Heaven from Hell..." is the beginning of the song "Wish You Were Here" by Roger Waters. A few nights ago, I sat on a deck somewhere in Baghdad, looking out over swaying palm trees lit up by sodium lights, while someone played it on acoustic guitar and sang.
You get moments like that here. Movie moments. As if some interlude or background music from a movie was playing in your real life. Or maybe we're all up on a big screen somewhere.
It's been pretty much exactly 30 days since my last post. I know I've been slacking and will try and be better about it. To be fair though, I've been racking up some 80+ hour weeks lately, and after that, you pretty much just want to go face down in your pillow. I'm getting ready to move into new quarters, and am anticipating that. It's not that I hate where I live, it's just that the opportunity to only have to share my bathroom with one other person, as opposed to three other people, plus shared accesss to a kitchen means I can actually cook (or at least microwave) my own food if I want. I have nothing against the DFAC food, but it's been a year, and I'd just like to microwave a pizza once in a while. Not to mention the full size bed (as opposed to a single) and a lockable private bedroom. Yeah, it's definately a step up.
Of course there are some DoS people who are upset that they have to (gasp!) actually have a roomate! I mean, my god! Who let these dirty unwashed contractors stay amongst them! Oooo! You have no idea how much that attitude (which I do run into from time to time) chaps my ass. I've nothing against DoS and many of their people are fine, hardworking individuals who deal with being out here with aplomb, whether in Baghdad or wayyyyyy out in the countryside in some tiny Army base. They take the good and the bad, and keep on rolling with the job. They are a cedit to their Agency, and their country. But we also have some Princes and Princesses, and I just want to slap them upside the head.
Can you imagine the imapct on US Military and DoS operations if every contractor in country took 48hrs off on strike? Their operations would come to a near standstill and they'd all be wandering around as if someone had just transported them to a future post-apocolyptic time. "Wh-wh-what do you mean the email is down and the contractors won't f-f-fix it?!?!?!!?" "Why is the DFAC closed? I NEED MY JAMOCA MILKSHAKE!!!"
The Military would fair marginally better, but they'd still be eating MRE's, not showering and not doing maintnance on equipment with no mail, MWR, internet, phones electricity, water etc etc etc. DoS would pretty much completely collapse in the space of five hours or so.
If I'm important enough to your job that you simply cannnot do it without me, then sparky, I am AT LEAST your equal. However, the truth is that if you were to dissappear tomorrow no one would notice for days if not weeks because you sit in meetings and type up what people say. If I dissappear I guarantee you there'd be an APB out for me in the space of three hours, tops. I'm not strutting, I'm trying to make a point that many in DoS and the Military seem to forget. Contractors do more than feed, house and clothe you. They allow you to concentrate on your core job, and they do this not just for you, but for many others at the same time. Every laundry person or telco engineer is allowing all of the rest of you to do your jobs more effectively. Without them, you're hosed. When you think of it that way, you realize that the contractor is AT LEAST as important as any one Diplomat or Soldier, and probably more important to the group than most individual diplomats or soldiers.
All of which is a long winded way of saying: I support two-thousand people. You support you and your boss. If we both take tomorrow off, whose absence will be more noticeable to the group? Now get used to having a roommate and suck it up. If you think it's rough here, you ought to try a month in a tent with no AC in Al-Anbar in May. You'll get the point by day two. Maybe then, you really WILL be able to tell, Heaven from Hell.
Regards,
-Bouncer-
