Iraq. Eye Roll. It's All. I Know.

I was in Erbil.  Then it got real.  

City of Dreams

I’m now on location, patiently waiting my turn to contribute to the engineering orgy that is an exploratory oil well.

The territory southeast of Kirkuk is an unspeakably beautiful topographic smorgasbord.  It’s a very real battleground (more on that later) and safety here is obtained only through constant surveillance and a troop of well-paid folks with guns. There are 35 armed personnel here, 5 bomb shelters, seismic devices to detect approaching heavies, and emergency escape vans we can all fit into.  We’re encouraged not to go outside the fence, gently encouraged, because this was a minefield 40 years ago. Our client requires me to tote a Go-Bag “in case shit

Nowhere near Kansas anymore

gets really, really real and you have to leave, like right now.”  But we’ll get to that in a pinch. I just wanted to start in media res for once, and to use “in media res” correctly in context.  Swish.

This post will describe in not-too-much-detail the recent goings-on in this corner of the world, as seen by your protagonist; a textbook middle child semi-ginger board game enthusiast.  Especially checkers.  For this post there will be no goofy theme or funny rhetorical device.  Mostly facts, with the occasional half-baked opinion (HBO).  These will all be absurd enough in their own right. I apologize (insincerely) for the scatterbrained nature of the information.  There’s SO MUCH to talk about.

Casual

Two and a half weeks have passed since Iraq got its blonde back.  I was pulled kicking and screaming from a wonderful Colorado vacation because Erbil base “urgently needed my attention.”  I should have smelled the BS from Keystone – I’m not that important! Turns out the “urgency” was our client offering to pay my employer $2,000 per day to have me on standby.  There was no real “urgency” per say, but rather an opportunity my bosses couldn’t turn down.  Ergo, here am I.  To answer what should be your first question, no, that $2,000 doesn’t go anywhere I can see it.  But it does make me more resistant than most to layoffs.  So, hey.  Perk.

Need a Wahala?  Well, holla!

The first few days blew by in a flurry of intensity.  My equipment finally stumbled in, tardy and unapologetic, probably drunk. It arrived with a handful of “wahalas,” Nigerian oilfield slang for problems.  Solving these caused several other wahalas to spring into existence.  In fact this entire base camp is essentially a wahala manufacturing plant operating at unheard-of efficiency and well within six sigma guidelines.  Nothing is easy.  There are no proper hand tools. It’s even BYO fork for lunch.  We usually clean our hands with Windex and eat cup-o-noodles out of washed-out hardhats.  I’m not kidding.

Assembled with love, dedication, duct tape

Performing any meaningful work here is, accordingly, almost impossible. It requires constant MacGyvering.  HBO: you will rarely see more effective or determined problem-solvers than in the oil and gas field-operator community.  It’s a finely honed skill from years of knick-knack wahalas cropping up.  Rule #1 is “no whining.” Rule #2 is “no buying new stuff.”  Rule #3 is “employ safety measures in accordance with the number of people watching and their rank relative to your own.”  Following this Code of Hammer-abi (anyone get the joke?), we proceed to provide the world with energy.

Not Pictured: Bow Tie

So we solved everything.  All our widgets went together.  Eventually, no wahalas and everything is koko (Context clues, figure it out).  HBO, the coolest part of this MacGyver mentality is that it can, will and does translate into “real” life.  No matter the origin of a particular wahala – relationship, car, financial, job, external genitalia causing difficulty jogging – this caste doesn’t waste time self-pitying, whining or posting to Facebook about it.  The mental flowchart goes from “observe wahala” directly to “solve wahala.”  Most of us mere mortals sandwich a third or fourth or fifth step(s) into the process.  Sometimes the sandwich is open-faced and we never make things koko, content to wallow and get attention.  That’s just not how it works out here.  I love this.  I’m trying to make it my own.  To observe progress, remain at least peripherally interested in my life.  Let me know how I’m doing.

My equipment was assembled, tested, green-tagged, boxed up and had bow-ties on it.  We cleaned up after ourselves, ordered spare parts for future work, and helped our buddies finish too.  We had, officially, nothing to do.  This resulted in excessive movie-watching, pushup contests, cutting up, loss of sanity due to cabin fever, and clever one-liners leading up to or immediately following passing of gas (“Speak, toothless one!”).  I learned some Arabic, some Kurdish, some Scottish.  HBO: Scottish isn’t English. 

This is a handy opportunity to talk about Islam and Middle Eastern culture.  The two are inseparable, so when I say one I mean both.  My buddy Mohanad is an incredibly kind person, and the thought of him hurting a fly is laughable.  He practices Salafin Sunni Muslim, which is also what ISIS claims to rep.  His contempt for them, as you can imagine, is obvious.  Mohan hails from Libya.  His chin hides under a big ole Muslim beard.  This is a problem on locations with H2S, which all reservoirs in this region are blessed with.  One must shave to wear a respirator or H2S can kill you.  But Mohan is a super-duper Muslim and won’t do it… so he got himself fired.  When queried, he told me that when Ghaddafi was in charge in Libya he was arrested for his beard, went to jail, and still wouldn’t shave it.  I asked about his 3 kids under age 5, and the feeding plan therefor.  He said he’d figure something out.  I opted out of the conversation, confident I’d say something stupid and/or offensive otherwise.  Much as I will now do with this paragraph…let’s move along.

South Kurdistan

The cabin fever crisis soon abated.  Our esteemed client decided it needed the sampling crew on site immediately if not sooner.  This represented another thematic element of this experience – everything is urgent, but nothing happens quickly.  Two days after our summoning, I was on the road.

And oh, what a road.  My Personal Security Detail (PSD) picked me up at 0600.  A PSD is a badass armored up 4x4 with military goodies, including our friend the AK-47, all in the cabin.  We took the long way through Sulaymaniah (“Suly”) because Kirkuk was under attack by ISIS.  Fun details on this situation you won’t see in the news:

   1.      There were 5 ISIS attacks on the same day, spaced hundreds of miles apart, to distract from Peshmerga activity in Syria, where they’re rocking ISIS’ world at the moment

   2.      The attack in Kirkuk nearly succeeded in its goal.  The goal was to surround the city and choke it off.

   3.      Peshmerga repelled the ISIS forces, after initially retreating, with help from US air cover. 

   4.      Over 100 Pesh casualties.  ISIS casualties unknown, estimated to be double that.

   5.      After killing a man, ISIS will sometimes sell his captured wife and children.  The going rate for a Muslim adult woman fluctuates between $100-$150.  Children are more expensive.

   6.      The best website for information on this is www.basnews.com

So we took the long way around that whole chestnut. 

More Southern Kurdistan

The scenery during this trip had a New Zealand-ey way of being impossible to photograph adequately, no matter the setting on my Samsung Spacephone.  The northern part could have been Colorado or Wyoming, featuring snow-capped mountains watching over meandering rivers and cities popping up out of nowhere.  A troupe of singing dwarves marching to fight Smaug would have fit right in. The scenery in no way resembled the product of erosion and techtonics, but rather the work of a passive-aggressive juvenile with two left hands and a spliff playing SimWorld. At no time did I think “oh yeah, I’m in Iraq, of course it looks like this.” 

As we made it further south, the huge mountains and river-bestowed greenery gave way to more precisely carved badlands and rolling hills, like that juvenile quit digging with a backhoe and started using an ice cream scoop and a 12-gauge.  New Zealand turned into Big Bend, where the land is more intimidating than awe-inspiring. The scattered big cities of southern Kurdistan gradually gave way to isolated small villages and cinderblock huts; more stereotypical Iraqi real estate.  As the geographical and geopolitical turn became more obvious, the driver and his assistant loaded their AK’s and passed me a helmet and flak jacket.  I’m still not kidding.

Finally, 11ish hours after we left home sweet home in Erbil, we pulled up to the rigsite.  Think Rivendell, the good guy stronghold from LOTR.  This compound does not fit gently into the nooks and crannies of an unforgiving, rugged environment.  It is carved into said environment.  Acres of mountainside are cleared and levelled for the massive rig itself, the access road, the security stations, and the living quarters.  It’s like a petroleum theme park.  HBO -  after the trouble we had just getting our tiny convoy to the rigsite, the thought of any military force getting to us and surprising us is a big enough stretch that I rest easily at night.

Welcome to Petro-World!

The Welcoming Committee

Well-Testing Toys

It's like a themed motel!

One lives in a trailer here.  I’m lucky, I have a single.  It’s roughly the size of my bedroom in Dallas, but the toilet doesn’t flush right and is 6 feet as the crow flies from my head when I’m sleeping.  Instead of the near-silence I’m accustomed to sleeping in, as my roomie situation at home is excellent, I get to sleep with the scratch-scratch-scratch of a rat living somewhere up in the ceiling of my little hut.  HBO: Unlike the mouse who lived in my room in Erbil, Freddie, this rat is neither adorable nor worth anthropomorphizing a name to.  He’s just a little shit. We need a rigsite cat.

Yep.  Who wants to touch me?

So the daily grind involves working out creatively, walking down to the rigsite intermittently to lend a hand and drink in the absurd engineering scope of it all, and ingesting food completely unfit for human consumption.  Weight loss is guaranteed by physics: mass out>mass in, closed system. Because my part in this production is still a ways off, I’m not swamped with work presently. The Brazilians call this gallo – waiting on the rig for your turn to go.  If you’re an innately productive person, it’s great.  I’ve read 5 books, watched too many movies, solved the rubik’s cube and paid rent.  It’s not so bad.  I can see how some people go crazy in such a situation though.  Minimal internet.  Unchanging scenery.  No babes.  Malfunctioning toilets.  Sets the scene for a bad horror movie when someone snaps.

RussFit, First Month Free!

My favorite part of the whole experience is that I can feel the growth coming on.  As of this writing I’ve spent 43 days in the field.  I miss my friends and family.  I lost touch with a lot of people I care about, and that part’s hard.  I’m a sucker for socializing.  However, there are plenty of upsides. This is not something I can post pictures of on Facebook and tell a couple whopper stories at happy hour, then it’s done.  It’s way better than that.  I’ve finally adapted to this as a situation normal, rather than an aberration.  You don’t grow up much on a whirlwind party trip to the Hamptons.  But this experience?  Game-changer. I get to take this with me. That means I’ll come back home a more koko dude.  More wahala-tolerant, more empathetic, conversationally fluent in Scottish, and probably emaciated due to malnutrition.  Plus I can see my hair for the first time since college.  Good vibes only.  Carry on.

Overwhelming Realness

Stay tuned for updates.  Thanks for reading.  I miss you.  Write me sometime, whoever you are, wherever you are. 

As-Salaam Alaykum,

Kurdy