Nothing Ever Comes Easy in This Country

Americas Team--The PMO Staff: SSG Gamboa, Major Young and I

The title says it all, it is my new mantra. "Nothing ever comes easy in this ______ country"!! (fill in the blank with an adjective of your choice depending on what mood you're in)

We have been very busy as of late. Since we are now working out of the PMO building on the Iraqi side of the base with the daily interface with our counterparts we are all over the place. Major Young was down at the IZ running the gauntlet for us trying to get the money requested for the various upgrades and required equipment. She arrived back late tonite and from what she told me, she was able to get approval on all but one of our projects which still needs to be massaged a little bit to become more palatable to the money folks down in the IZ. My head is bruised on the right side from banging it on the wall each time I hang up the phone with the folks in the IZ after discussing money.

Six more buildings refurbishments/upgrade contracts were awarded on Monday which is great news for us. With that most of the facilities are now either being worked on or work will commence in the next 2 weeks. At the same time those are being worked on the USACE folks are working on the infrastructure upgrades and trying to resolve our pump station issues to remove some of the water that flooded some of the construction ditches.

Today I spent most of the late morning and late evening with the Iraqi's going over some of the building issues and other internal issues pertaining to facilities and trying to get some traffic redirected away from the construction sites. As has been the case all along, there needs to be some city manager function on the Iraqi side of the base to ensure that new construction, services and life support functions are managed from one point to ensure there are no undesired second or third order effects based on decisions made independent of other organizations on base. A perfect example is the DFAC on our Depot. It was supposed to be one of the last ones brought on line by the Iraqi Army. We attended several meetings and were basically told that it would not be operational until springtime. That fit in perfect with our base upgrades since it would allow us to build a fence to keep traffic from the DFAC away from our Depot.

The other week I was approached by one of the NCO's telling me that the DFAC would be number two in line. I told him to have the Iraqi General call BG S who is the Iraqi General in charge of the Depot. Four days later we come to find out the DFAC is operational. We still have no been able to get the fence built because based on the original schedule there was ample time to get the contract awarded and the work completed. The Iraqi Army has not approached us on requesting electricity and providing us fuel for the electricity consumed. They just went ahead and did it, and the hell with the anyone else. Right now I am trying to run down the IA Food Service officer to speak with him regarding electricity and fuel, because as the saying goes no pay no play and that pay is fuel.

I had told the company that was delivering equipment to the Depot who the point of contacts were and our contact numbers. So today I just happened to read email between lunch and heading back to the Iraqi side. I noticed that according to the Company their driver was at the gate that we told them to approach to deliver the goods. I sent SSG Gamboa with translator in hand to that gate to pickup the truck and escort them to our depot location. He called me about 20 minutes later saying he could not find the truck at the gate. I in turn figured out that maybe they were at the other gate, so I grabbed one of our translators and headed to that gate. No such luck, so I spoke to one of the Soldiers who radioed his folks and they confirmed what I had already suspected, there was no truck at that gate or inspection area. Instead of Where's Waldo, we were playing where's the delivery truck game. At the same time we had the AMC guys, waiting at the Depot with the Aussies and the forklift to assist with unloading the equipment.
I get back to my office and the trucking company says they can't get hold of their driver after I requested some additional info on the truck and driver. We will try again tomorrow morning to see where this guy is at.

Yesterday we ate lunch over at COL M's office, he is the Maintenance Battalion Commander and we (the PMO staff) were instrumental in him getting barracks for his Soldiers at the Depot and we wanted to show us his appreciation. I was pleasantry surprised at the lunch, we had fish, salad, eggplant soup, rice, pita bread and chicken, plus dessert. The fish was very tasty and I ate everything else except the chicken. We had a good time discussing a myriad of topics and getting to know him better. We left with full stomachs and a better appreciation of his unit and their role.

That's it for now, it's way late as there was soccer tonite and with the 2 hour time difference between Spain and Iraq the games didn't finish up until 0100 hrs our time. As usual my team lost again at home 0-3 and the good news is that the fans were booing the president big time with my favorite chant: "Lopera Vete Ya".

The Colonel