Cleanliness is next to Godliness

Here in Iraq, for the most part I would say things are not all that bad. Compared to my last year here this place is a cake walk. It is generally harder for me this year for many reasons starting off with my new family that I am no able to be with. But over all this is really not a bad rotation. We are not under daily attack. We live in so what comfort. We get up to 4 hot meals a day for free, if you can eat that much. We have Burger King, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and a few other smaller eateries. We have a PX and places to worship if you want. Other than the heat and the fact that we are far from home, it is just another day in the world.

But recently things did start to get a little dirty. And a lot smelly. Here at COB Adder there are two ways to get clean clothes. There are a few laundry turn in points around base where anyone can come and turn in up to 20 articles of clothing a day and 72 hours later go back and pick them up. Or in every LA (living area) there are multiple laundry shacks with washers and dryers. Most people around here like to do their own laundry. Sometimes it is hard to get a machine and you end up waiting around. But it is a little bit of home in a way. Plus most people are really not that into having someone else wash their underwear. If you do your laundry yourself you get to use whatever laundry detergent you have and get to do it at your own time and speed. If you turn your laundry in again it is a 72 hour turn around and they use a laundry detergent that leaves clothes smelling “a little like diesel fuel”. So again, most of us do our own laundry.

Well about 2 months ago the PX (Post Exchange) ran out of laundry detergent. And this is when the problem started. Slowly people started to run out of their store of detergent. Fights started breaking out over bottles of soap. Laundry stopped being done. People started to stink. And everything went to crap. Wash was being done with Axe body wash, with ground up bars of soap, and with nothing but water. And people continued to stink. I getting very tired of all of this sent an e-mail off to my father to see if his rotary club could give us some help, and he said he would work on it.

Two weeks later I received a shipment of 11 boxes from the Rotary Club. Each box containing 2 bottles of laundry soap, and 10-12 packets of travel tissues. And then two weeks later I received another shipment of 15 more boxes. This time in addition to the laundry soap there were books and magazines. And now, we have clean clothes. I watched the attitude of the soldiers skyrocket. And I am extremely thankful. So I would like to put out this thank you to the Orange Rotary club for their help with our problem. I know there are a lot of people out there that care a lot about the military, but not a lot that will go to such lengths (and money) to help us over here. The club has been sending out boxes to soldiers here in Iraq at least since my first deployment back in 2004. They have sent out a lot of boxes. The Program is called Operation a bit of home! If you want to go and check out the website. I don’t know what is on it. I can’t get our slow net service here to go to the page. They are at:
http://www.abitofhome.org/


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