Post 6 - Just another day in paradise...

(28 March 2009)

The weather was perfect today – 75 and sunny skies. Work production wasn’t exactly booming though. At the hanger, all they were doing was wetting the burlap cloths covering the fresh concrete slab (just placed the other day). Nothing new on the taxi-way—just a dozen or so Nepalese sawing and jack hammering out the spalled areas to repair. Harry and I had to, again, tell the workers to stop sitting down in front of the 12 inch blade, legs sprawled, and pulling the saw toward some very important body parts and that the handles on the machine are there so they saw could be pushed from a standing position.

But, I guess we really can’t complain too much. At least we finally got the QC to get string and paint to create a STRAIGHT line for the workers to cut along. Up until now, the Nepalese have been “eyeballing” the area around the damaged spalls they need to cut out and the line looks like they were done by a very incoherent individual…. It’s taken about a week of arguing and making them re-cut crooked lines, but we’re getting there. Now, we’re working on getting them use straight pieces of wood for formwork so the contraction joints stop looking like they also were laid by a drunk/jacked up on Iraqi tea person—which apparently is loaded with enough sugar to keep you going for days. Harry has made them jack hammer out the same section of freshly placed concrete two days in a row now due to the poor quality. Maybe tomorrow will be our luck day…. (See photos). One step at a time, I keep telling myself. It’s safe to assume most of these workers have very little education. And I’m not even talking about academics. I’m talking about the task at hand – construction. These guys are told to do a job, but no one explains why it needs to be done—or even how it seems.

At the housing, they erected the formwork for 14 columns, so they’re ready for concrete placement. However, there’s 40+ columns and they only have 14 forms, which means they can only place 14 a day. The QC for the housing project – No English Hyder – says concrete truck will be here “maybe tomorrow, I am not sure” which can be taken as “no.” (The QC for the communication and radio buildings is also named Hyder, but his English is pretty good while housing Hyder’s English is….well, bad. So they’ve been renamed “English Hyder” and “No English Hyder” to keep them straight.)

You wanna know why concrete isn’t coming today? Even though, 77 Company (the Turkish sub contractor doing all the concrete work) lives on base and their batch plant, also located on base, is 10 minutes down the road. Because there is probably another project somewhere down the road that is very behind and needs to place a lot of concrete that day or they’re in trouble. So the prime contractor (or maybe even the subs themselves – who knows over here!) pulled all their workers from their jobs, including ours, and concentrated on getting concrete placed on the job in the red.

There will be a day that this project will be even further behind than it already is, and the corps will say “you need to have the formwork done and the slab placed in X many days or you will get a letter of concern followed by termination.” Then, magically, workers will appear from the wood work and get the job done – but I guarantee you another job is suffering due to our threat.

Housing was also supposed to have a sample door on site today to show the Colonel for the Iraqi Air Force, but that didn’t show up today either—maybe tomorrow, No English Hyder has reported. At least he didn’t say “enshala” (if God willing) – if he had said that then I would KNOW to not expect a sample door for at least a week.

All is well though, the Colonel didn’t seem too bothered when the door was a no-show, so I’m not. He then invited Harry and me into his office for some “chai” (tea).

What are the chances?!? I’ve been hearing about Iraqi tea since my first day at pre-deployment in Virginia. Despite the warnings, I was not prepared for what was to come. I have not had a sip of alcohol since I left Virginia, but if it’s possible to get drunk off of sugar, Iraqi chai is the way forward! The glass was about the size of a double shot glass, but there must have been at least 6 cubes of sugar in this puppy. I mean, the chai was actually thickened to a near syrupy substance! Whew!! If this is the stuff the Nepalese are drinking before they start saw cutting and placing concrete everyday, that explains a LOT…