21 Dec

Oh...boy what a day. Well apparently inshallah (see yesterdays post) meant today because the workers for the furniture build showed up at 1100 unannounced. And the punches keep on coming...they show up with 7 guys, of which only 5 are workers, to put together 85 desks (particleboard type) 90+ office chairs, 250 school desks - chairs with flip-up desk tops. Additionally, they need to move 12 washers and dryer, 50 small refrigerators, 10 large refrigerators and put together bunk beds. Through my calculations it should take at least 3 days for a 10 man working party to put together all this stuff - a week with only 5 workers. These workers were planning to spend about 20 hours to complete all the work. And to add to the confusion these workers were not told that electricity was not available - even though the contractor that we hired was told electricity was not available to the site. So now what - well lets get them a generator to help them out - a disaster in the making. After we got them a generator we turned our backs to address other issues. First they stripped the covering off the electrical cord that was connected to the generator and were about to...get this...plug the power cord from the generator into one of the wall sockets in the building in order to provide power to all the electrical sockets in the building so that they could charge all their dead batteries. Had we not stopped them I believe the building could have caught fire or at least charred the socket they were about to plug into. It took great inner strength not to "butt stroke" the guy with my rife who was trying to plug the generator cord into the plug socket. His answer to, "what the h@$* are you thinking," oh..we do this all the time. Good thing I do not speak Arabic cause if I did I would have been in his face...thank goodness for translators. I can see it now, over the radio to the LtCol, "a...sir, the building is on fire can you stop by when you get a chance." I would have fired the guys on the spot but I was not going to put together all the furniture - I have other issues I need to deal with and building furniture is not one i am willing to take on right now. Talk about patience...I may use all mine up here in Iraq. I have found that you have 2 types of workers here - those that want to work and those that give you excuse after excuse about completing a project; I got the latter of the two with this bunch. Needless to say we have keep a close eye on them since. On a pleasant note I was able to reschedule our dinner with the construction managers / workers for tonight.
After we got the furniture workers set-up for the night we rendezvoused with the construction mangers at their location for dinner; we arrived around 1800. The construction crew consisted of the project manager - from India, the mortar / cement manger - from Iraq, the electrician - from Iraq, the medical tech - from Georgia, and the public relations director - from Georgia. All in all quite a diverse team but they have been working on projects in and around this area for the last year. They all work for a British Company that was hired by the US to build / refurbish the existing buildings and add a few upgrades. They are doing a great job. Anyway dinner was very good, we had soup, chicken, rice, pita bread and some kabobs. After dinner we found ourselves playing ping-pong. The project manager - a small Indian citizen (I will leave his name out for security reasons) is quite the player - I would not be surprised if his contract came with a "ping-pong" requirement. It was a very nice evening and a good change of pace; it was good to sit down with them in a social setting vice always at the meeting table. I must go and prepare for tomorrows challenges and obstacles that are sure to be accompanied by our furniture workers - I am sure my level of self control will be tested. Till later....