Sickness and Waste

It only took a three and a half months but I got a cold. Dealing with dumb people makes being sick so much worse and unfortunately they seemed to line up to see me today. It’s been a rather long day. So I thought what better to do than to get paid an inordinate amount of money to write a blog post. This is the closest that I will ever get to being paid to write, so why not?

Last night it rained here for the first time since I have been here. It is the first day that I have had with “different” weather. It was a light sprinkling but it lasted for a few hours. If I hadn’t felt like I had just been hit by a truck, I would have gotten up and enjoyed it. Seeing clouds in the sky was almost foreign but it was a nice change.

Yesterday I was on the way to chow with Eric and we saw a truck that had backed up too much and the back axle and tires fell into one of the lovely Marine made ditches that we have all over base. It was slightly humorous. There were a bunch of TCNs and Brits that stopped to take pictures. I felt bad for the guy but I chuckled all the same.

Trying to find something to do with waste is an enormous issue for the deployed folks over here and there is a variety of solutions that have been implemented. In Kandahar (east of me and in the heart of the terrorists), also called KAF for Kandahar Air Field, they have what’s called a “poo pond.” It is just that. A pond filled with human waste. It even has a fountain in it to serve as an attempt to circulate things and encourage evaporation and decomposition. I have never smelt something as awful as the air is at KAF.

I support more units than I can list (30+) and quite a few of them are on outlying bases (also called FOBs which means forward operating base). Most of the FOBs are very basic in nature and rarely have any decent accommodations. For this reason, the use of “wag bags” is wide spread. It doesn’t take a genius to know what a wag bag is. They generally come with the actual back that is used for a container and a wet one in the event that wiping is needed. On occasion these are thrown at the enemy but of course that is not endorsed by DOD and merely uttering the allegation can cause enough issues, but I find humor in it. Wag bags are always a high demand item mostly because the alternative is to dig a hole and pop a squat. That doesn’t sound very appealing either.

Here at Leatherneck we have the port-a-potties. These are some of the most heinous things you could ever imagine. I won’t even get into exactly why they are heinous. Most of them are cleaned out daily and sprayed down with a power washer. If you go in to use one right after it has been sprayed down, it feels like you are popping a squat in a rainforest…or at least I would imagine it would be like that. Now Leatherneck does not have their version of a poo pond. When the base first started, they would dig trenches and it would all flow off base and the local farmers loved it because it was the best fertilizer they have ever had. Well eventually the Marines stopped doing that and angered the locals. Instead, we have grey water and black water.

Grey water is the water that is drained from showers and sinks. Black water is what is taken from the port-a-potties. Black water is taken off site and disposed of in ways and places that I don’t even want to know about. In Iraq they would burn it in the burn pits but in Iraq, they burned everything. Wait a few years for those health related lawsuits to roll in. Grey water though serves a purpose on base. Grey water is continuously spread on all of the streets here and then steam rolled. This is done so that the roads can stay concrete hard (even though they are dirt) and it keeps the dust to a minimum. What disturbs me about this is, how confident are you in a bunch of Marines (and guys in general) not peeing in the shower? I am not at all.

So basically we spread pee and spit all around the base in an effort to control dust and sand. It is amazing that I haven’t been sick long before now.