Water, water everywhere… But not a drop to bathe in…

Actually, that’s not true. We at Al Asad are located at an oasis of historical import—it is said that Abraham spent some time here—however, the size of the oasis compared to that of the base is miniscule. The water runs off into a wadi (a dried up river bed cum swamp) overgrown with reeds and kept green by the copious amounts of wastewater that Americans produce. The wadi then drains into the Euphrates River several kilometers up the road. So, there is water here, more than in most of the desert, but it is mostly waste water that may or may not have been appropriately treated—the waste water management infrastructure on base is old and not up to modern standards, but will be upgraded in due course. Certainly the system is better than when the US first arrived!

So, our main source of water on base for drinking is bottled water. But, our main source for everything else (e.g. showers) comes from a nearby town; the water is piped onto the base and treated, monitored and otherwise surveilled—that is how we know that bad guys haven’t messed with it and that is isn’t really water that you would be happy to be drinking—although it is good to go for bathing and washing clothes. Maybe the bad guys have thought of putting something sinister into the water, but to date the best they have done is blow up the pipeline that brings the water into the base.

This is why we are on day 7 or 8 of no running water—I think in the last two weeks we have had about 3 days of running water. Again, things could be much worse. I much prefer taking a shower with bottled water than not taking a shower at all. I prefer coming out of the dust and dirt and wind and sleeping in a (relatively) clean building than wallowing in the sand all night in a tent. We have it pretty good! I am sure you can imagine how the process works for a bottled water shower. Thank goodness for short hair—some of the females on the team have long hair and they need a couple of extra bottles for their bottled water shower.

No, the tricky part of the no running water experience is the laundry. You see, in so many ways we are living quite comfortably—clean bodies, clean rooms—that is becomes burdensome to have dirty skivvies. And that is exactly what you have after a week or so of no running water! So, I thought I would take this opportunity to show you an excellent example of Iraqi plumbing and electricity combined in the form of our washing machine set up. Check it out:

First, you can see the gray pipe for incoming water that is an add-on from the now famous “I do it myself” plumber. Next to that pipe you can see the hard-wired electricity coming down the wall, but we don’t use that—too obvious. The white cord draped around and on the gray pipe is the extension cord that plugs into an overloaded surge protector that provides our washer its power. The coup de grace is the drainage system—that’s right, the hoses snaking across the floor and into the center floor drain make up the drainage system. You can only drain one item at a time or else the whole thing gets overwhelmed and next thing you know you are squeegeeing the floor trying to push water down the drain.

Now, the washing machine itself is unlike anything I have ever seen. I am sure some of the readers of this blog have seen or used something similar in the past, but not me. Two top-loading sides of the machine are obvious. One is the agitator side and the other is the spin side. The procedure goes like this: place clothes and soap in and fill up agitator side (making sure drain switch is off—otherwise filling takes a long time as all the water goes right down the drain!), let it agitate for 10-15 minutes, drain and move wet clothes to spin side (making sure to turn drain switch on—otherwise the spinning is useless and the water stays in the machine!), place clothes back in agitator and refill with water (again making sure drain switch is off), agitate another 5-10 minutes, spin again.

As you can tell, there are some pivotal points in this process where the drain switch has to be correctly set or else the entire process is compromised and various steps have to repeated until you get it right—it can be quite a time sink…

Time to go check the laundry!