Bread and poo

The Iraqis gave us some of their bread that I've been watching them eat with such enthusiasm, so I thought I should show it to you. It looks like... bread. Kind of like pizza crust. I wish I had some marinara sauce to eat it with.


It had cream cheese inside. I assumed it was some crazy goat's milk home-made cream cheese, but I later found a store-bought package of cream cheese laying in the dirt, so I don't think that is the case. It was quite good though! Kind of like pizza crust with cream cheese in it, or a bread stick. I'm not as excited about it as they seem to be, but I probably would be if that was all I had. When I wrote about breadsticks I compared it in my mind to Little Caesar's breadsticks, and now I miss Little Caesar's. Sad times. :-(


These are Iraqi hole diggers, digging holes. They are building a fence, so the holes are probably four feet deep. And the only tools they have are a shovel with a tree limb for a handle, a big piece of rebar with a sharpened end, and buckets of water. They jab the ground with the rebar to loosen it up, then shovel out as much as they can, then fill the hole with water and let it soak, loosening the dirt a little and turning it to mud so it's more easily shoveled. The holes are actually very symmetrical and deep considering the method to dig them. But it seems to me if they would just give them a post-hole digger or even have a big machine do it, it would be done in an afternoon rather than days and days of hard work for them. They don't have many proper tools, but in general do an impressive job with what they do have.


Another bad dust storm. This time it wasn't so orange, but there was a lot more actual dust blowing around. This is one of my co-workers all covered up trying to stay out of it.


And a self portrait of me with my new boonie hat and ninja scarf.


Even CLOSER and MORE DRAMATIC because I'm not looking at the camera, like I don't even care! I had brown sleepy seeds because all the sand would stick to the moisture in my eyes. My ears were full of dust and nose from the short time I didn't have a scarf on. Iraq is so awesome.


This is an Iraqi port-a-potty. I blacked out the poo part so you wouldn't have to look at that. But as you can see there is no seat, and no urinal off to the side. Just a hole, with convenient grippy treads on either side for safety. They squat to go to the bathroom, even the guys just to pee. We confirmed this by watching one do it before the port-a-potty got delivered to the new site we were working at. He at least had the courtesy to go partially around the corner, but we still saw his back and saw him squat down for about 30 seconds and then stand back up, zipping up his cover-alls, so it's pretty obvious what was going on back there. It's not a huge problem for me as I can just stand up and pee in the hole (or at least towards the hole... maybe in that general direction... the girls swear that we try to write our name on the port-a-potties without the use of a marker.), but the ladies I was working with did not have as much fun trying to use the facilities, from what I was told.