What's that smell?!

Hello All:

WHOSE READY TO PLAY: "What's-That-Smell"!!?

That's right, once again, it's time to play "What's That Smell" (international version).

Jodi loves playing "what's that smell" and she will tell you that you usually have to be in close proximity to me to play.  Well, this time you had to be at Camp Lemmioner this past Tues night.

I was outside Tues night and there was a bit of smoke and haze in the air accompanied by a foul smell, one which I had never encountered before.

Turns out that someone had dumped a couple of camel carcasses at the city dump (about 1 mile away) a few days prior.  Camels are fairly large animals and I am not sure how they got them there.  I am confident that they were not passing by and just keeled over.

At any rate, city workers decided that they couldn't just let camels rot at the city dump, not to mention wild dogs who were helping themselves to the buffet.  The solution:  dose the dead camels with diesel, light them on fire, walk away. 

I guess that is one way to handle it. 

Changing subjects, I just finished up my rather lengthy check-in process which included "welcome aboard" briefs from the CL Base staff as well as the CJTF-HOA staff.  I think some efficiencies can be gained as the two briefs were largely the same. 

One of the briefers was throwing out some factoids which inspired the next few paragraphs on the country of Burundi, which is east of Tanzania and providing thousands of soliders in support of the Transitional Federal Government of Somolia.

Burundi is a land mass of 10,800 sq miles which is the same size as Maryland.  By comparison, Sudan measures 967,0000 sq miles which is three times the size of TX (and throw in CA). 

Its population is 10 million which is double that of Maryland and equal to that of Michigan. 

It is also one of the 10 poorest countries in the world with a per capita Gross Domestic Product of $108 annually (US per capita GDP is $47,500).

Up until the past couple of decades they produced no electricity internally and purchased it from neighboring countries.  They now produce 43 Mega Watts of power with 32 MW coming from hydro-electric facilities.

Like Burundi, CL also produces electricity using a dozen or so Caterpillar diesel powered generators (not the ones you buy at Lowe's, these are the size of tractor trailers).

CL produces 27 MW of power, or about 62% of what the country of Burundi produces. 

Glad I live in the US of A.

Until next week,
Michael