Clean Water

I covered a grand opening of a water plant in a village that the Army had installed. Did you catch that? The military actually builds school, hospitals, installs water plants, and provides water and food to Iraqis. You might not know this because our shitty media fails to report anything positive the military does. This was the first time these Iraqis had clean water…they would drink from the Tigris, wash their close in the Tigris, piss and shit in the Tigris…so needless to say, they were pretty damn excited to have clean, running water. We went out with the Civil Affairs Unit again but this time I was stuck in a shitty humvee with a Sergeant. We usually go out in up-armored humvees and that’s not even that safe…but this time I got stuck in humvee that had NO roof, NO doors, NO windows…it was completely open. Well the doors were pieces of material that went half way up. All I could think was, fuck off I’m not going out there in this. The Sergeant tried to calm me down and said…”What? It’s my Batmobile. We’ll be fine.” Of course, the higher ups wouldn’t let me change my vehicle and I wasn’t about to not go…so I said, fuck it. If we die it’ll get out that the Army is sending people out in humvees made out of pieces of material. The whole way there I slouched in the seat and held my feet up…I didn’t want my head or my feet to get blown off. I don’t think it would’ve made a difference if we hit an IED, but it made me feel better. We made it there safely. The Iraqis made cake, gave out soda and cut a ribbon for the grand opening. The Iraqis told the Civil Affair guys that the people in his village were upset because the water had given them diarrhea and hurt their stomachs. You just can’t win, can you? Kids were everywhere and begging for cake. I didn’t want mine so I attempted to give it to them…bad idea. I was completely mobbed and ended up throwing the cake. There were two older women getting water and I tried to take their picture. They really weren’t having it. They yelled some shit at me in Arabic, so I left them alone. They came back and finally let me take their picture. I talked to them as best as I could. One of the Soldiers pulling security in a hummer told another Soldier on ground that a guy pulled up and was staring at us with binoculars. That wasn’t a good sign. We decided to leave but the women that were getting the water, grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. Two other Soldiers had to get them off of me. We finally left and made it back in one piece.