I've arrived now in Kuwait. Today is a "rest and adjustment" day. I went to bed last night at about 10:30 and I slept 12 & 1/2 hours! (Very unusual for me.) I was so tired from the traveling and the time zone change.
Tonight we start what we call "reverse cycle training". That means we'll be working at night instead of daytime. We're putting up the tents that will be the command post for our exercise and it gets so hot here, that it's safer to do hard work like that at night. I think it may take only two nights to finish setting up as people who came earlier did much of the work already.
Last night I dropped in to see the chaplain at the camp - hoping that my friend Chaplain Stu King as still here, but I had lost track of when he was to be replaced and he has been gone about 3 months. When I arrived, a worship service was just starting so I stayed for the service - though I'm afraid I had to struggle to stay awake, as I had traveled over 20 hours by plane (including layovers) plus an hour and half bus ride, administrative briefings, and settling in to the tent where I'll be staying.
After chapel, I borrowed a computer and checked my office email, but not my personal email, last night. I had lost track of what day it was and I thought it was still Saturday, but it was Sunday night (silly me). So I didn't celebrate Eucharist yesterday.
This morning, as I said, I woke up about 1100. Slept right through my alarm, which was set for 0900. I went to lunch then back to my tent to find that two of the chaplain assistants from Camp Arifjan had come up to visit, and brought us some office and religious supplies to use during the exercise. They asked us what other help we could use.
We discovered that there were TWO tents with space set aside for the Unit Ministry Team members. The one in which we had originally set up was likely to become more crowded than the other one, once the rest of the main body of the unit arrives in just over a week, so we moved to the other tent. One of the chaplain assistants from Camp Arifjan had printed paper signs for each of our cots, to label the ones we're using now, and to reserve cots for those who are coming later. This is actually quite a useful thing, because the cots are not numbered or otherwise labeled to distinguish them. If you have to go wake someone up during his sleep shift, and he's snug in his sleeping bag, it can be hard to tell who is sleeping where. For that matter, if you have to leave a note for some when he's away from his cot, the same problem applies. Most of us don't have luggage or equipment that looks distinctive (all those Army issue duffels and rucksacks look the same).
After shifting to the new sleeping tent, I went back to the chapel and made use of their wine and their altar to celebrate Eucharist. (For those who don't know, CEC Priests are required to celebrate Eucharist weekly, whether pastoring a congregation or not.)
I had brought my own Communion bread, but didn't bring wine as it is tightly controlled. Military service members and civilians with the US military services here are not permitted to have alcohol except when it is needed for religious practices - such as ^oneg shabat^ (the Jewish Sabbath meal) or Christian Communion services in denominations that use wine for that purpose.
After Eucharist, I came to the USO tent to use the free Internet computers. Signed up and waited an hour and fifteen minutes to get the use of a computer for 30 mins. Not a great investment. Later today I'm going to go to the Wataniya Telecom network shop and spring for a $5 card that gives one day of access to the Internet through wireless “hot spots” around the camp. Some say that it's terribly slow and completely unsatisfactory. Others day that it works just fine. I think it depends on where you are and what time of day you're accessing the system.
I'll be working night shift, most likely, so the best time for me to access the network will be mid-morning, which is when it should actually have the fewest users, so hopefully it will work well for me. If the network works OK for me with the one-day card, I'll buy a one-month card which will carry me through the rest of my stay here in Kuwait.
There's no way that a wait of longer than an hour to get me on a computer for a half-hour is going to be tolerable once I start working 12-hour shifts at the Command Post.
Anyway my computer time is up. Have to go now.
** Second installment follows. **
Now it’s Tuesday, 12 May. After supper, went to work setting up tents all night. It did not go nearly as smoothly as I had hoped. We divided up into groups based on where in the command post we set up our workspace.
The “subject matter experts” in my group hadn’t set up one of these in a long time and were making lots of time-consuming mistakes. We’re done for the day now, but not all the tents are up, yet. Tomorrow night, we should finish them, though, as only a couple of the smaller ones remain to be erected. Then we can start working on the insides (with the air conditioners on).
Couldn’t get much in the way of photos. For one thing, my camera’s just a cheapo snapshot camera and doesn’t do very well in the dark. For another, well, I was putting up tents! … or rather, spending a lot of time waiting for someone to figure out what needed to be done and TELL me, so I could help. These tents require an engineering degree, almost, to be qualified to erect them. The biggest ones are too large and heavy for a group of people to lift… so we put a huge air bladder on the ground, put the tent on top of it, and hook it up to a compressor! As the bladder blows up, the tent goes up!
However, it takes experience to get the bladder and tent in the right place so that when it goes up it is positioned correctly to connect with adjacent tents. AND, it takes experience to know what parts have to be attached before the tent goes up and what parts have to be attached after it is up.
One of the large tents went up FOUR times before we got it right. The user’s manual says the tent can be put up in 23 minutes. It took about four hours, I think. To be fair, some of the problem was because the tent had apparently been ill-used in the past. Several poles in the expanding frame were broken. The other tents went faster, but the slow pace of work was still boring and frustrating.
On the positive side, I’m finding that the wireless network on the camp is overall pretty satisfactory to me. The Starbucks café that’s not too far from my tent apparently has a router, and it’s packed with people using the network. It’s one of the few hot spots where you can get out of the wind and blowing sand and get good, reliable Internet access – and electrical outlets so your internet time is not limited by your laptop computer’s battery life.
I think I’ll go ahead and buy the monthly access card (which is the cheapest way to go). To get on the network you buy a card that has a user ID and password on it and the user ID has a pre-set amount of time it can use to log in to the Internet. A one-day access card is $4, which gets you access for 24 hours from the first time you use it to log on. Weekly access cards are $12 and monthly access cards are $30. So, if you know you’re going to be on the camp for more than two weeks and a day, then the monthly card is the best way to go.
It’s only good on THIS camp, though. If I take my computer to a different camp, I have to pay for THEIR wireless network. At Camp Arifjan, the network is run by a different company, and the prices are a bit higher – but with different choices. $1 per hour, $5 per day, $35 per month. I don’t think they offer a 1-week card. At any rate, if they do offer one, I don’t remember the cost of it. It’s not that important, though, because I’m not Camp Arifjan and am unlikely to be for more than a day or two during the course of this exercise.
Anyway, I need to toddle off to bed.
God bless you all and keep you in his grace and mercy!
Fr. Jonathan Landon +
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