Alamo Trip

I just returned from traveling, I had to go to a different camp in the area for some work actually for two separate cases, so the trip became more worth it to travel.  With everything that went on last week a trip at the end of that week worried me a little and for good reason I didn’t tell people I was traveling.  As has been the case travel over here is not easy, at Trial Defense, we don’t have a movement team, we would barely have enough people in country to have a movement team if we even wanted one.  So I found some people going my direction and worked out arrangements with them.  However that ride didn’t show or at least was very late, but as luck would have it while waiting for the first ride I met another movement team that travels around quite a bit and they offer me a ride.  It worked out nicely because they brought me back to camp too, a couple days later, as well as gave me contact information incase I had any more travel to do, most of them were reservists out of Kentucky so we bonded quickly. 

It is always interesting to drive through the town and see everything, I wish I could take pictures but I'm always in the back of the up armored cars so it is hard to get a picture, we aren't really strolling through.  But honestly it breaks my heart, and truth be told I'm kind of sad that we will be leaving because it is going to get a lot worse, you can see the benefits we have provided them and it isn't much but it is something.  They don't have a lot of buildings most of those were destroyed years ago and only rubble stands.  I have been told if I think it is bad now I should have seen it when we first got here, there was nothing.  Now there are cars everywhere and construction equipment.  Now as you drive along the road there are a lot of roadside stands and "shops" I mean the entire road is covered with them.  They are sometimes brick buildings but most of the time they are Conexes (which are the storage containers that we use to ship things over here) or they are very rickety wooden structures, some are building that were obviously destroyed and it is amazing that they are still standing.  There is trash everywhere, and the kids just play in the trash and on the side of the road.  I think about how many local nationals work on or around the bases and can’t imagine what they did for support before.  It is a different way of life that is for sure.  I don't know what this place will be like when we leave and are not putting money into the economy, hopefully it will thrive in its own way. 

This is everything pretty much

I went to camp Alamo, and boy is it small, I thought camp phoenix was compact but this place is small hardly much room to even move around.  There are very few officers on the camp at all, and even less females, the entire three days I was there I saw only 4 female contractors and 2 Jordanian military females.  I asked someone and they honestly could think of any female military, I’m sure there are some but it was different that is for sure.

While there I woke up on the second day feeling a little under the weather, not really sick but just not right.  At one point that morning I was in a board hearing and I just started feeling terrible, I got really flush really fast, there was a doctor on the board, we took a break from proceedings and I went with the doctor to the troop medical clinic to get checked out because it has come on so quickly.  Come to find out I have been dehydrated because I have been drinking too much water and not enough other stuff (non coke products), you know juices or Gatorade.  So I am working on correcting that and have been doing much better.  So all in all the trip was actually very productive.

The trip did make me realize that I have a lot to be thankful for here although they did have cheesecakes, we don’t have those here.