Let me tell you about my CHU. I am actually not sure what that stands for, but my guess is “Crowded Housing Units.”
CHUs are little boxes to live in. Yes, kind of like the little boxes made of ticky-tacky in that one old hippie song, except there are not green ones or pink ones or blue ones or yellow ones. Nope. They are all gray. The doc that was here before me had what they call a wet CHU, meaning that there was plumbing. A real live sink, shower, and toilet. I’m not sure how she pulled that off, because someone of my rank does not typically merit a wet CHU. Anyway, I got a dry one. I was still very excited to get a CHU, however, because that meant I would not be on a cot anymore.
My CHU is a single room, about ten feet by ten feet. Two beds and two sheet metal panel armoires. When I first stepped into my CHU, it did not make a good impression. There was dust and sand all around the floor. Dirty, dusty walls. Small bits of garbage on the floor. Weird spots and stains on the linoleum that were fortunately not quite identifiable. Torn linoleum and a couple of spots, and bubbled up linoleum in the corner where a fridge had apparently leaked. A girly magazine underneath one of the mattresses. No fridge or television, even though the CHU is supposed to have one. The funny part about all of this was that they had delayed assigning us CHUs so that they could perform condition and cleanliness inspections before we moved in. I’m not sure what happened with that, but I am sure that the government contractors who were supposed to do the inspections are making six-figure salaries.
Anyway, no big deal. I spent about three hours cleaning the room, making it more habitable. I really got it into quite a decent condition on the inside. The outside was another story. Now, these CHUs are lined up into several rows and grouped into larger groups, kind of like large trailer parks. The trailer parks are called “LAs.” I do know this one, it stands for “living area.” I think, though, that it should stand for “litter area” the way people trash it.
The LAs are made up of all these charming gray rows of gray CHUs with gray gravel on the walkways in between. Every few rows you find a gray T-wall, which looks kind of like a freeway noise reduction wall, except less decorative. Just plain concrete. In the middle of the LA are bathrooms and showers, separated into male facilities and female facilities. Here and there you can also find bunkers, which serve either in case you need a bunker, or in case you want to break the rule about not getting it on while deployed.
The LAs are big enough that it is easy to get lost. At first, I thought the rows all looked the same. Long rows of gray boxes. Sagging electric and cable cords running between the individual CHUs. Cigarette butts carefully blended into the gravel. It was hard to find my way back home to my CHU. Then, I learned to look at the trash. Each row has different trash. Once you learn that you can tell the rows apart. One end of my row has a broken coffee pot with various white plastic shards strewn around. The other end has a really dirty old-school lawn chair with an aluminum frame holding woven rows of wide, striped, green plastic strapping.
Now, I have heard that my LA is the ‘hood, and that the others are less trashed out. I live amongst hundreds of young army soldiers. In my LA, there are lots of landmarks such as wrappers, cigarette butts, empty water bottles , old cots, and random trash everywhere. And lots of pee bottles. Do you remember that one travel game where you see how many bottles full of pee and tobacco juice you can spot off the side of the road? That game would get way too easy here. There are pee bottles on people’s porches, thrown under the CHUs, in the bunkers, and stuck in whatever cracks might be available. I found the urine everywhere quite disgusting.
Outside of my CHU there was quite a collection of carpets. By carpets, I mean cheapie little carpet squares that they sell here at the Post Exchange. Most everyone gets one, since the floor without it is plain linoleum. Well, each of the several last people who moved out of my CHU left their carpets on the ground. In the rain of the wet season they had become dusty and muddy. They were heavily weighted down with dirt, and matted and formed to the contours of the coarse gravel underneath.
Anyway, to get back to the story… On that first night, I cleaned the CHU for about 3 hours, then I went to sleep. I should remind you that it is very hot here and we drink a lot of water. I am not sure if it’s because of that or because kidneys are slower than everything else at adjusting to a new circadian rhythm, but I had to wake up 3 times during my six hour s of sleep that night to empty my bladder. I did not feel rested in the morning due to the interruptions. Same thing next night. Had to pee. This is such a pain because you have to get up, get some kind of clothing and footwear on, and hike to the toilets. You are wide awake by the time you return. On my third night in the CHU, I woke up again for a third time in one night. At this point, I was very tired and frustrated, and may not have been thinking straight. In any case, I suddenly felt a great kinship with my neighbors, and viewed their idea about pee bottles as a great suggestion. With the precision of an Air Force in-flight refuel, I found an empty bottle and filled it. Problem solved, with minimal disruption to my mission of getting some sleep.
In the morning I was quickly reminded of my midnight void by the yellow-filled bottle on my nightstand. I wondered what I could do with it. I was not going to give my neighbors the satisfaction of knowing they had converted another bottle peer, since I had thought the practice a little obscene three nights before. Also, I was the only officer for dozens of CHUs around, and felt like I needed to set a good example. I carefully wrapped the bottle in my towel and concealed it until I could quickly let it slip into the trash can in the shower trailer. I refined this skill further the next evening when I had two bottles, containing over 1.5 liters, that needed concealing.
Up until this point, I had been in my CHU alone. I had been told that, as the Doc, I should be alone because people might come to find me at all hours. When they told me this, I had taken down the other bed. I placed my clothes in one armoire, and my empty bags in the other. Two days after my first filled pee bottle, I was told at 10:00 AM that I would have a roommate arriving that day. I was busy, and continued about my business for a short while, intending to go set the bed back up as soon as I could find the time. I was later told that at about 1:30 PM, my new roommate stormed into medical, quite irate.
“Where is Doc?” he yelled at my corpsman, who was alone in the room. “He needs to come set up my $%^*$&# bed and get his @#^% the #^$# out of my closet!”
About a half hour later he found me, and said in an angry, sarcastic tone, “Doc, thanks a lot for having your $%#^ spread out all over the room and taking the other bed down. You need to get back over there and get that place straightened out now.”
“I’m sorry your bed wasn’t set up,” I said. “If I had known you were coming…”
“What would you have done,” he interrupted, “baked me a cake or something? I didn’t even want to leave my bags in the room after I lugged them over because your $#$% was all over the place. Just go get it straightened up now.”
As I returned to the CHU, I wondered what had upset him. He was very tired from a lot of traveling, but seemed really mad. Had I left a bottle of pee on his nightstand? Was my stuff everywhere? When I got there, everything was actually in place. My bed was made. My clothes all put away. I am certain there is no other guy in the command that would have left a tidier room than I happened to that day. I must credit Keriann’s careful training for that. It took about 45 seconds to reassemble his bed, and 30 to move my bag out of his armoire. I think he had just wanted to be mad.
After forcefully encouraging me to get his bed set up, he never came back to claim it. He found somewhere else to stay, but never took the time to let me know. That’s fine, because, alone in my room, I can still fill a yellow bottle whenever I get the urge.
