Helo again. It’s been awhile

Back from a break, though it wasn’t a break at all. Just been super busy at the office, what with the regular summer transition. Probably 75 percent of the staff in my little section turned over. It’s a weird thing about this job: there’s constant turnover. The larger the section, the more people come and go.

It can be sad, but at some point, you get used to it. It’s a gig where everything is temporary. In Baghdad, it’s more intense because at normal posts, people stay 2-3 years, but in Baghdad it’s 1-2. With my timing – most of the turnover is early in the summer and I arrived in late September – I’m on target to work for three bosses in two years, which, due to my weird timing, should turn out to be 26 months.

 

With the new bosses, though, comes new introductions to everything. Not just people, but procedures. And since, in Baghdad, we don’t get out much but the security people need to know the area, getting familiar with the lay of the land includes a helicopter tour of what’s known as the International Zone.

Since we’re the federal government, we go big. It’s never just one person, so we took two groups of people in a helicopter tour, and I got lucky and got a ride.

I totally love helicopters. I did the first one in Alaska, and I remember thinking I would film the takeoff and when I went to take a shot through the see-through floor, I realized we’d already taken off. It was an amazing sensation, just lifting into the air.

For this tour, I was all-in! We did about 20 minutes, and I had “coms” – headphones the pilots use to talk to each other. I – and three other people – could listen, but not talk.  It was hard to hear, but I eventually figured out when to expect “maneuvers” – we did some fun moves to get around radio towers and things.

 

One of the big things to see in Baghdad is the “Crossed Swords” monument, and there was some kind of armed forces photo op going on. There was a camera drone around somewhere and I could hear the pilots talking about it. (Obviously, we didn’t want to ruin anyone’s pictures.) Those guys were good – I never saw the thing.

Baghdad is huge. We only went over the International Zone, but there were white buildings as far as I could see. The pilot pointed out things like Route Irish and some of the sites of the presidential palaces (yes, plural). To me, it was just amazing to look down and see the Tigris, the same one that flowed in Adam and Eve’s time. I swear, I love this part of the country.

And helicopters. It was so much fun. We had two legs going and when the first group got off they were all smiles and thumbs down, saying, oh, it was awful – you don’t want to do it. I’ll take your spot. Definitely my Baghdad highlight.

I told the new boss all I need now is a photo op for me in front of Crossed Swords and I can leave! Kidding, of course, but since I don’t have a prayer of making it to the zoo and have already seen Saddam’s swinging site, Crossed Swords is my last realistic (somewhat, anyway) bucket list item.

It was a great way to wrap up my first year in Baghdad. Technically, my anniversary was September 15, but because I left for home leave on the charter flight yesterday, I had two weeks of “bonus Baghdad time.” My second year doesn’t start until I return, which is due to be October 18.

Now I’m in DC, getting ready to head to Florida just when everyone else is trying to get out. I’m due in tomorrow at 1 and have a lab appointment at 2:30 and then possibly a dentist appointment; that was scheduled for Thursday at 8 a.m. but apparently they called me this morning to reschedule. I hope I can; I need a crown.

 

My big home leave trip this time is not taking Zippy to a softball game, though; instead I’m driving her to see her brother at his son/her nephew/my cousin’s wedding. It’s in Asheville, which is cool because I’ve never been.

Unfortunately, I’ll have to drive. No helos.

 

Back from a galaxy far, far away

 Been back two weeks from my R&R and it’s very much like I never left. Par for the course, I guess, but it does get tiring. Now I am planning for my home leave, which is a few short weeks in America. As usual, there are doctor appointments that need to happen. Trying to get a referral from here without going to see a primary doctor there is about as hard as taking out the Death Star, but hopefully things are lining up. Unfortunately, I got the added wallop of a toothache and it looks like I’ll have to get another crown, which will probably make my home leave more expensive than the whole trip to Star Wars land. 

Tunisia was really cool, thought. Hot, but cool. August isn’t the time to go to a desert, but I knew that in advance; I couldn’t go any other time. It was about 10-15 degrees cooler than it is in the sandbox, but it’s also – at least on the beach part – more humid.

My private group tour wasn’t all about Star Wars; basically, I saw the whole country, culture and traditional and all. Kairouan, for example, has the oldest mosque in north Africa. (And, before the tour, I discovered that Tunis has an American cemetery, the only one in Africa. Soldiers who died during the world wars are buried there. I had no idea America had cemeteries overseas).

But the Star Wars scenes were highlights, even though there’s big movie magic involved. Luke Skywalker’s house, for example, was incredibly tiny. It steps down to the ground, yes, but inside, it’s not more than 8 feet across. There is no way that Luke, Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen lived in that tiny place. Mos Epsa, one of the backdrops from the prequels, had raw wooden beams holding up the little round housing structures and the droids in the courtyard were made from wood.

 Here's Smithsonian’s take on the Mos Epsa site, which is surrounded by gorgeous dunes. We took a 4x4 out there and did some dune bashing, which was a lot of fun. The guide said there used to be another site about 5 kilometers away but has, in the 40 years since filming, has been taken over by nature.

 “It's only a short drive from the oasis of Tozeur, but the abandoned set of Mos Espa spaceport on the Chott el-Gharsa salt flat feels something like the end of the earth. Familiar landmarks of the fictional town have withstood weather and time, including the spaceport gate, podracing area, Watto’s shop and the café of famed podracer Sebulba, whom Anakin defeats to win his freedom. Moisture vaporators and other props also remain, posing a stark contrast to the desert landscape and mustard-colored set. Only the first stories of buildings were constructed for the prequels, leaving computer-generated imagery to design the rest. The crew of the prequel triology spent close to five months at the location, forging the now well-beaten road to the Nefta-Tozeur highway.” 

Some of the sites were, inexplicably, in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Once in a while, it made sense, like the area used for the pod racing in the first prequel. That site has a structure called “Camel’s Neck,” and it’s basically a dry lake of nothingness. I thought it was beautiful. We drove through another huge dry lake, too. Gosh, it was just forever of flat earth.

 We visited the Sand People’s digs, which was also used in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Sidhi Bouhlel was the place where the Sand People tried to attack Luke when Ben steps in. In Raiders, it’s the place where Indy aims the gun at the ark and the Nazis dare him to shoot it and then Indy winds up being drug under the truck.

 The Raiders scenes from Cairo also doubled as Star Wars sites. Who knew Anakin worked on his pod racer in the same place where Miriam was kidnapped? The ksars were beautiful and fascinating. Although, sadly, they’re run down and mostly vacant now, they have been in use for hundreds of years.  

 I should go back and watch the prequels again so I can try to visualize where I was, but that would mean I have to watch the prequels again. I’ve seen them once – they were horrible. But I went back and watched “The Rise of Skywalker” again, marveling at the movie making. At the final scene, Ray, shown outside Luke’s childhood home, buries the light saber in the sand. In reality, the site, smack in the middle of the dry lake, is surrounded by dirt, not sand. She wouldn’t have been able to do that.

 Tatooine doesn’t exist, but Tataouine does. Lucas and the crew set up there to film in nearby sites and liked the name so much he adopted it. We also went through a Chibika, and, although I didn’t see anything to lead me to believe he took that name, it certainly sounds like he did. The guide said “chibika” means “the place where the oasis meets the sand.”  

Another base the crews used way back then, Sidi Hotel Idriss, is still used and has a lot of memorabilia, but no souvenirs. I’m American – I was expecting commercialism everywhere, and it just didn’t exist. But that hotel – which was there the cast stayed during parts of filming – had an amazing room with 40-year-old photos and such. (None for sale.)

 The hotel part has little rooms in the courtyard and on the doors they have character names where the actors stayed. They showed me the Luke Skywalker room, where Mark Hamill crashed. It’s way out in the middle of nowhere and the rooms don’t even have bathrooms; those are down the hall.

Really, Tunisia wasn’t a bucket list location or anything; I just had a vacation to take and I didn’t want to go far. Our vacations start off in Amman, and the flight to Tunis was under 4 hours. It worked out really well. I guess the force was with me.