1st. Lt. Stephanie Melton - August 15 and 18, 2009
1LT Stephanie Melton
551 MP CO
FOB Prosperity
APO AE 09348
August 15, 2009
Sorry it took me so long to write. The trip took two days straight!! We lost Thursday completely while in the air! We finally got to Kuwait on the morning of the 14th at about 3:30am. We are 8 hours ahead of you so it should be Friday night for you now while its already saturday morning for me. Kuwait is HOT! It's like standing in the middle of a hair dryer on high, except the hair dryer is filled with sand and grit that blows in your eyes. The sun is very bright and you really don't wanna be out in it from about noon to 2pm or you burn.
I'm hoping to buy a wi-fi card today so i can write and get on facebook more. I'm on the army computers now and they are really, really slow and the line goes out all the time. We should be training up here about another 10 days or so then heading out, cant say where over facebook.
Yay I got internet!! I'm sitting in the Starbucks right now using the wireless. They keep trying to tell us that Kuwait is a combat zone but all I can think of is dude, I'm sitting in a Starbucks, I mean really? I can't emphasise enough how HOT it is here! Its 111 degrees today but it'll get up to 117 after lunch. It's such a dry heat and the sand is so fine it sticks to everything, dry or wet. It's in my ears! Drives me crazy already. There's a sandsotrm going on right now that I wish I could send you a picture of. I just don't wanna take my camera outside since the sand gets in everything.
We're living in biiiiig tents all in one room but they're air conditioned. It does a pretty good job of cooling it down but the demand for electricity is so high there are rolling blackouts during the days, sometimes for up to two hours and then it gets waaay hot inside. So we just run to Starbucks or the dining facility lol. I am definately having a little adventure, I kinda like it and hate it at the same time. Everything here is so different. I've never seen so much brown in my life. The sand stretches on past the horizon and because it's so flat the horizon goes on forever and ever. There are a few desset trees they've planted along the highway. They are short and wide with thin leaves, half of them dead. There are bits of scrub bushes every so often but they all look so close to death. I actually saw a herdsman with a herd of camels on the way from the airport!! I was so excited, lol. I didn't realize they came in so many color varieties. Some were tan or brown but others were pure white and some had splotches like Appoloosa horses.
There are locals who work here on the camp, I'm at Camp Buhering by the way (just outside of Kuwait City). Some of them are Kuwaiti from the lower classes but even more are imigrants. Most Kuwaitis are uber rich because of oil and U.S. contracts so they work as supervisors and managers. Most of the workers are men because their culture is Arabic and most women don't work. I've heard though that Kuwait City is very modern in some ways. When we drove through the city the architecture was beautiful; alot of color and spires and decorative details. They all use brown ceramic tiles on the roofs instead of shingles and that gives the city a strange look. The local men can be a little creepy because they tend to stare at the women; I guess we still seem very odd or appealing to them.
August 18, 2009
It is HOT! Almost 120 today and it's only 11am, lol. You almost get used to it until mid-day. I practically refuse to step outside between 12-2pm. The sun is unbearably harsh. We all wear balistic sunglasses but the sun still makes your eyes ache by the end of the day. I've almost gone through an entire chapstick. I've already got a list of things I'd like sent in the first package, lol, chapstick being first on the list. Its hard to get ahold of here cause everyone buys it out. The liquid carmex would be best because the stick kind will just melt in the package.
We went to the range yesterday at around 4am to shoot while it was still cool out. It is amazing to watch the sun come up over the desert. It's so flat here that you can see for miles and miles and it's all the same color so the land seems endless. Strangely the sky doesn't have that big open feeling because the sand is so overwhelming. They had to bus us out to the range because it's off camp which I didn't expect. I got to see a little more of the desert which looked alot like the desert I'd already seen.... ;) I'm really excited because tomorrow I'm being driven to the port by one of permanent party Soldiers to verify our shipping containers. After I confirm they are the right ones they'll start shipping them to Baghdad. It's about a 3-day drive to get our containers there. We are going to drive through Kuwait City to get to the port so I'm really hoping to see some more of the city. I'm told parts of it are very modern and others are very basic. The interesting thing I found out is that they don't build by buildings, they build entire blocks at one time. That way they can ensure that all the buildings blend in. They pay attention to the weirdest things and ignore others. The streets and roads are lined with garbage, just trash everywhere. The wind blows constantly here and it moves all the trash around. The only clean places are here at the Camp and even then only around the Soldier's living areas because Soldiers clean them up.
I'm leaving for Iraq on Friday. We'll be flying out of Camp Buehring to Baghdad International Airport (BIAP). Once we get there we'll stop at Camp Liberty to pick up our equipment. I should be there a day or two then we'll convoy up to Camp Prosperity. We have two possible missions: convoy escort or perimeter security. I'm REALLY hoping for convoy escort because the busier we are the quicker time will go.
The picture is Stephanie and another soldier in a vehicle.
Peace,
Stephen Melton
