Or outside the wire. I went outside the camp for the second, and possibly last, time today. The biggest project that I have been responsible for started officially with a ground breaking. It is a new school for gifted students. It will eventually teach up to 250 students from Basra, Maysan, Dhi Qar and Muthanna provinces each year. They will compete for admission.
The mission didn't get off to a good start, but we recovered, and the ground breaking went well. We got lost at first, because the grid we had for the site was off by about a mile. We ended up standing around in the Jameat for about 30 minutes until we reached the contractor, who met us and led us to the actual site. One thing that every says about being outside is to watch the children. If they are around and being pests, then there isn't going to be any trouble. If there are no children then something bad is going to happen.
We had about two dozen boys and girls all around us. Some were trying to practice their english. Some were just begging for some kind of gift. But they were all smiling. Children are cute no matter where in the world they live.
Although Jameat is next door to Hyyaniyah, it isn't an open sewer like Hyyaniyah. It is what passes for middle class in Basra. It is still fairly dirty, by US standards, but it looked remarkably clean compared to other parts of Iraq. There is a lot of new construction too.
I would have liked to see more of Basra. In a couple of months, a school will be openning in a much nicer part of town and there is a hospital by the river that I could have seen too, but maybe I will be sent back here again. Corps has been sending people home early for lack of work, so maybe I can talk someone into letting me come back.
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