To Kuwait: Pt 3 (Landed)
This is part of my Moving to Kuwait series.
The high was 120 the day we landed in Kuwait. They said the wind would feel like a hair dryer, and they weren’t kidding. Getting off the plane, I instantly thought how I’d never experienced such heat - it was comical. With dust in the air and the bright sun beating down upon us, I wondered with a fellow employee how people could live in such an extreme, desolate place.
But we were quickly taken to air-conditioned buses (Mercedes-branded, I remember), where the curtains were drawn and we were instructed not to look out of the windows. We drove away to where we would be oriented for work in a large, escorted caravan away from the airport. Dusty air filled the bus, and I felt like I was choking slightly.
The whole thing was a massive operation that I constantly marveled at: the training center in Georgia, the jumbo-sized plane, feeding everyone, logistics, head counts, stopping at a terminal in Germany apparently designed to handle these kinds of shipments. I was undecided between being proud of my country for being so capable and being in a state of mild terror at what a powerful war machine we were.
My amazement continued as we spent several more days in a transient base in the desert. It was still dusty and very dirty, but again I was naively amazed at the facilities. There were air conditioned sleeping tents (although there were 16 of us per tent with bunk beds), trailers for showers, latrines, and laundry. There were a couple recreation tents with internet access, private TV stations, a projector with scheduled movie showings, DVD rentals, Playstations and XBOXes, Pool, Ping Pong, Foosball, comfortable chairs for relaxation/sleep. Massive, constantly-running diesel generators provided power for all of it.
I was surprised by how much power everyone needed for their personal electronics, computers, phones, etc. I was also surprised by how many iPhones I saw. In my tent alone I was awoken in the morning by several default iPhone alarms going off at various times (mine included).
We waited to be processed and did more training at the camp. I’ve never experienced such heat. I remember wondering how people could even function properly in such an environment. The generator for our sleeping tent broke one night, and we awoke to find ourselves in an oven.
Again, the heat amazed me. The wind was strong, but wasn’t a cooling one. I knew that my body needed to acclimate to the different climate as well as time zone, but I couldn’t help but to still feel panic as if I would suffocate while walking to different tents in the camp. Dust was in the air and it was thrown into my eyes by the wind.
We escaped the heat by going indoors, and indoors wasn’t too shabby either. The cafeteria was probably more impressive than the one in Georgia. Chicken tenders, pizza, fried chicken, a salad bar, fountain drinks, ice cream bars, and even a manned sundae and milkshake bar. Someone said that the Army recognized that one way to increase troop morale was to provide then with good living conditions. I also was told that this Middle Eastern theater was the first in US military history in which troops were going back fatter than when they came.
And if you didn’t like the cafeteria, there was a KFC, McDonalds, and Pizza Hut. They seemed to be very popular too; someone told me that a McDonalds at a base in Iraq had the most sales of any in the world (although I came to feel there were a lot of tall tales floating about).
I was also struck by the foreign workers at the transient camp - a lot of Indians or Eastern Asians. The Indians here were different than the doctors or engineers I was accustomed to seeing at home. They worked as janitors, maintenance men, drivers, cooks, cell phone salesmen, DVD rental counter clerks. Someone said they made about $500 a month and that they had their passports taken upon entering Kuwait until their work was through.
I remember seeing striking messages written on the bathroom stalls:
Ask Jesus for forgiveness, or your just one heartbeat away from hell.
amended with
Do you really think any of us is going anywhere but hell?
On the lighter side, there were a few Chuck Norris jokes:
Chuck Norris doesn’t wipe because he doesn’t give a shit.
When I was inside for long periods of time, I would sometimes forgot where I was and think that I was back in the states. Being in the foreign and extreme environment of the camp made me yearn for the conveniences of home, and I thought much about being back in Huntsville with Jamila.
I looked at my new job as a chance to see a different part of the world, but I got the feeling that this wasn’t a goal of many other contractors in my group. To their credit, most others wouldn’t be staying in the city like me (instead they would be working on secure bases in Iraq or Afghanistan), but the motivations I kept hearing started to grate on me. My fellow contractors were proud of the good salaries that would be getting, and there was a lot of talk about money.
