Eight days, six helos, six fixed wings, seven flight lines, five PRTs, two restaurants, five DFACs, three PXs, one especially flirtatious Ugandan cashier, one Iraqi feast, 45 provincial reconstruction team officers, eight Italian surgeons, three former British military officers, six gherka guards, one Iraqi general and his two sargeants, dozens of Iraqi children receiving free surgery, one lake, one Ziggurat, one flat tire and fourteen towels.
… and not enough photographs, sorry. But here’s my map of Iraq with all the places I’ve been these past 15 months. You can follow along geographically from there.
Sunday morning at 0900 I, and my two colleagues, launched ourselves into the Embassy intra-Iraq transportation in the hopes of getting to the PRT (provincial reconstruction team) offices in Salah ad Din province by nightfall (barely 150 kilometers) Shuttle to the first flight to BIAP (Baghdad International Airport). Then on to Kirkuk. Then to Speicher base. 9-5.30 to go 150 KM. Welcome to life in Iraq. Everything is like this – takes 4-5 times as long as you’d imagine and requires 4-5 times as many people and 4-5 times as much effort. I’m used to it now though.
Same goes for scheduling. When I first got here I wanted schedules of activities laid out for me. But everything always goes horribly wrong. It also always works out, often better than I would have planned, but never the way it was originally intended. One of my traveling companions was fairly new to Iraq, and I got the feeling she was a little uncomfortable about how wide open our schedules were at the PRTs. I kept saying, “Don’t worry. We’ll show up. We’ll see who’s about, and talk to them. Trust me, you’ll get plenty of good meaty conversations.” I don’t think she did trust me, until the third PRT. In addition to the folks we thought we’d talk to, there were staff available that we didn’t know were going to be around, particularly locals. And we had time that we didn’t think we’d have, due to flight delays from dust storms. It all worked out.
The purpose of our Knowledge Management trip was to ensure that the PRTs knew what to save and where to put it before they closed and to do interviews with as many PRT staff as possible to capture the tacit knowledge of their experience in the province to build out profiles of the political, economic and educational environment.
Notables in Salah ad Din? We had a barbecue with some of the PRT staff outside the CHUs on the second night. Perhaps the most amusing part of Salah ad Din, however, was the fact that when we arrived, we realized that the PRT had provided us sheets for our rooms, but there were no towels (I’d forgotten to ask – most other PRTs have had towels for me). So Sunday night, after dropping our battle rattle (body armor and helmets along with bags) and touring the base and the PRT and having dinner, we went to the PX (US Army Postal Exchange – basically a little convenience store type place) to find towels. First PX only had hand towels. Second PX had none at all. So we went back to the first PX and we each bought three small brown hand towels to get us through our washing up. By Tuesday morning, when we headed to the flight line for the help back to Kirkuk, we’d been on two helos and one fixed wing. We’d eaten at two separate DFACs, had a dusty, t-wall ensconced barbecue and accumulated nine towels.
Tuesday it was off to Tallil Air Base near Nasiriyah, where the offices for the PRTs for Muthanna, Maysan and Dhi Qar provinces were located. First back to Kirkuk then to BIAP then to Tallil. The Dhi Qar PRT is actually run by Italians – residual from the coalition days – and we learned the day before our arrival that the Deputy Director of the Iraq Task Force of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was arriving the same day, along with the US director of the Office of Provincial Affairs and her entourage. We were no longer the priority and when the plane arrived in Tallil, and those other folks were greeted by the Deputy Team Leader of the PRT (American) who would have otherwise been our control officer. No worries, I’m used to changes in plan. 
We were met, instead, by a guy doing security for the PRT. Not an Italian, but in fact a former British military officer – reminiscent of the coalition days in Iraq. Turned out he and his colleagues, who’d been at the PRT for years, were a wealth of information, not to mention being delightfully humorous in their oh so British way. Oh, and this is where the gherkas come in. Rather than Ugandan or Peruvian guards like the US has guarding its bases and the embassy, the Italians have Nepalese gherkas. So delightfully good-natured and friendly.
That night we ordered pizza from a local restaurant on the base which was surprisingly good. But not as good as the pizza that the Italians have cooked themselves, in their own brick oven, at the Italian embassy back in Baghdad (some of you may remember that from last year). We dined with the whole visiting gang and then off to bed.
Next day was meetings with officers from the Muthanna and Maysan PRTs. The actual operating sites for those PRTs were miles away and extremely small and austere, but they had come to the offices at the Tallil base as a central place to meet with us. Many of them often work there on the way in and out of country as well. And so, as I mentioned, we got to meet up with a bunch of officers we would never have imagined we’d have got to see. It was great.
It was on this day that we went to our third PX. Late in the day, I went to the PX to see if I could find larger towels for us, and was overwhelmed by the ministrations of an overly eager Ugandan cashier who decided that I was to be his new bride and began planning our trip back to Uganda. Found micro-towels, which are very thin shami type material and got two (figured if one of them didn’t want one I’d take it). Then I got two regular towels (50% off – how delightful) for my colleagues in case neither of them wanted the micro towel. So now we are up to 13 towels.
That night there was a great Iraqi feast planned at the Dhi Qar PRT. One of the locals arranged to bring in all kinds of local food, including an enormous pot of dolma (stuffed grape leaves), my favorite. Also kebob and these potato and rice knish type things and pastries. I can never remember what it is all called. The feast was in honor of the Italian surgeons that had come with “Smile Train” – a global non-profit that provides free surgeries to children with cleft palates. They had been working out of a mobile surgical hospital that had been set up by the Italians and US right outside the base. The feast included a presentation of drawings by a local artist to all the surgeons (and anesthesiologists and nurses, etc.) The artist had been at the hospital all week doing artwork with the children and their siblings while waiting for and/or recovering from their surgeries. It was wonderful. Those surgeons were just amazing. I had conversations with a few and thanked them for their work. I remember one man responding, “Oh no. This is my holiday! This is a gift for me, for my heart.” Beautiful.
Next day we had more conversations with Dhi Qar staff and wrapped up the day with a pasta dinner with the deputy team leader and a couple of the British guys at little “restaurant” on the flight line. Please note that throughout Iraq I use the word “restaurant” loosely. Mostly it means the equivalent of a pizza/sub shop in the US – plastic and paper cutlery and plates, soda cans and molded plastic chairs. Only been in one proper restaurant in Iraq – a Lebanese place in Erbil.
Show time on Friday was 0645 for the helo to Basrah, but the dust was crazy – could barely see 500 metres. Weather hold for two hours. Weather hold for another two hours. Then at around noon, they cancelled completely. Of course within about an hour it was totally clear. Figures. Oh well. This is Iraq. So we had a day to catch up on our work and consolidate our notes and go to the gym (at last!) Even managed a visit out to the hospital to see the children and families being helped by Smile Train – they were all so happy and grateful. And had a drive past a little man-made lake on the base where we were told that Kingfishers often congregated to feed on the little fish. From the lake we had a view of the Ziggurat of Ur (where the biblical Abraham was allegedly born). Couldn’t go to it because it was off the base and would have had to get special security team to drive us out, but took a picture…
Saturday morning catch another flight to Basrah and jam a day and a half’s worth of meetings into one day and take advantage of the tiniest DFAC ever (on the PRT site) and one of the largest (on the US Division – South headquarters site across the base). Amusing event was upon return to the PRT with the Deputy Team Leader (a colonel), we discovered a very mean looking humvee in the DTL’s parking spot with a couple of Iraqi Army officers milling about around it. The colonel didn’t speak much Arabic and the officers didn’t speak much English, but eventually they figured out that they were parked in his spot and moved the humvee. When we got into the office we discovered that they had brought an Iraqi general, who was meeting with the Team Leader.
The following morning, my colleague brought out of her CHU a micro-towel she said she found in the CHU. DTL said she could go ahead and keep it and that brings us up to fourteen towels.
The last adventure of the trip was getting a flat tire on the way out and the amusing experience of having four Iraqis, two US civilians, a major and a colonel working together to change the tire. Talk about international teamwork…
The wheel was rusted on and they had to pull a piece of the iron grating out of a drainage canal to bang the wheel off.
Really wish I could put up the fabulous close up photo of our enthusiastic and very humorous and friendly Iraqi handyman joking around with the colonel, but I don’t want to risk getting him identified as working with Americans and possibly killed. 
I love these brave Iraqis who are willing to work with us to make their own country better one project at a time (in this case, the airport in Basrah), even at personal risk. They will be the ones to bring their country out of hatred and into a place of respect in the international community again.
Basrah to BIAP with some stops on the way. Then back to the embassy. Eight days of adventure. Even without trips into the cities to engage directly with Iraqis it was great to be out and about – no matter how many towels.
