Busy Weekend

This weekend went by quickly, it was one of the busiest 2 day period since I've been here. The contractors kept me busy with questions and requests, so I did not spend much time in the office, but I did cover a lot of miles on foot around the base.

I asked Mike what the Afghani called "man jammies", it's very similar, "jamay". Someone else in the office had a list of questions for Mike from his daughter's 6th grade class. I thought there were some good questions and Mike's answers were interesting. They asked about the Afghani houses and Mike will try to bring us some pictures. The houses are built like compounds, they are walled in and usually quite big. They have to be for all the children and other family members as the whole family lives together. Every compound has a guest house for the guests. The whole family sleeps in the same room, on their own beds. The men usually eat in a group and the kids are not allowed to eat with them until they are 6 or 7 years old, then it is only the boys. Both boys and girls go to school, but separately. In some locations where the schools have limited resources, the boys go in the morning and girls in the afternoon, others have separate schools for the boys and girls. School is only 4 hours long. Outside of school the kids have chores to do, working in the compound, but they do get some play time after their work is done.

The paving contractor is now on their 3rd project manager since the contract was awarded last fall. They finished their first delivery order this week and the new manager showed up on Saturday. He is a hard driver and is pushing the workers harder. He is asking a lot of questions and keeping me busy, but he is only supposed to be here for 2 weeks, he is more of a regional manager and someone else will be taking over the on site duties. They finished the road that originally had the tree in the middle of it. The top picture shows KBR setting the barricades along side the new road to help direct traffic. In the picture the guy, a local national, in the background behind the loader is looking in his cargo pocket on his pants. I saw him do this several times while they were setting the barricades. When I was talking with them, they told me he had a couple small lizards in the pocket and he was checking on them. The lizards were hiding out in between the barricades and he caught them as they moved the barricades around.

The other picture is an example of the equipment the contractors have to work with. In the picture is the arc welder being used by the fencing contractor. There are several of these around the base and I'm amazed at how the contractors seem to keep them running. They don't look like they would even start.