicked my butt, I had to do modified poses, but it still kicked my butt.  Today we are all walking around telling each other what is sore.  The Friday session should be interesting. I wish I would have taken photos.  

“When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.” – Oprah

Well the Americans are taking over Camp Basrah and I had a run in with one of them, I had put it down a bad day on both our parts, but this week, my boss and another colleague had a run in with the same guy, I’m almost 99.9% sure, but will get confirmation at a later date.

So the story goes like this, it was Thursday evening the night before the weekend officially starts, well our one weekend day anyway, and one of my colleagues was out in the field and I was scheduled to pick him up.  He was late and I had Arabic that night at 6:30.   I left work at 4:45 p.m. to try and get in a work out.  I got to the gym and it was me on the ellipitcal and this other guy, one of the PSD guys on the treadmill.  I started working out and I heard a gross sound like someone farmer blowing, I looked over and the guy on the treadmill was blowing his nose into his hand, then he put the snot in his pocket.  I looked away, but then I heard it again, and again, and again.  I started gagging.  Then I heard him hock up a lugie and saw him spit it into his hand, then he deposited that into his shorts pocket.  I almost puked. I thought to myself this has got to me it, he can’t keep doing this, but he did and before I puked my guts up, preferably all over his gross, inconsiderate self, I abandoned my workout and ran out of the gym.  Unfortunately I forgot my phone.

I ran back in to get it and clueless, inconsiderate guy, said, “What’s your problem?”  I said,  “You are absolutely disgusting!” and left the gym.  So I didn’t get to work out.  My colleague was supposed to arrive at Delta gate at 6:00 p.m. dinner starts at 6:00 p.m.  and I had to be at Arabic at 6:30 p.m. so I e-mailed my carpool buddy to Arabic Jasper and told him I would be late and I went to Delta gate.  My colleague was late and the gate was closed so they were going around to Alpha gate, so I texted Jasper and told him I wouldn’t be going to Arabic.  Annoyance number 2.  I drove out to Alpha gate and waited about 10 minutes until my colleague came through at that point it was 6:30 a.m. and I was thinking if I hurried I could still make Arabic.  I got in the “civilian” lane behind a bus, we waited for about 10 minutesa and then the bus’s hazard lights went on, so my colleague and I assessed the situation and decided to try a different lane.

I pulled into the other lane and went up near the bus to execute my stop and the solider on the bus, was yelling at the top of his lungs, “Stop, tell her to stop!”  when I was in the middle of stopping.  He gets off the bus marches over and says, “We have a procedure here!”  “That’s fine,  I’m willing to follow procedure.”  He didn’t even let me finish, but said that I needed to wait in line behind the bus, when I tried to explain that we thought the bus was broken down, he wouldn’t even let me explain, but kept harping on how I needed to follow procedure. Finally fed up I said, “So arrest me.”  He admitted that he couldn’t, but then decided to prove his manhood by harassing me.  He made me and my colleague get out of the car, he then searched the car, he then made me pull the car over to the side and started examine my badge. He looked at my Mercy Corps badge and said it was expired.  I said it had nothing to do with him and he was violating my civil rights and I wanted to speak to his commanding officer.  His commanding officer came over and told him to let me go that I had the appropriate badge, and then Mr. Power Hungry lied to his commanding officer he told him that I had been speeding, there was no way my Kia SUV could have gotten up to speed in the 20 feet I had in the lane and it pissed me off. I said, “You are lying, why are you lying.”  But he persisted in his lie, my colleague backed me up, the sergeant finally threw up his hands, gave up and walked away.  Biscuithead then started to explain procedure to me and I said, “You are a liar and I don’t want to hear anything else you have to say! And I will see you in the Lieutenant’s office.  He then said, “Well I”m going to report it also.”  I said you go ahead and do that.  Then I asked him what his job is.  He didn’t answer.  I said again “What’s your job?” And then answered for him.  “To protect American citizens, and if this is you doing your job, you suck at it.”  He detained me for 45 minutes and then made me wait for a convoy.  I reported him to his superior officer and told him that it was partially my fault for mouthing off, but then when this week, my boss and a second colleague both whom are African came in and reported being harrassed at the gate I was sure it was the same biscuithead and sure enough when I went to pick up some of our national staff he was there at the Delta gate.

What happened with my boss, is that he walked in with an unlit cigarette in his mouth and the solider ordered him to take it out. He said no.  The solider then said this was a no smoking area and my boss replied, “I’m not smoking.”  Then my other colleague said, “I don’t see a no smoking sign.”  And the solider told him to “Shut his mouth!”  They almost came to blows before the other soliders stepped in.  I’m 99.9% positive it was Biscuithead, which means that he has power issues, because as my basketball coach used to say “Once is a mistake, twice is a pattern of behavior.”

It was just a really odd experience, because for the most part the American soliders have been very friendly and courteous.  But this interaction made me think, this is the type of guy that shoots first and ask questions later.  And I wonder is he understands that his lying about me speeding calls into question his integreity.  I hate liars, particularly when it’s to cover their own ass.  He knew he had no reason to detain me, but he wanted to prove he could so he invented a lie to make it all right.

I think one of the issues is that the American soliders over here are so young and they aren’t paid to think, only to follow orders, the Brits, were older and easier to deal with.  But that Biscuithead at the gate is scary and if he’s the one who also had the run in with my boss and colleague it makes me think that he picks his victims carefully, I’m a women, they are black.  It’s disconcerting.