CHUville

Time to talk a bit about life on the NEC. First thing to understand is how the military live here, at least those of us below the rank brigadier general. Because this is an embassy compound in a reasonably hostile area, all of the Department of State folks live in the very nice apartment buildings here, all of them hardened against the odd rocket or mortar shell that might find its way here.

For us DoD folks, however, a somewhat less appealing route was taken. We have what is called, in typical military vernacular, a Containerized Housing Unit which unsurprisingly, in accordance to military insistence on acronyms, is referred to as a CHU (pronounced chew). Easiest way to visualize these things is to drive around town until you see somone with one of those PODs used for moving or storage. Put a regular door on it instead of a roll-up door, install lights and and AC unit, and you have what passes as home for a year of your life.

As bad as that seems, if you are a LTC or below you have to share this thing with someone else. As you can see from my pic here, real estate is a bit skimpy. These things are lined up in neat rows with decking between the rows, forming a community of CHUs, thus the naming of this community as CHUville. The housing manager is, and I'm not making this up, the mayor.

The typical CHU has no running water, so each row has one or more community bathrooms. Not so bad, really. Each bathroom CHU has three individual locking bathrooms with sink, toilet, and shower. There are also laundry CHUs, each with numerous washers and dryers and an endless supply of laundry detergent.

For the lucky colonels with sufficient seniority, there are the ultimate in CHUville real estate, the wet CHU. This little palace has its own bathroom, sparing the lucky occupants the indignity of mingling with the filthy masses. Now, it's only about 12 feet from my front door to the front door of a bathroom CHU, so not a huge inconvenience. However, rare is the night I don't have to shuffle around to find my Crocs and my CHU key (it can be cave dark in these things) and walk into the blinding "street" light to relieve my aged bladder. And so back to the CHU with no remaining night vision, so cave dark becomes something more like absolute dark, and stumble back to the bed.

My wish is that they concern themselves less with time-in-grade seniority and consider the fact that some of us are just plain old and could use a break. Oh, well. It is something to aspire to, what another colonel here claimed to be a life-changing event while here. Every day I get more senior, every month some these current lucky dogs vacate the premises. My hope will never fade.