Contractor DFACs

After posting pictures and a description of our DFAC, I thought I'd include some pictures of the kitchens that are set up and used by the local national contractors on their job sites. It's not like home where the contractor's all bring their lunch bucket or hop in their truck and drive to the closest fast food restuarant. If the job is going to take several weeks, the contractor will set up a kitchen on the job site, bring in food and a cook and serve a warm meal for the workers. The cook also brews the green tea for morning tea break, which usually includes some flat bread or biscuits (cookies). The pictures below are some of the kitchens around the base.

This kitchen is located in the KBR village, where all the KBR employees live and have their offices. KBR employs several hundred local nationals (at a wage of $1.96 per hour) and the locals have built this kitchen behind the carpenter shop, close to a fuel source. Everything is cooked over a wood fire. Some contractors even share kitchens and cooks. When Mike was working on the fence project in this area, he used the KBR employees cook and kitchen for his employees.

I have to include a short story on the language barrier. The contractors have to submit all their workers for badges and they have to identify their jobs. I was looking at one the other day and I could not figure it out. The guy was listed as a "car painter", I could figure out why we would need a car painter on the job, even though I realize they like to paint up their trucks and trailers real nice. After a couple minutes it hit me, the guy is a "carpenter". I'll do a post later on some of the other interesting "lost in translation" words.

This kitchen was set up by the contractor that is building many of the brick and mortar living facilities on base, so it has been in place for months. The second picture is of the inside of the kitchen. I did not include a picture of the counters they use for food preparation, but needless to say it probably would not pass any Department of Health inspection. Everything is cooked for most of the morning in pressure cookers, so it probably kills off any thing that may have found it's way into the food.

This one is a little difficult to pick out of the surrounding scrap wood and concrete forms. It is similar to the previous one, but not enclosed.

The next couple pictures are something I came across today. We have a contractor building a Sea-hut, not to be confused with the B-hut, but it is a larger version. It is much larger than the B-hut and this one is going to be used for temporary housing when there is a change over. The new people will live in it until the people leaving move out of the brick and mortar living facilities. It is a large open bay with cots for beds. Similar to the large circus tents we stayed in while at Bagram, but has a longer life than the tents. The contractor was putting the plywood on the roof this morning and I noticed something about the workers. Two of them were barefoot.

I guess their sandals tend to slide on the plywood. I also noticed that one of the laborers was short a few fingers. Between his two hands I only saw three full length fingers. the other five were stubs, somewhere between the first two knuckles. I wanted to ask what happened, but chickened out and did not, he obviously had his hands somewhere they should not have been. He did have both thumbs, in case you were wondering.

I included this one because it reminded me of my civilian job. The folks over here read road signs about as well as they do at home. All along these two buildings there are 8 "No Parking Anytime" signs posted, but when I went by, four vehicles were parked alongside the buildings. I just can't seem to get away from it (signing issues), even thousands of miles away from home.