I’m past 100 days in country, and it definitely feels like it. Though there remains a degree of excitement and satisfaction with the work I’m doing here, I also can’t wait to get out, first to Jordan for a week of vacation, then back to the US for two weeks of sloth and gluttony. The long days and 6 day workweeks are definitely taking their toll. So much so that I lost track of time (and lost my motivation), which accounts for the two week interval since my last post.

I attended Good Friday and Saturday Vigil masses at the palace for Easter. No matter how many times I go to Mass there, I can’t get over the armed congregation, the piles of body armor and Kevlar helmets at the end of the pews, and the T-walls surrounding the ‘chapel’.

Each year, I forget that the Saturday vigil Mass is typically very long, and includes the formal confirmation of converts into the church. This year was no different, and amazingly there actually was a lone convert/sponsor pair (junior Army officers both) participating in a somewhat brief rite of initiation.

Last week there was a rocket attack surprisingly close to our compound. It was a single rocket, and no casualties were reported, but it was notable in that we’ve not taken much IDF in the last few weeks. Hopefully it’s not the emergence of a new trend.

A few days later, a mortar round hit just behind the palace pool where I’ve spent several afternoon meals. The mortar penetrated a sandbag barrier and actually skipped under a few rows of housing trailers, and fortunately didn’t explode (a common problem with the aging ordnance used by insurgents). The entire area was evacuated and a pair of humvees with mounted .50 cal machine guns stationed somewhat pointlessly outside the area, as though subsequent mortars might be fended off by the gunners. In the end, no one was killed, but it was disconcerting to say the least.

Last week there was an odd combination of dust storm and rain storm, which made for some interesting pictures, to be posted soon. I’d been told by those who’d been here that dust storms turn everything orange, but I didn’t appreciate what this meant until I experienced it for myself. It’s as though you’re walking around with an orange filter over your eyes; it was very eerie.

Thankfully, the subsequent rain shower washed the dust out of the air, which is not typically how a dust storm ends.

In the last couple weeks the Iraqi Ministry of Electricity, the very same feckless bureaucracy that brought you two hours a day of power and higher electricity bills, in cooperation with the Uncle Sam’s elite bureaucrats, the US Joint Area Support Group (JASG for short), decided the IZ should feel their pain, and instituted rolling blackouts throughout the IZ. As a result, our camp loses grid power for several hours each day, at more or less random intervals.

Fortunately we have a backup generator and a stockpile of fuel, just like virtually everyone else in the IZ, however this just introduces another logistical gotcha. In fact, last Thursday as were were preparing to head up to the bar in Believer’s Palace, the grid power went off, and Lucent’s huge backup generator failed to start. The cause? No fuel!

Just as we were beginning to dispair that our evening of drinking and self-humiliation would be ruined before it even began, a diesel truck came barreling into the camp and minutes later the generator was alight oncemore. Tragedy, narrowly averted.

That notwithstanding, the A/C unit in my trailer automatically shuts off when it loses power, and does not come back on when power comes back up. There’s nothing so refreshing as coming home after a long day’s work to a 90 degree trailer and a powered-off A/C unit.

U took N and A2 to CRD last Wednesday and Thursday for two days of intensive training, demonstration, and discussion of the application with virtually the entire CRD staff. The result has been immensely positive, with CRD staff coming up with a number of great suggestions and clearly taking ownership of the application.

Of course, a lot can still go wrong. Earlier we learned that the MoI colonel who was giving us grief over our failure to use Oracle has put a line in the sand, and his superiors lack the initiative and spine to overrule him, for fear something might go wrong and they get blamed. This type of bureaucratic inertia is one of the Iraqi government’s most significant shortcomings, and will likely hurt us again in the future.

For the time being, we’ll slip the schedule and port to Oracle.

Our housing situation has somewhat stabilized, though a move appears inevitable at this point. The way in which the situation was handled has further eroded my already flagging confidence in the USG’s ability to execute the mission here, and our own internal management as well.

At this point it doesn’t seem that the housing debacle will be enough of a hassle to bring me home, but it is a demoralizing experience.

My vacation is coming up in less than two weeks. Though I worry what will happen in my absence, I cannot wait to get some time away. The stress, widespread incompetence, six day weeks, long days, and close quarters produce a strain which really does just sneak up on you.

I’ll be meeting Rebecca in Amman, hanging out there for a while, driving down to Petra for a day, then on to Aqaba on the coast of the Red Sea. After a week in Jordan I’m flying home for two weeks. After a total of three weeks away, I’m not sure how I’ll feel when I come back, and my reaction to returning will in large part determine whether I stay past July or not.

It’s really getting hot now. The last couple days have felt > 100F, and it only gets hotter from there. So far I don’t mind the heat, but ask me again when it’s 140 in the shade.

One of our developers, Y, has been threatened by a man in his neighborhood who apparently saw him driving into the IZ one day. He will probably have to find a new neighborhood for his mother, sister and himself to live in, otherwise he risks kidnapping or death. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to him that he could simply stop working for us. I suppose the comparatively lavish salary and education he gets working with us outweigh the risk he runs.

Before I came out here, I was warned by everyone from the BearingPoint team to DoS staff at DSAC training about how hard it would be here. I heard about the danger, the deprivation, the emotional stress, the distance from friends and family. But there was one hardship that no one thought to mention: the astoundingly high bullshit level.

The government reconstruction activities here are almost as dysfunctional as one could imagine. There are multiple civilian and military groups with no clear boundaries around their responsibilities, and little coordination between them. The civilian groups are led and managed by largely inept bureaucrats, and executed by largely inept contractors.

In addition to this, there’s the support. As a BearingPoint employee I’m among the best-treated civilians in the IZ; as a BE employee with a clearance and an Embassy badge, I’m among the elite. And, still, stateside support for our work varies widely from lavish (at the lowest level of management) to ambivalent (at the mid-levels) to abstract distain (at the high levels). This is in large part due to the inability of corporate management units to even begin to understand the extent to which the work we’re doing in Iraq is unlike the bullshit government contract work they think themselves so skilled at.

Not to be outdone, the Iraqi officials vary from extremely cooperative, to ambivalent, to overtly obstructionist. Many are well-intentioned but live in a sort of bureaucratic fear which they no doubt learned in the previous regime, which paralyzes them when faced with a decision. Inevitably, they must consult with a superior, and their superior, and so un, until you find yourself asking the appropriate minister for approval of the smallest decision.

All in all, I have a sense that we/I could really make a difference for the future of Iraq, if only the American and Iraqi governments and corporate leadership would let us.

On an unrelated note, my learning of the Arabic alphabet is proceeding well. I can write my name in Arabic, and read alot of words. Speaking it, on the other hand, is much more challenging. There are consonants in Arabic whose sounds I would not have thought any human could make, and which require use of vocal muscles that I didn’t know I had. Not to mention that Iraqi colloqial Arabic is essentially incompatible with, say, Egyptian colloquial Arabic, and that the so-called Standard Arabic is not necessarily compatible with either.

At any rate, I spend most of my day immersed in rapid-fire Arabic conversation, so if there’s anywhere I’ll pick it up, it’s here.

Yesterday I took a PSD convoy with A1 and U to the Ministry of Interior building to meet with a high-level ministry official about the MySql/Oracle controversy. In addition to the features common to all Iraqi government offices which I’ve enumerated before, MoI is noteworthy for another reason: its infamous stairs, the so-called ‘stairway to heaven’.

You see, the elevators are unreliable, particularly in the absence of electricity, so for security reasons the PSDs don’t let us use them. The alternative, the stairs, is particularly unpleasant at MoI because the steps are very tall, uneven, narrow, and without rails. We then climb these stairs, several flights, in stuffy summer heat, without A/C, smoke in our lungs, and of course wearing heavy body armor. By the time I reached our destination on the second floor (the ground floor is 0) my legs were already aching, and I was feeling particularly grateful we didn’t know anyone on the 11th floor. U, who isn’t in particularly good shape, was gasping by the time we finished our ascent.

The day before yesterday I went to the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs (MoLSA), which is responsible for the juvenile correction facilities in addition to a wide range of other duties. MoLSA is a long way from the IZ, so the drive takes a while and goes through alot of Baghdad. I continue to be struck by the things I see. On the one hand, violence and crime are rampant and life is very hard, but at the same time, there are people clogging the roads in cars, eating at outdoor cafes, children in fenced-in schoolyards, throngs of people at markets, etc. I’m not sure what I expected to see, but that definitely wasn’t it.

This isn’t to say the reconstruction effort is going well or Baghdad is a safer place to be; it’s not. But the prevailing image from American media is also not completely accurate, nor do I know how it could be given the complexity and intrinsic contradictions of Iraq.

At any rate, en route we passed by a disabled armored vehicle abandoned by a Blackwater team after taking an IED hit. The IED left a surprisingly small crater in the ground by the roadside, and didn’t appear to do much to the vehicle apart from shattering the driver’s-side window. On the way back we passed it again, this time with a contingent of Iraqi police and Iraqi National Guard surrounding it and a US military convoy en route to recover the vehicle.

Having back-to-back two days of red zone travel behind me, I’m amazed how draining it is. During the trip I don’t feel particularly nervous or anxious, but when I return I’m drained and literally exhausted. I hear this from everyone who goes out, though it manifests in different ways. This, combined with my growing burnout and particularly high project bullshit levels of late made for a pretty sour mood. Thankfully, today is Thursday, so I can stay up late, have a few drinks, and sleep late tomorrow.