Week 1 - complete...

Hello all!

Well, the first week is completed. Sometimes I think that my job will be more like hearding cats than anything else. Dealing with camp bearthing and services is definitely proving to be a challenge if only just on my patience. :) It's not really that bad. I just have about 18 different projects or problems going on at once.

I'm still getting a handle on bearthing assignments. People are supposed to come to my office for permission to move bearthings or change their bearthing configurations in any way. Of course, getting this concept through to the Army is a bit difficult. Then there are the issues with broken items like doors, showers, sinks, toilets, windows.....and the list goes on. Oddly enough, the females have been giving me the most issues lately. Several power outages in the female bearthings due to plugging in 110v appliances into 220v sockets. Then someone kicked out a drain pipe to a sink in the female latrine (head). Shower head was busted. Little things.

I can tell right away that trash is going to be a problem. Too many people; civilian, military and local nationals alike are leaving trash all over the place. Mostly it's water bottles. I might have to hire a local just to walk around cleaning up. I would hate to have to do that, but I can't be everywhere at once.

All in all, this job is very manageable. Just like any job I've done, division officer and department head, there are are always varying personalities to deal with. Resource management, both with people and materials. The biggest variable here is the weather. Dust storms, wind, glaring heat. From what I understand it gets so cold here that some days no work at all gets done. Well, we'll see.

Today and yesterday, I've spent my time rearranging the office space to accomodate two more desks. Problem I cam across was with the LAN. Apparently, the Army has their computer network set up to lock out a LAN connection any time the cable is unplugged. Well, I didn't know that and all of the computers had to be unplugged for the move. Now, we have to get the Army to open up the ports. I'm not suprised to have learned that the Army has kept control of their network at camp Phoenix in Kabul. So we have to wait for their civilian contractors to 'get around' to fixing the ports remotely. I hope to have the computers back up tomorrow. ***fingers crossed***.

Well, I'm going to get going. I hope to have some more pictures for you on the next post.

Take care.