CA Stuff

Another day, another excruciating meeting. Today's focused on a local contractor who appears to be building a water purification station in a location and manner utterly divorced from those specified in the Scope Of Work.

This is, of course, a no-go.

These days, we spend Iraqi dollars (through the Iraqi Commanders Emergency Relief Program - ICERP) through city councils, but we still provide contract and procedural oversight.

So when we heard the contractor was not purchasing actual real filters, but instead building them himself with his own two little hands, that required visual inspection.

So off we trudged. Up the road, through the market (abnormally tidy), through the critter-slaughtering part of the market (only mildly disgusting, through the machine shop part of town (where they did not appear to be manufacturing IEDs).

Until we found the "filters."



That's one of our terps (interpreters), serving as a size reference.

So, yeah. Giant, rusty, badly welded, slightly misshapen pipes.

So guess who came back to FOB, got an interpreter and phone, and arranged a little meet-the-bitchy-new-CA-sergeant meeting for Mr. Substandard Contractor?

Sometimes, I love this job.