Housing

December 23, 2007

OK, I guess I need to explain the FOB a bit and give a semi-layout of the land. I’ll start with where I live, which is in building #1. There are several rows of buildings on my side of the FOB and each building has 10 rooms in it with a head and shower room at each end. Each one of the rooms is made for 2 beds, but some guys live in them alone. I guess over time each person, or persons, has to decide which layout works best for them in their room. The room is wired for Internet and TV, (but they only get 4 channels if you are lucky enough to have a TV.) We got here and poked around in other rooms to see what seemed to work best for others and then set up our own room. It’s not a ton of space, but I’d say it’s enough to operate out of. It’s funny because I kinda feel like I have about as much room as an average inmate cell.

OK, so the guys who have been here a while get to live in “The Cans”, which are single cell rooms that have their own bathrooms and showers. They are over on the other side of the FOB by the Haji Shops and barber shop. It’s about a 5 minute walk from my hooch. They are basically large conex boxes stacked on top of each other that have doors and plumbing built in. I have included a picture from a guy’s room in “The Cans” that I call the presidential suite. He has a freaking 47 inch flat screen TV in the damn thing, and hard wood floors! I asked him how he was going to get the thing home and he says he won’t bother. He is going to raffle it off for $20 a ticket when he goes home. He’ll set up a raffle in the MWR, (FOB Rec Room), and sell tickets to not only us, but to soldiers too. He’ll have to donate some money to the MWR in order to have it there, but I think he might actually make some money. Ahh, capitalism! Anyway, the waiting list for “The Cans” is at least 6 months. I don’t know if after that long I’ll want to pack all my stuff and move on over. But we’ll see how the lure of privacy plays on my patience by then.

So women here on the FOB get to live in buildings like mine that are obviously “women only”. But they have some other small single rooms across the street from me that look kinda cool. I don’t think they are any bigger, and I know they probably wouldn’t withstand a mortar hit like my building or “The Cans” would. I guess that’s why they have several duck and cover bunkers around their rooms. But they’d have to leave their rooms and run to it, where as I’d stay put because my building is made of concrete.

We have a pretty nice chow hall. We also have a nice MWR that has a little movie theater in it, and a pool room, gym, and a small Internet café. I have my own computer so I don’t have to go wait in lines to use the Internet. But most of the troops here don’t have that luxury. We have a small PX that is totally run by volunteers from the FOB because we’re not big enough to have AAFES come in and run it. (Once a FOB reaches a certain population then AAFES comes in, and they bring luxuries like McDonalds, Green Bean Coffee, and Subway with them.) And there’s a small clinic and postal area. We can go see the medics in the clinic if we have a problem or need to get more shots, etc. And the mail room only opens when they come to the FOB…apparently every 2 weeks or so. We can send mail out when a group of us goes over to the Green Zone on Saturday’s to pick up mail for MPRI only.

All in all, it’s a pretty good place to live. I only have Al Salem, (in Kuwait), and The Hilton, (at Klecker), to compare it to. So my experience is limited, but I think I’d much rather be living here than in a tent up in Mosul like some other Advisers for MPRI. It aint home…but it’ll do.
-Jim Franks