Another Meeting

Meetings around here are AWESOME! Invariably, how to use the toilet will come up, as will a number of other random things. There is video of the toilet speech today, but the site manager said I couldn't post any photos of him, and especially no video. So, sad for you, my dear readers. All 3 or 4 of you. No video of the toilet speech.

And sadly, there wasn't as much masturbation talk as one would have hoped. Please don't get me wrong, I understand the epic seriousness of how wrong it is for a man to be whacking off in a sink in the women's toilet trailer. But if you don't laugh around here, you'll go NUTS. And in my case, it's not that long of a trip. Some would say, I've already taken that trip. And, hell, they might be right. But anyway.

Oh, and then we had a meeting after the meeting. But this one was just for people with vaginas. Not people with sand in their vaginas, because that could be anyone. Actual cooters. Apparently, there has been too much cattiness and it needs to stop. A good portion of the things mentioned in the communal living rant were discussed at the post-meeting meeting. The lone female supervisor has been designated, for lack of a better term, our 'den mother'. I had no idea I was coming to a flippin' boarding school for crazy junior high chicks. It's insane how catty some of these chicks are. It's mostly in the other tent though, and I'm happy to keep it that way. One of the girls wants management to put a lock on the women's toilet and shower trailers and give us all keys. WTF? How are all the military girls, who are mandated to use the DynCorp shower, due to Afghan Army asshats being, well, asshats, supposed to get in? Keys for everyone? And then when someone loses a key, rekey the lock and make 6000 more keys? Hi, welcome to Howz-e Madad Locks 'R' Us. Oh wait ... THAT DOESN'T EXIST! Cipher locks were suggested, but shot down by Den Mother, because the combo will get out, which is true enough, but it would make some of the girls feel better. Whatever. If I catch a boy in the girl's toilet or shower unit, then I'm punching him, taking his badge, and dragging him by the ding-ding to the site manager. Done and done.

Anywho, so no excellent "where to masturbate" stories ... just don't do it in the sink in the women's restroom. Hmmm ... now that I think about it, they never specifically forbade masturbating in the sinks in the *men's* toilet trailer.

'Til next time, stay safe, know where your nearest bunker is, and don't walk around with open-toed shoes ... you'll get written up.

Michelle's Guide to Communal Living

Communal living. It's not for everyone. I'm not really a huge fan myself, but it's what we have here, therefore, I will live with it. I have stayed in my fair share of hostels, and have well-traveled Friends, who have also experienced both the joy and the pain of a communal living situation. I'm not an expert, by any stretch, but I do have a lifetime of experience trying to be a decent, considerate human being. I haven't always been successful, but I try.

So here we go: rules to try to live by when faced with a communal living situation:

1. Plastic bags - they are the devil. Crinkling plastic bags are the bane of a communal living area. They are LOUD. You can try to be quiet with them, but it doesn't work. Ever. NO PLASTIC BAGS.

2. Slamming doors - don't do it. Unless you are making a dramatic statement during an argument with a significant other, doors do not need to be slammed. Especially at 5am, when you are the only one awake. If you can't take the time to gently close a door, go live the fuck outside where you don't have doors.

3. Lights - ever heard of a flashlight? It was on your packing list. Your very bright light does not need to be turned on at 5am, nor does it need to be on at 11pm. You were told to bring a flashlight. USE IT. If you didn't bring one, too fucking bad, turn your gosh damn light off, people are trying to sleep.

4. Heat or A/C - it does not need to be all the way up or all the way down. Every fucking day I walk into my tent and the stupid chicks have the heater turned all the way up to 90 fucking degrees. You can sterilize surgical instruments in my tent, it is so fucking hot. I'm pretty sure this is contributing to my computer not working properly. So every day, I turn it down to 75 degrees. A reasonable temperature, at least 30 degrees warmer than it is outside. For fuck's sake, it is going to be hot enough here in a couple of months, do we really need to experience it now? I can't wait until summer when they are all crying because it is hot enough to fry an egg on a wooden deck and the ECU is broken, because they froze the compressor. Haha bitches, I'm going to the fire station.

5. Food or drink - if everyone's clothes smell like what you are eating or drinking, you need to not bring that shit in the tent. I enjoy the smell of coffee. I don't drink coffee, but it smells nice. If, however, the coffee is so strong that the little hairs inside my nose fall out, then get that shit out of the tent. And bringing food in means the mice have something to look for. It's not like the tent is sealed and rodents can't get in. I am going to laugh at you when you see a mouse and scream like a little bitch because you left food out.

6. Doors - unless someone is going in or out of one, they should be closed. Do you want someone to steal your shit? Then leave it outside, unattended. If my shit is inside the tent, I don't want it to get stolen. Leaving doors open invites in everyone to steal your shit. My shit gets stolen, someone is getting punched in the face. More than once. Also, open doors invite in flies. Flies suck. Flies crawling on your face when you're sleeping really fucking sucks. I don't care where you are from, that's just nasty.

7. Loud talking - use your indoor voice please. Unless your indoor voice is really loud, then just shut the fuck up. We live in a tent. It's not very big. It's pretty open. Your voice travels. Please, keep it down. If I have my headphones in while watching a movie, and I can still hear your conversation clearly, you are too loud. Shut up. If it is after 10pm, take your shit outside to chat. Unless you can do it quietly, then you may remain inside. Do I care how cold it is outside? Not if you are loud. Also, no one wants to hear your music, no matter how cool you think it is. If you want us to check out a song, because you think it is awesome, that's cool, but ask us first. Don't just blare your shit for the universe to hear. It just pisses the Taliban off more. They wish their girlfriends were hot like me. (That's a lame song reference, in case you were wondering.)

8. If it isn't yours, don't touch it - seriously. Keep your mitts off of my shit. It may not be worth a lot, it may not be high class, but it is MY shit. Not yours. Mine. I'm not going to touch your shit without your permission. Don't touch my shit without mine. Touch my shit without my permission, and we are going to have problems.

9. Common courtesy - use it. If someone smiles and says hello, say hi back. Don't be a bitch and ignore people. That's just rude. I'm not saying you have to say hi to the same person 14 times a day, because that gets silly, but the first time, say hi back. If it's been several hours and you pass them again, a "Hey, how's it going?" is not out of order. Also, it's not polite to say "Wow, you look rough today" first thing in the morning. I was just woken up by you slamming the fucking door at 5am. It's not "rough", it's "pissed", you should learn the difference.

10. There is no 10. I tried to make a 10, but I think I have managed to get all my frustrations out in the first 9.

So there you have it. Michelle's guide to communal living. Learn it, live it, love it. Or get the fuck out of my tent.

(We have an all-hands meeting later today that will possibly be not only about using the toilet properly, but also proper places to masturbate. If we get a lecture on where to masturbate, there will be another blog soon.)

We needed to have a meeting for this?

Well, it turns out that tampons are not the only thing that clog the pipes here at our little oasis. Yes, this is a post about toilets. Again. But not just toilets. It's about meetings about toilets. And the need to have toilet guards.

So we didn't really get to any toilet stuff at the first all-hands meeting after our site manager got back from vacation, because it was rudely interrupted by baddies trying to kill us. A couple of days later, we finally go to it. And it was good.

Let me preface by saying that I am still a proponent of educating Foreign Nationals (FNs) on "western" toileting methods, i.e. don't stand on the toilet, use the toilet paper, don't use water bottle as bidets, etc. If this involves pictures or an actual demonstration, fine. It needs to be done. One cannot expect people who have never been exposed to a certain method of doing something to magically acquire the knowledge to undertake said task in said manner.

When the toilet units were first installed, each stall had a sprayer. Think: the kind you have on your kitchen sink. Because they were part of the toilet unit, I am going to assume they were, in fact, intended for bidet purposes, in the absence of an actual bidet. So the people used to using a bidet to clean their behinds after pooing were using them. The result? Water and shit all over the place. Awesome. So they took the sprayers out of all but the last stall of every toilet trailer.

Turns out our ass-washing FNs are pretty resourceful: they started bringing water bottles into the toilet trailer to use, since they no longer had the sprayer in every stall. Pretty ingenious, I think. The result? Water, shit, and water bottles all over the place. Actually, they were pretty good about throwing the water bottle in the "tampon troughs". Emphasis on the "were". Someone decided ... decided, actually made a conscious decision ... to flush a water bottle. Yeah, the whole thing. Well, the whole thing, in two halves. THEY CUT THE BOTTLE IN HALF! And tried to flush it down the toilet. Guess what happened? IT DIDN'T WORK! The bottle got stuck. (Shock) The toilet had to be taken apart to remove the bottle.

Naturally, this pissed off the powers that be. They are pretty possessive of their comfort trailers (I don't blame them) and screwing them up makes them angry. So another all-hands meeting was called. I initially refused, because the last one didn't go so well, but was told that I had to go, if I wanted to ever use the toilet again. As I am a fan of flushing toilets and not being very, very, very cold when I pee, I decided to ignore my trepidations, and go to the meeting.

It was pretty short and to the point: flush anything but toilet paper down the toilet and you're getting fired. Bring anything but the clothes on your back into the toilet trailer and you're getting written up. And then the ultimate in awesomeness: Toilet Guard was established. We had to provide our name and ID number when we entered and the number of the stall we used when we left.

Naturally, this annoyed me, because I am a responsible toileter, but whatever, I'll play the silly game. I went to the bathroom, not long after Toilet Guard had been established, with my new tentmate, Security Lisa (cool chick, ex-Army), only to discover that someone had PISSED ON THE SEAT! So after wiping it off, using the toilet responsibly, and washing my hands, I walked out of the trailer, gave the Toilet Guard my stall number, and said "Whoever used stall #2 last PISSED ON THE SEAT". I felt like a 3rd grader, albeit with a potty mouth, and decided I was going back to using the porta potties again until they abolished the Toilet Guard position, because I decided it was asinine. (In case you were wondering, it wasn't a conscious decision to go to the toilet WITH Lisa, we just happened to be going to the same place, at the same time, for the same purposes.)

It only lasted another day or so, but it remains to be seen if that particular problem has been solved. Apparently, we are working toward a new one, though. I was stopped, on my way to the toilet, by our head Operations guy, who told me that he is now finding wadded up balls of shit-covered toilet paper in the trashcans. I am pretty sure this is because the FNs are making an effort to toilet in a western style, but since they have never been shown, and have been yelled at several times about flushing stuff, they are now wiping with toilet paper (yah), but throwing it in the trashcan (boo), so they don't get in trouble for flushing something they aren't supposed to.

It's a vicious cycle. A vicious cycle that I am certain will be a major topic of discussion at our next all-hands meeting. I'm considering making a power point presentation and/or handouts to provide to all personnel on how to conduct one's toilet in a socially acceptable manner. It will probably be the best power point presentation ever assembled for any purpose ever.

Any volunteers for the pictures?

49 Days

So, in case you were unaware, I am in Afghanistan. More specifically, I am in the Zhari District, of the Kandahar Province, in Afghanistan. In case you've been living under a rock for the last oh, almost 10 years, there's a little bit of a skirmish going on over here. It's kind of a war zone. I knew this going in, so I have accepted the risks that are inherent to war zones. I know there is a possibility I could die here. Obviously, it's not my first choice of things to do while I'm here, but it's a possibility. Anyone who thinks otherwise and is here, is mentally unbalanced and should go home, because they are dangerous.

That being said, we were hit with our first Indirect Fire (IDF) attack a few days ago. It was marginally humorous, as all of the DynCorp personnel were in one place, at an all-hands meeting, when the first round hit. (That's funny, because of the whole "don't put all of your eggs in one basket" thing.) Our site manager was talking about something, probably how to use the toilets correctly (wish I was making that up), and we heard a rather close and loud kablowie. There was a very brief pause, and then we were told, in a rather urgent fashion, to get into the bunkers. A couple hundred people trying to fit through the opening to a bunker doesn't work well. I followed my boss to the next closest bunker, and as we were on the way, moving calmly, but quickly, we heard a second rather close and loud kablowie. We picked up the pace a bit and all huddled into the bunker.

I am not afraid to admit I was scared. Scared there were more coming, scared they would get closer to us, scared the two that had already hit, had hit someone. (Excellent ending to the story though, but I'll get to that ...) In the bunker, for the first few minutes it was pretty quiet, as I'm pretty sure everyone was thinking the same thing I was: "Is it over? Is there more? Damn it's cold in here". But, we had the fun crowd in our bunker, so the tense silence didn't last for long. Like many, I use humor as a tension diffuser, and why should IDF attacks be any different? There was no shortage of jokes and cracking on each other. For being a fairly terrifying experience, it wasn't all bad.

We later learned that there were no casualties, nor any injuries, to anyone on the FOB. YAH! We also learned that the baddies that perpetrated the attack were pretty dumb, and were very quickly caught. Not sure if they are still alive, but I really don't care. Less baddies on the planet is a good thing.

If you're wondering about the title of this post (49 Days), that's how long we (Jason, Mike, and I) had been at Howz-e Madad before we experienced out first close IDF attack. There was a rocket attack while we were at KAF, but we didn't even hear it hit, so it was nowhere near us. Not too bad, considering this place used to get hit significantly more often. Of course, I should clarify: we were here for 49 days before our first attack; there hadn't been one for several weeks before that, either.

So, there ya go: my first IDF attack. It was definitely scary, I definitely experienced a heightened sense of awareness for a few hours, and other than a couple of super tiny craters in the ground, nothing or nobody was injured. As far as attacks go, it wasn't too bad.
I am glad we finally got the first one out of the way. I knew it would come eventually, and I hate waiting. :)

There was going to be a continuation of this post with the tragic story of a water bottle leading to toilet guards, but I'll save that for later.

New Year's at Howz-e Madad

Ah, New Year's Eve. The end of one year, the beginning of the next. A time to reflect on what has past, and plan for improvements on what is to come. Our NYE, here at FOB Howz-e Madad, started with a new hairdo, and ended with a few thousand pounds of explosives.

Sgt. Allen and Sgt. Mora came over to hang out ... Sgt. Allen was my tent mate, up until this morning when she left, and Sgt. Mora is a mortar battalion guy (we met him our first or second day on the FOB and he let us play with mortar charges, so we liked him immediately!) ... with Jason, Nathan, the Chief, Tali-Dan, JBhad, and I. JBhad couldn't hang, and left early, but Nate, Jason, and Tali-Dan spent a good portion of the evening looking for ninja outfits, designing custom flags for Nate-opia, and generally screwing off on my computer. (This was the day of the sore pooping FB status from me ... that was from (most likely) Tali-Dan.) The rest of us just sat around chatting and having a lovely time.

Fairly early in the evening, it was decided that Sgt. Allen needed a new hairdo, so Tali-Dan and Nate went a little insane with the styling glue and she ended up with fairly insane hair. I have pictures, but I'm not certain she is going to appreciate me posting them on my blog, so I'll post them of FB later. :)

I should have written this just after NYE, because I have to try and recreate the evening in order, and it's not working out very well at the moment! (No alcohol involved at all ...)

Anywho, we have a new firefighter named Chris, who is from South Africa. You know those little towels you can get that are completely dehydrated, so when you put them in water, the expand and actually become a towel? Well, Chris has a package of those that are apparently used by strippers in South Africa to ... well ... clean up. He is telling Nate and Tali-Dan about this, both of whom are fascinated, so they decide to see if they will expand, using only saliva. On the count of three, both boys pop a dehydrated towel in their respective mouths. Several minutes, a bit of bottled water, a little spitting, and quite a bit of flapping heads later, voila! Both Nate and Tali-Dan have towels hanging from their mouths. So now they both have towels to bathe themselves with, except both towels were hydrated from spit. So what does Nate do? Yeah, he wipes his face. That's on video too. Perhaps it was one of those "you had to be there" things, but rest assured, it was hilarious.

One of the cool things about being the fire department is that people tell us stuff. So we were informed of the planned midnight "festivities" several hours in advance, and knew to stay up. If I had gone to bed when I had planned (regular time), what came at midnight would have scared the hell out of me and I probably would have wet myself.

So, I live on a small forward operating base in a war zone, in case you missed that part. Sometimes the bad guys get in some hits on the good guys. That is the horrible part about being here ... knowing that, at any time, someone you know could be hurt or gone forever. The fun part about being here is watching the bad guys get what is coming to them. And that's what happened on NYE. The nice men and women of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF is the NATO mission that we are all technically part of ...) made some bad guys go away. And they did it with A LOT of kablowies! It was SPECTACULAR! Bright flashes of light, followed by the sounds of in-ground swimming pools being placed with extreme prejudice. Unfortunately, I have no pictures. I wasn't fast enough. I did get some sound though, and that's on my FB page.

What was funny about the whole well-timed offensive, is that not everyone knew about it. So there were a number of people in the DynCorp area of camp that spent a couple of hours in the bunkers, scared out of their minds. I suppose that isn't really funny, but we were all standing outside watching the festivities, without a care in the world, while our poor coworkers were all huddled together thinking the world was coming to an end ... there's a little humor there.

So there you go ... New Year's was rung in with many thousands of pounds of explosives at midnight. I'm not sure a traditional fireworks show will ever be enough again.