Git 'Er Done!

January 11, 2008

It’s worth saying again that here in Iraq there are the way things ought to be and then there is the way things are. One very specific case in point is the way that the Iraq’s approach maintenance at the prison. Part of our job is to advise them of the pros and cons of a well maintained facility. But try as we might, the one thousand years or so of backwards thinking and general “Get ‘Er Done” approach to solving a problem seems to always take precedent over common sense.

My tent compound, or Rusafa…as we put it, has 2 giant generators that provide power for the complex. There are 2 sides, A and B, with 15 tents per side, and roughly 25 men per tent. The entire compound is powered by these 2 generators; heat, AC, lighting, etc. So when one of these generators goes down it has a big domino effect on the whole compound. And, of course, we had one go down last week. It seems a wire burned out, (I am no electrical engineer so I’ll keep it as simple as my feeble mind can), and they were having a heck of a time getting the maintenance department to come out and fix it. So like any self motivated person would do, the ICO’s decided to take matters into their own hands and just “get ‘er done!” I wanted to see the problem for myself so when I went over to have a look 4 or 5 ICO’s were huddled around the machine working their magic. What I found made me laugh, but I’m not sure they quite understood what was so funny. They had removed the old wire, (which I found out was one that that they had previously self fashioned), and were in the process of putting on the “new one”. Now this generator is pretty big and the original wires are high gauge in order to handle the electrical output. So what they did was take a bunch of old copper wire and twist it all together and then wrapped the thing in either rubber hose or duct tape and…VIOLA! Problem solved. The first one they made had a far more “made out in my shed” look to it than the new ones did. And I was shocked that a fire hadn’t started or that someone hadn’t gotten seriously hurt as a result of their ingenuity. To my chagrin, these guys were proud as hell of their handy work. And all things considered, with the red tape it takes to get even a light bulb changed, who was I to tell them otherwise?

One of the hard sites, (the tents are considered “soft” and the regular units that have bars and cells are considered “hard”), had a sewage back-up that caused quite a mess. We had to roll over there to take care of something and were treated to this lovely site and smell. But as if the smell wasn’t bad enough I had the great pleasure of watching the septic guy pumping raw sewage out of the drains standing in waste up to his ankles. And to add insult to that visual injury the poor bastard was doing it in sandals, shorts, and wearing no shirt. I missed that photo opportunity but did get a shot of two inmate’s pumping another drain. You’ll get a good feel for their sense of hygiene awareness in this picture. OSHA definitely has no place in Iraq!

Yesterday I came across what has so far been the oddest act of Iraq ingenuity to date. The Warden of another guy’s Rusafa saw the need to have his own personal Sani-Can rather than have to use the common bank of them that adorn the roads around the complex. I’m not sure if he put his most trusted ICO on this job or if he came up with the idea himself, but either way I saw it as an engineering landmark. What they did was dig a small hole, about 10 inches deep. Then they stuck a piece of 3 inch plastic hose in it and ran the other end out into another covered hole dug just outside the Rusafa. Then they lined the inner hole with concrete. Then they pulled one of the other Sani-Cans, cleaned it all up, cut a hole in the bottom of it, then place it over the concrete hole with the pipe and…VIOLA! An Executive Restroom was born. Of course, the ICO’s didn’t do any of the dirty work. No, they pulled out a group of inmates and had them handle the Sani-Can work. And do you know how these Edison’s cut the hole in the bottom of the can? They started a small fire right there in the middle of the road and heated up the tip of a shovel and used it to wedge and cut the hole. You’ll see by the pictures I took of this 8^th Wonder of modern engineering that the inmates were also very proud of their work and ingenuity. And all things considered, who was I to tell them otherwise?

-Jim Franks