For anyone that doesn't know what I look like- picture a teenage boy with close cut brown hair and grey eyes. Now give him boobs and you've got me. This is an important fact to know because that is how I appeared to the Iraqi detainees also...and they loved young boys. Don't get me wrong- I'm not trying to say that every man that lives in Iraq is a disgusting closeted pedophile. I'm just telling you what I think based on observation.
Perverts
Medics worked rotating 12 hour shifts. It's usually boring work- morning meds, lunch meds, evening meds, insulin here, wound care there- basic stuff. We usually gave out all meds and conducted "sick-call" (Universal Health care for detainees) through the fence. Sometimes a patient required heart auscultation or a BP check. When this was needed, the patient (malingerer) would put their arm through the fencing and you would take their BP standing up (not the most accurate). Oh yea- I almost forgot to tell you- I was the only female medic. Soooo, every time I had to take some one's blood pressure, he would put his arm out and I'd wrap the cuff around it, listen to the pulses and write down the reading. But this is their interpretation:
OOhhh young boyish looking American girl is touching my arm
Every time I began taking a BP, 4 or more arms from different men would pop out towards me through the fence. Suddenly everyone was having chest pains.
Unsanitary
Preventive Medicine Specialists are the Health Inspectors of the Army. It was my responsibility to keep all foods safe to eat and make sure that water remained potable. The same held true for the detainees. I did weekly inspections of their "pens" to check for anything that could cause illnesses.This should have been an easy task. I mean- their food was prepared fresh and served 3 times a day, we gave them port-a-jons to do their business and each pen had its' own water spigot and showers. Well, obviously someone didn't do their cultural studies homework because Iraqis don't want any of that.
Their food- prepared by Muslim Pakistanis, consisted of white rice and meat twice a day, a soup of dal or other lentil, pita bread, fresh oranges (from Egypt- and they HATED Egypt so we had to peel off all the labels) and a creamy cheese and jam (I'm pretty sure it was Laughing Cow brand cheese) and Lastly- just to make sure they knew we weren't the bad guys, we gave them Chai tea, 5 gallons per pen per day. Okay, it wouldn't be fair to those guys if I didn't mention a few problems with the food/beverage. I did conduct one investigation of a "bug in my soup" complaint. The conclusion was that the Pakistani cooks were putting dead fruit flies in the Detainees' soup. Gross I know- but we stopped it. The other matter of great importance was the Chai. Can you imagine what Americans would do if suddenly the government banned caffeine? This is kinda what we did to the Detainees when they were naughty. We'd take away their Chai for the day- and man were they pissed off.
*as a side note- this same chai tea coupled with the intelligence of a structural engineer allowed a functional tunnel to be built all the way to desert freedom. The walls were like concrete...but they were a little late in using it because we found it first- too bad.
Anyway, the food. What I'm trying to say is that it was clean and good. It was served in clean containers. So what did they do? They like to eat it all mixed up and in communal bowls without any cutlery. Then, they'd take their milk and open it up, sit it outside, and let it slowly curd into a cheesy yogurt. It's okay though because they cleaned their own dishes with desert sand and Lister bag water.
Lister bag water-Ingenious! Iraqis do not like to get up and walk to a water faucet and drink fresh clean water. So, to solve this problem, they would take garbage bags and stuff them inside potato sacks. They fill the garbage bag with water and seal the top (with??). For the spigot, they'd take an empty toothpaste tube, cut it in half and stick it through the plastic in the bottom. Somehow, it was water tight. Routine water testing gave positive results for E.coli in almost every sample.
The Port-a-jons- I will keep this brief just in case anyone is eating or about to meet and greet an Iraqi for the first time. To them, toilet paper is disgusting. Why would anyone want to wipe their bum with a paper product when you can use your left hand and bottled water? And, just to top it off- sitting down on the toilet is completely foreign too. They liked to stand on top of the rim and just let it plop. So what if it missed- they weren't the ones cleaning it.
Homosexuality
It's very simple. Sex with a man is for recreation and sex with a woman is for procreation. BUT, being gay is a HUGE no no. So, make sure that after you have homosexual sex, you do NOT cuddle...because you might get raped. (happened often)
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