11 Jan

In the US we have mops, buckets and vacuums to help get our houses ready for guests; in Iraq they are less fortunate. To make a long story short the logistic personnel and local workers are cleaning the newly constructed buildings because the contractor hired to do the job has yet to arrive and the new tenants are to showing up soon. So in order to do the right thing we are cleaning the buildings. Iraqi culture lesson #5. Apparently the Iraqi's use brooms to clean/brush the carpet and use squeegees and water to wash the floors - even when the floor is upstairs. Imagine my surprise when I entered the stairwell to go check on the progress of the cleaning on the 2nd floor, when all of a sudden down the stairs and over the edge of the stairs comes a rainfall of muddy water. Crap...I can't get away from the mud. Not only does it surround the entire building - it is coming down the stairs...I can't win. So, I yell up the stairs - what I yell does not matter, they do not understand English anyway - I just needs to be loud.

The water flow stops and as it comes to a drip I proceed up stairs to find five guys pushing four garbage cans full of water around the floor toward the door. When the water gets close to the door they give it a quick push to get it over the lip of the door and into the stairwell where the muddy water begins its journey to the bottom of the steps anyway it can. As you can imagine there is water and mud on the door, wall and overhang leading down the steps. So what are my choices - not much so I allowed them to finish the 2nd floor and stairwell before I cut-off the flow of water to the inside of the building. Once the remainder of the water was squeegeed out of the stairwell I refocused their effort to use the three brooms to finish sweeping the ground floor. When I came back to the building the entire floor had been swept and two of the three broom sticks were broken - at least they pushed hard when sweeping. I do not know if these workers have ever lived in a two story house or if they just push the dirty water over a balcony at home. Either way the bottom line - ensure the Iraqi's understand that in these buildings we will keep the squeegee use to the bottom floors and then only as a last resort. Sweet Dreams.