Flies and safety

The war with the flies continues. Today I was swatting some flies when one of the Iraqis came over and handed me a fly swatter. It was a nice gesture. Fly swatters are considerably better at killing flys than boonie hats. The picture above is a very very small sampling of the flies I killed today. I got two-in-one four times, and killed three with one shot once. Apparently the flys are mating or whatever flies do to reproduce, as I frequently see them on top of each other or flying around looking like they are fighting. This makes it easy to get the multiple kills with one shot. And if you think about it I'm really wiping out an entire family lineage of them, so my kill count should really be quite a bit higher.

Next we have some funny safety problems on the job site, like this cord laying on the ground which leads to...

This welding machine which apparently has lost its outer casing and is just laying on a piece of cardboard. I'm not an electrician or a welder, but I am pretty certain that these things generally come in a protective case for a reason and really aren't designed to have the scary looking coils and wires exposed laying on the ground. This is probably the same welder from an earlier post where one of the guys was holding the ground to a metal pole.

The Iraqis seem very generous. They share their "samoon" (not sure how to spell it) with us which is the bread I took a picture of earlier. Once they even gave me the last piece when they didn't have any left. I didn't know it was the last piece or I wouldn't have taken it, but they were nice about it. And on several occasions when an Air Force member has complimented an Iraqi on their watch or ring or hat or something, just trying to be nice, the Iraqi immediately takes it off and hands it to them. One guy I worked with was joking with one of the Iraqis and told him to give him his watch and ring and even wedding ring, which the Iraqi handed over almost immediately. My co-worker of course gave it all back, but it was interesting that they'd give up anything so freely.

On the other hand you have to watch them though, as I've seen them trying to trade people watches, where the Iraqi gives a $10 watch in exchange for a $60 watch. The Iraqi that gave me the fly swatter to use also came back later and jokingly said "I... two dollars" meaning he wanted me to pay him $2 for the use of his fly swatter.