Fanny Packing

Gun immune

2009-02-28T22:35:00.000-08:00

I no longer react to the sight of a gun. I glance over it like I would a typical accessory--say, a watch or a scarf. There it is. Check. That one is an interesting color or shape. Etc, etc.

I no longer associate them with their design or purpose--which is great when I am stepping over them in the cafeteria or standing in line with one pointing back at me; however, it is not so great when I pull up to work to two Iraqi military standing in the way of my entrance.

Or when I read a sign and don't even blink until the person next to me starts to laugh.

Supporting the Troops

2009-02-28T07:03:00.000-08:00

Vietnam does not want you to let you go

2008-08-16T08:52:00.000-07:00

The Hanoi airport has to be the most confusing place I have ever been. For example, the departure information for your flights reads to check-in at "Area A" and "Area A" does not have a sign ANYWHERE designating it as "Area A", so what do you do?

Step 1: Go to one side of the Airport (through throngs and throngs of people flying both domestic and international who do NOT MOVE OUT OF THE WAY AND WILL ACTUALLY CLIMB OVER YOUR CART AND STEP ON YOUR BAGS TO GET IN FRONT OF YOU AHHHH!)
Step 2: See there is no counter for your flight.
Step 3: Curse and maybe accidentally scare kids
Step 4: Go to the other side of the airport (get more and more aggressive about getting through the crazy people who apparently like to hang out in airports and then decide to move only when sweaty, irritated girl decides she wants to get through).
Step 5: See there are no signs for your flight
Step 6: Go outside to calm down and maybe fling yourself into oncoming traffic
Step 7: Repeat

The entryway for the departure gates is HIDDEN. I. kid. you. not. UNDER THE STAIRS. Where more non-flying people like to hang out.

This picture should do my last hour of hell a bit of justice:

My friends, you cannot see the arrow on the left clearly, but these are two signs, saying the same f'ing thing, POINTING AT EACH OTHER. I finally pinned a poor woman to the ground and demanded she show me where in the hell to go...and maybe sweated on her...a bit...on accident...sorry, nice lady. Mama needs a drink.

It Ain't No Voodoo What Vu Do

2008-08-15T22:26:00.000-07:00

I am losing my steam with SE Asia...especially traveling alone and have now given myself permission to spend most of my last day here, sitting in a cafe and not running around in the heat looking for the next souvenir or snapshot.

I am back in Vietnam, but in Hanoi this time. My first night back was spent sitting next to a lake eating whole crabs and drinking beer with a strange little man named Vu, who decided he would take a shot and try to woo me on the way home. He was tiny, but very persistant in his attempts to grab my hand, try to kiss me, and glom onto me any way he possibly could. I would push him away and back he would come, so close I had difficulty walking. Push again and get him a couple of feet away...milliseconds later, he was breathing in my ear that he needed a place to sleep.

And maybe I'm getting old, but this crap hasn't happened to me in years, and I was trying to think back about how I used to handle these types of situations. I vaguely remember such moments where I would try to balance their self-esteem and my own personal safety, forgiving them for their drunkeness, and politely walk away again and again. Sometimes, I would even laugh it off as if they were just clowning around to allow them to save their last shreds of diginity. But as I said, I must be getting old, because I just finally flicked him in the nuts as hard as I could and kept walking...SO much less time-consuming in the long run.

Laos

2008-08-15T08:46:00.000-07:00

So, I just spent two days in the capital of Laos, Vientiane. And what I learned? I am so glad you asked.

I learned that there are many things about travel that sound like such great concept. Namely, French influence. I mean..what is there not to love about the idea? The architecture! Fabulous! The food! Divine and rich! But in actuality, I usually just get annoyed at the balconies on dilapidated buildings and eating pate' in 100 degree heat. So, Vientiane...it was charming and nice, but a bit too frenchy for this girl. Also, the Mekong flooded while I was there, so everywhere I stepped I heard "squish" and prayed that I would not repeat my muddy experience in Cambodia.

My Two Days in Cambodia (or why not to wear white pants during rainy season)

2008-08-12T08:58:00.000-07:00

I love Cambodia...well, the little piece I have seen of it in the past 24 hours. The people...good...the sights...amazing...the weather...eh...that part we don't need to focus on--it is rainy season after all, and my day was for the most part--clear and gorgeous.

A guy named San drove me in last night from the airport on his scooter for $2. We got soaked and muddy when it started to rain on the way in; however, I knew at that moment, I wanted to see Siem Reap from the back of a scooter and not the inside of a car, so I hired him for a whopping $15 to drive me around today. He drove me to six different sites, and we covered about 40 total kilometers of road. Needless to say, my ass is killing me.

Speaking of my ass. I put on a comfy pair of white capris today for my adventure, and at the first temple, I promptly wiped out in the mud. When I say 'wiped out' it really does not do the spectacle justice. Somehow I got mud on my forehead, the entirety of my backside, the tops of my feet, and one shin. I really don't know how I did not get my camera or my bag muddy, but I will take it.

Anyways. Enough talk. More pictures.

My trip to Vietnam...

2008-08-11T05:06:00.000-07:00

...described in just one picture:

A year ago today

2008-08-01T12:28:00.000-07:00

Since I have been in Iraq, I have been playing a game with myself called, "A year ago today, I..." It has been fascinating to look at what I am doing now and recall where I was a year ago. Typically, it brings on the feelings I had when I was in my last relationship--depressed, unsure of myself, but unwilling to make a change for fear I would lose out on convincing my parents I was on the road to a normal life.

Today marks the first time, since I have been in Iraq, that I can look back and honestly say, "A year ago today, I was happy, confident, and full of optimism."

A year ago today, I slept in a new house all alone but finally felt completely whole again.

A year ago today, I started on a journey that took me to Senegal to Iraq to South Africa, Zimbabwe, Thailand, Dubai, and now will take me to Southeast Asia.

A year ago today, I breathed deeply again and dreamt again and held my friends close to me again without any guilt.

A year ago today, I drove home from work without dreading that I was too late, not happy enough, not loving enough.

A year ago today, I never realized that one year from then that I would be sitting in Basrah still absolutely giddy with life and not looking back.

I hear your lips melt off at 130

2008-05-24T05:21:00.000-07:00

Today it is 115 degrees outside--I don't want to hear "it's a dry heat" or "you'll get used to it" anymore. I feel like I'm at the top of a scary roller coaster that is about to descend into the depths of hell--i.e., a Middle East summer.

Filling in the gaps

2008-05-21T05:01:00.000-07:00

Here and there, I started to write a post or wrote journal entry in my other computer and never posted it on here. As a result, I am trying to fill in some of the gaps and back dates some posts. So, if you go back in a time a little, you may find some new stuff here and there in the next couple of days.

Being social

2008-05-21T00:07:00.000-07:00

Day-to-day life here is not all work and rockets. There are always things to do at night and during our day off. But even social events tend to have their own IZ flair.

For example, I walked into a fundraiser a couple of weeks ago with a friend, told the guard holding the very large gun my name on the list and was asked to read the sign behind him before entering the compound. The sign essentially said, "If the alarms go off, hit the dirt or the bunker or else." "Huh," I thought. "That's not something you see at the BBQs at home."

We grabbed a seat at one of the picnic tables and started talking to some friends. The band was setting up, so the music was coming over a sound system. Suddenly, we heard the alarms and all stood up cussing and rolling our eyes. All off us had one leg up and our arms shaped into a running stance before the beat rolled into the alarm, and we realized that it was just the introduction to the song that had come on. Nervously laughing, we sat down again.

At some point in the night, the alarms really did go off, and I crowded together with about fifty other people. I looked around and realized I knew the majority of the people just from their dark outlines and voices. Every day, you see the same people at these events, and even though days like this feel like Groundhog Day...The same guy in the same suit..doing the same job....

But at least once in awhile, they mix it up a bit:

Losing them

2008-05-20T05:38:00.000-07:00

When John was first deciding whether he wanted to come to Iraq or go somewhere else in the Middle East, I remember giving him the following advice:

"Understand that if you go to Baghdad, you are going to be surrounded by people who have been around war so much that they are impacted by death and horrific events less than we as humans should be. This will change you--and I am not sure for the better."

I still don't know if I was right in this advice. I had never been in a war zone before I arrived in Baghdad a mere two months after telling John not to go. I suppose that I am too becoming desensitized to stories about death and dying in Iraq--that the gray area between right and wrong has become bigger than the two of them combined, and that I have ceased judging people on a myriad of things that would have been "unforgivable" back home, but in this context barely get a "meh" out of me.

While I am getting used to these ideas and these events more so than I ever thought I would, I was never prepared for was losing people in my life here to something other than mortars or gunfire.

This week has been hard. I lost one friend to the U.S. and am about to lose another to cancer.

I can't even begin to explain how fast things move here. So fast, that you blink and your life changes, emotions and life events are accelerated at a break neck pace. And suddenly, you look back and gasp that you didn't know the person next to you last week who now feels like the center of your life. You blink again and that person has gone home for good.

And when some people leave Baghdad, they have to leave it all--the memories, the people, and even their names to be able to exist again back home. So when Rob left this week, it was a lot like he had died, because in a way, that person ceased to exist the moment he got on the airplane. That was something I had never experienced before--in all of my goodbyes throughout all of my travels.

My other friend is an Iraqi in our office that has been fighting cancer since before I arrived. We found out yesterday that he has two days left before his doctors have said he will be in a coma or worse. He is currently at home, gathering strength to come into the office to say goodbye tomorrow.

When our Iraqi counterparts "come into the office," it is a totally different concept than you might think. It can take hours to safely enter from the Red Zone...not to mention to make it through all of the checks once they get here. The thought that he wants to spend one of his last days alive getting frisked and searched by guards to come to work to see the same Americans that he is getting frisked and searched to protect, it makes me want to weep.

But it also makes me hurt in a way that is so real that I'm beginning to realize that my advice to John was absolute crap.

Recipe for danger

2008-05-18T11:23:00.000-07:00

Take one cooler full of water balloons and a giant slingshot...

mix in a couple of crazies on a roof...

and you have yourself a party (and some very confused AK-47 wielding guards).

The day to day

2008-05-17T04:07:00.000-07:00

There is a sign on one of the bases that reads "Baghdad Barber -->" For some reason, this scares the crap out of me whenever I see it. It just sounds like the nickname of some horrible man with a propensity for straight blades and blood. Instead, it is a cozy little barber shop were John got his hair trimmed while I read magazines and sipped a mocha.

Last night I was flying through a traffic circle, munching on a Subway sandwich, talking on my i-phone...to a mercenary about his run into the red zone that day.

And the other day, I needed to wash the car, so I pulled up to the sign that said "Car Wash $10," handed over the keys...and then looked around at the cars being repaired in the lot--busted out windows, shrapnel ripped doors...and a couple of bullet holes.

There are these moments here that are so...normal, so mundane, so exactly what I would be doing at home. However, there is always the "kicker." The moment that snaps you out of the lull of the familiar and reminds you that you will never feel like your routine is just a routine, and that you will be the weird one at the cocktail party bitching and moaning about your commute and how you HATE getting stuck behind a tank on the way home.

You know you're in Iraq when...

2008-04-29T01:43:00.000-07:00

You receive tourniquets instead of flowers when someone is trying to woo you.

The Bomb Monster's gonna get ya

2008-04-17T00:42:00.000-07:00

I arrived back to Baghdad last night, spent the night unpacking and catching up with my coworker at camp, and repacked my suitcases to leave for Dubai today for a conference. We woke up this morning to a tan colored haze in the air. Knowing the equation, I groaned:

Spring = sandstorms = no planes flying

The sandstorm was bad yet, so we headed out to the Baghdad airport with little hope that our plane would take off. We had lunch and watched as our view of the plane went from this...

...to this...

We all chalked it up as the most expensive lunch in history and got back into our security detail to go back home after they announced our flight had been postponed to the next day.

So, the equation was correct. However, I forgot the other component. Apparently, not only do..

Sandstorms = No planes flying

but also,

Sandstorms = Rockets

We pulled up to work and were getting the car searched, when the alarms went off. I saw the guard waving wildly to GET INSIDE QUUUUUIIIIICK!!!!! OMG! And heard a *BANG* as the front car door slammed and our security went running towards safety. Without us and without turning off the child proof locks.

Now, had I had time to be rational, I would have realized that despite what it looked like, I was actually safer in the back of an armored vehicle, however, when you see a man decked out in grenades and guns run like that, you start to think that maybe you should be running too.

John would later tell the story like, "Fanny tried to get out of the car, and in the process of not being able to open the locks got more and more panicked. Very soon she was screaming 'I CAN'T GET OUT. AHHHH...I CAN'T GET OUT!!!' It was like the Bomb
Monster was coming to get her. Awesome."

Lesson learned. If the Bomb Monster wants ya, there is no use worrying about it...he's gonna get ya. No matter what the terrified running of security guy tells ya.

Week 2: Bangkok, Beaches, and Bruises

2008-04-15T15:40:00.000-07:00

Leaving Africa was hard, but I knew that I had two weeks with Katie in Thailand, so it wasn't near nas difficult as usual.

We bummed around Bangkok our first day and then stayed up all night, so we could make our 6am flight down to Ko Samui.

We got to the island, Katie rented a motorbike, and we took off (with me riding bitch) and drove around the island our first day. It was fantastic. Katie was totally in control: weaving and bobbing, driving hard and steady, kicking that scooter's ass. We finally get back to our bungalow and I got off, so she could get across the road more easily and pull into the parking. She made it across the traffic just fine...straight as an arrow...right into a wall.

Wall: 1 Katie: 0

On the bright side, a quick trip to the hospital confirmed that Katie had no broken bones and nothing more than some gnarly bruises (yeah..I said "gnarly"...what..). I'll let Katie tell this whole story in detail as my perspective was pretty much just silent screaming panic. When I finally got my voice back, all I could really muster was the occasionally hysterical "SHE RAN INTO A WALL!!!!!" Apparently, I am absolutely worthless in high stress situations. Meh.

The beach...well, it was a beach. It was gorgeous, and the island has some good food. We finally learned to relax, watch some TV, and not worry to much about our slow pace.

We upgraded to a jeep and went off to see more of the inner island our third day. Went off into the mountains to find a waterfall. We paid for parking, hiking in the sweltering heat all the way down to the bottom, then up and around, then back up again, and all we found was a bunch of sewer pipes spouting dirty water.

Add the mummified monk wearing sunglasses...

...and the random market goodies...

...and it was a full day.

A lifetime in 3 weeks

2008-04-15T12:36:00.000-07:00

I am about two hours away from finishing my first R&R away from Iraq. When I left, I thought that 19 days would feel like a blink--that I would barely have enough time to process that I was even gone before I found myself flying. However, that wasn't the case. I did, saw, and ate so much that the past three weeks have gone accomondatingly slow. So now, I am ready to go home, get back to work, and plan the next vacation.

The first week felt like going home. I spent time in Johannesburg, Harare, and Cape Town:

I spent time with my Zimbabwean family (and saw hope and optimism in Zimbabwe the day of and the day after the election that I have never seen there before)

I went skydiving (you can't read it in this picture, but this tag says that I shouldn't push the small button, because the wings will fall off. HA! Nothing makes a person feel better about jumping out of a plane than the realization that a itty-bitty button can make said plane's wings fall off).

I spent time amongst vineyards and horses, drank wine until my heart was content, and ate one of the best meals of my life (and carried around a skeleton key that unlocked my room--but apparently is very difficult to use after drinking wine...especially in the dark countryside...but especially after wine)

I caught up with old friends (one who is like a sister, and one who is apparently my brother)

I slept, I drove, I did yoga, I soaked up the sun, I shopped. But mostly, I realized that I can just be with myself and be totally content and fulfilled (although I tend to drink too much, jump out of planes, and go into unstable countries when I'm left totally to my own devices)

Weeks 2 and 3 coming shortly...

One Hell of an April Fools Joke

2008-04-01T00:23:00.000-07:00

Happiness is...

2008-03-31T05:56:00.000-07:00

...being halfway around the world and realizing that going home does not always have to mean the same thing:

Public vs. Private Sector

2008-02-29T06:22:00.000-08:00

It was very difficult for me to leave the public sector. The "golden handcuffs" had their hold on me in a bad, bad way. But now, I finally have some distance and a new perspective. Let me put it this way.

This is what the public sector gives you to fight off a terrorist attack:

And this is what the private sector gives you:

Um yeah...selling out can be pretty badass.

Saddam, John, and Me

2007-12-16T10:55:00.000-08:00

Seen around the office...

2007-12-15T11:21:00.000-08:00

For when you want to make the air smell like your dorm room in college.

Work Together, Play Together, Pee Together

2007-12-09T10:48:00.000-08:00

I know that many of you are very curious about my life here, and I promise that the details will come out slowly. Unfortunately, by the time I get home, I just want to settle into my room, watch TV, or hang out and talk about nothing with John and the others.

One of the strange things about our living/working situation is that most of the people I work with live in the same place, eat in the same DFAC (dining hall), go to the same places to hang out, and are generally around me from the time I wake up until the time I go to sleep.

Unfortunately, the closest bathroom to our office is also shared:

There is no "bag" in Baghdad

2007-12-07T16:57:00.000-08:00

I made it ok. Unfortunately, my bags have not. As a result, I have gotten very creative in what I wear to work. I made it through on underwear and socks bought in the PX, but now I have gone to drastic measures to be clean:

Is it Fanny? Or John? The world may never know.