Week 3 - My Week in Iraq

Hey all,

First of all, let me remind you - I am here to share my adventure. Please feel free to pass this email along (along with my email address - wadeiniraq@yahoo.com) to anyone you think would be interested (don't put me on a spam list.... :-p ). I want to personally thank everyone who wrote back. I love getting your emails - it makes my day - and I try to reply to everyone - even if it is a quick "thanks for the prayers." You don't know how my face lights up when I log on in the morning and it says "12 new emails"....WHOO-HOO! Also, I did throw out my back last week - it was pretty bad. So thanks to all for the prayers and good thoughts. While there is still some minor pain, it is doing MUCH better. They were almost going to send me to a bigger camp - but I asked to wait to see if it would get better. It did.

Okay, quickly - about the packs of wild dogs. It is very sad - but there are vicious packs of dogs here....there are unkept dogs all over the place - but the packs that roam at night are the scariest. They are very loud and occasionally, they attack their own (if they are injured or hungry enough). I have some photos - but I have deleted them. It is too sad. Especially for a guy like me who loves dogs (have 3 of them) and I want to adopt every dog I see. Do me a favor....hug your puppy if you have one - pet him or her gently and speak lovingly to them at least once today. Because there are a lot of dogs here who will never get hugged or know a touch of human kindness or hear a soothing voice - and this is tough to see for man's best friend. Trust me, if you could see it in person, it would bring you to tears. 

All right then, enough of that....see, I told you it was sad. So, let's get on with the good stuff! This week's adventures. Okay, here's the deal - I can't give you specifics - but I can say this..... we are on a small camp that is holding many more people than it was originally built for. So, we have some inherent problems with....hmmm..... how shall I say this politely..... "outgoing by-products of a large group of people." Or maybe another way to say it is "Products Outgoing Of People".... That's too long to repeat, so let's use the acronym....POOP. So we have a real problem with POOP here. Matter of fact, we can spend hours a day on getting rid of POOP. When it was a small camp, you could have POOP tanks pumped once or twice a day.... but as you get more people (hence...more POOP) you need to pump it 5 or 6 times a day. Then, when it can't get pumped (such as the truck that pumps it breaks down or you have a pipe bust or an overflow), you have to shut everything down and you have several other problems that no one likes to talk about. The biggest problem is Smells That I Now Know are Yucky (or...acronym - STINKY). So I guess what I am politely saying is that I am responsible to help get rid of the STINKY POOP (by the way, I am assuming my grandkids are laughing hysterically right now - because this is definitely their type of humor....).

Well, to do that, I am setting up a new removal system in the camp that will make our lives a lot more user-friendly. So one of the things we try and generally do at the camp is to give some of the simple work to the local Iraqis. Okay, if I didn't tell you before, when I was in Baghdad, one of the military people who had been here for awhile suggested that I get a "Haji" phone (btw, Haji is an accepted term over here - an honorific title - means something along the lines of "traveler" especially when they go to Mecca). So I bought a Haji phone and got like 30 billion dinari worth of minutes (which i think is like $5.52....). Any rate, the locals can call me and we can talk....except for one problem.....they talk ARABIC!  So this guy from one of the local towns calls me and tries to talk English.  A couple of problems with this:  

1. His English sucks.

2. My arabic sucks (worse).

3. I am getting hard of hearing.

4. I can't figure out the darn phone.....so this isn't working. 

So I go grab one of the guys who speaks arabic.... and guess what....he is British. His English sucks worse than the Iraqi.  Okay, since he is English - I guess my English sucks worse.... either way, I now can't understand a thing either of them are saying to me.

The local Iraqis finally come to visit - now I thought they were going to bring one (maybe two) guys for a site visit. They bring 5! To look at installing a simple waste removal system.... sheesh! I've had multimillion dollar site visits where one guy shows up for a company - and he barely pays attention. Anyrate, I wasn't expecting all these guys - and I brought one vehicle... (and I have an interpreter and a force protection guy).... so all 8 of us pile into this little vehicle and drive to the site. We get out and it looks like the clown car at the circus - people popping out all over the place. So we do the site visit and eventually this local guy gets the award. Yay! We are helping the local population with jobs and training them on how to.....well...um... how to remove (last time I say it...I promise........) STINKY POOP.

So why am I spending time telling you about this? Well, this is one (real good) example of how cultures differ. One of the hardest jobs I have to do is to convince Iraqis that it is worth the money to get rid of their waste. They don't get it. Pump it outside - let it soak into the ground - it's gone. Why should I worry about it? Well, part of the problem is the flies and mosquitoes the waste draws before it dries up. Where do those flies and mosquitoes go once it does dry up? The other problem is that the soil is now contaminated - and if someone walks through the soil and then heads into the DFAC - well, you get the picture.... and before you know it, you have a sick camp.

#1449

Okay, what else.... some people have asked (since I work at a port) if I am around any boats. The answer is  "Aye" (that's from working with all of these sailors...). If you look at #1449, you will see me standing next to some Iraqi Navy speed boats (again, none of this is sensitive info). BTW, I am working with all of these sailors - and I have yet to hear one of them say "aye" or "aye-aye". (Unless they were imitating Scotty from Star Trek "Aye Captun...she's breakin up!") Nor have I seen any eye patches, wooden legs or parrots. This is really disappointing.... (and I hope you realize I am kidding). Actually, what I do see from the sailors is a lot of hard work and a real desire to get the Iraqi Navy on their feet before the US Navy has to leave. I don't know - nor do I care - what the media says or will say about the military leaving.... I just wanted you to know that these guys (and gals) have an INTENSE desire for the Iraqi Navy and Marines to stand on their own. The military folks I see are obsessed with training their Iraqi counterparts hard and doing everything they can to help the Iraqis do just that (stand on their own). Anything else you hear is an anomaly (which happens) or is just flat wrong. Again, based on what I see on the ground - not what I read in the papers....

#1395

Okay, another thing I get asked a lot is do I see a lot of guns? Yeah, pretty much. Just for fun, I attached a photo from the Iraqi Marines - now this is not normally how they keep their AKs - they were having a big inspection - so they pulled all the guns out to clean them - and then stack them back neatly into their cabinets.... but #1395 shows a pile of guns (literally). I was going to ask to pick up a couple of the guns and do a "RAMBO" shot - but as I said, these guys were expecting a big inspection and they were a little nervous.

#1411

Another "culture difference" is the military officer's quarters.... I have attached #1411 - but look closely. It has a bed in the back. Matter of fact, almost every office (including the BX that I showed you last week) has a bed - this is not for nighttime sleeping. This is for the after-lunch nap. It is expected that after lunch, all of the Iraqi guys go lay down for a quick nap. Actually, this is not a bad idea. How many times has someone scheduled a long boring meeting for right after lunch? Remember how hard it was to stay awake? This may be one of those things that I need to "bring back to the states" with me.... I am not sure if my office will be the same when I get back, but I gotta admit....I like the idea.

Finally, the weather....well, I have to admit - it has NOT been over a 100 degrees yet...(actually, in Celsius - it hasn't been over 35 yet....so that sounds much colder) - but we have had some sand storms. Now sandstorms here are like ice storms in Georgia - it shuts the whole place down - nothing happens. We had a sandstorm this past Wednesday - it wasn't as terrible as the one a few weeks ago - but it was nasty to go out in it. By the way, I did not put any type of red "filter" on my camera - the air was actually red when the sand was blowing.  

Sandstorm

The sand storm even made them quit pumping oil in Kuwait - and Kuwait is just a couple of feet away.... see the picture "Sandstorm" (go figure) and if you look in the distance there are several large cranes. Normally, I see them good enough to read the verbiage on the side - you can barely make the outline of the cranes here.

Well, once again I have run out of space and time. The few minutes you spent reading this represents my last 80+ work hours... so I hope you enjoy these (if not, let me know). As I have stated before, I am very proud to be one of the many people who represent our country over here - and like America, there are all different kinds of people working together and trying to help Iraq stay free. I will leave you with what one female Iraqi told me when I came over here. You (America) have made Iraq the light in the desert - a beacon to show the rest of the middle east how to be free. My mother was a Sunni, my father was a Shi'ite - but I am all Iraqi. Thank you for helping my country.  

She didn't specifically say the following phrase..... but I think she believed it.....

God Bless America,

Wade

مهندس  واد  بروير