Kentucky Rides Again, and How to Fix an Iraqi Hose

For those of you that remember Kentucky, the guy I went through the initial recall with, I heard from him the other day. He's alive and well and counting the days until he leaves. It seems when they cut his orders they were for 365 days instead of the 545 days the rest of us got. It looks like there may be a chance he will get to go home earlier than the rest of his unit. I hope he does. The big question remains what will happen to our bags when we leave? Everybody else is loading theirs up in a conex to ship back to their home station. We don't have home stations though. This is a problem for him too. It's good to know that there universally isn't a plan for everyone and not just me. As long as I'm not the only one that doesn't have a plan for getting home I feel better.

On to the Iraqi hose. I've noticed, since I've been working with the Iraqis, that they are a very resourceful bunch. They're completely comfortable with thinking outside the box. Not only in things like problem solving but also in law enforcement and human rights. My first glimpse at this was when they were trying to run some wire from one side of the building to the other. The building we live in is shaped like a "U" if you look at it from above. So from the hallway just outside of my second floor room I can look out the window and see the other wing across the courtyard. One day the Iraqis decided they needed to run a wire from our wing to the other wing. This does, on the surface, present a few problems. How do you get the wire across the courtyard, how do you get the wire from inside the hallway to the outside of the hallway, and once on the other side how do you get it back inside the other hallway? The answer to these and almost all other questions is a hammer. They just hit the window with the hammer breaking out a whole section. Then they tied the wire to the hammer and dropped it into the courtyard. Another guy in the courtyard would then throw the tethered hammer up onto the roof on the opposite wing. This took a few tries and more than one injury. Once the hammer and wire are on the opposite roof they just bashed out another window and fed the wire through. Problem solved.

A similar solution is used to install a car stereo system onto a scooter. You know the Honda Spree type scooters? Those are everywhere around here. And nothing says pimped out scooter like nailing a car tape deck and speakers to the plastic molding under the handle bars. I don't know about you but I think that just screams Chic Magnet! Once the stereo and speakers are nailed to the dash they take a wire coat hanger and wrap it around the whole front end. I guess this is a secondary safety incase the shattered plastic no longer holds the nails they drove into it.
Lets say you wanted to water the patch of dirt oh say 20 meters from your front door but only had two 10 meter hoses. What would you do? The obvious question is why do you need to water the dirt, and the answer is since the hose is never turned off you might as well water something. The hose outside the front of our building has been on since I got here a number of months ago. 24 hours a day the hose is on. There's no grass, just dirt so why do you need the hose? I don't know the answer but I do know that the hose must have been too short because as of yesterday it's now twice as long. How did they mend the two hoses together you ask? Simple, they nailed it together. I know you think I'm making this up so I have photographic proof. The service I use to post my blogs just came up with a way to post pictures without using a third party hosting site so here's my first trial at using it.