Toys"R"Us

Busy day. OCCP meeting, in which we found out that the Turkish government is finally going to start working on the second main bridge in Aybak. The bridge was washed down in a flood in March this year. From there we went back to the safe house, where a delivery of toys had just arrived. The PIO (Public information officer) and G9 were delivering the goods, while MOT Z was acting as force protection team. Myself and an interpreter joined them, and we went to a kindergarten and an orphanage in Aybak, delivered the toys, took a lot of pictures, and came back for lunch. It was, in short, a controlled chaos.


A snapshot from the yard of the orphanage.

While we were away, the TPT, or Tactical Psyops Team and the GENAD, or Gender field adviser had arrived. Fortunately they were able to entertain themselves during the day, so that I could pay our local employees their salaries. I paid the salaries a week in advance, but R and M still wanted advances on next month's pay, as usual, and I'm quite sure that H will too, when he comes to collect his pay tomorrow (oops, I made a referral to the future. Well, that kind of information won't matter). Then I wrote a couple of emails to staff and the situation report. After the daily briefing the GENAD and the leader of the TPT wanted to sit down and talk. The Swedes call it "diskutera", and it's very popular with them. It can be quite fun and useful, too, at times. I wasn't that keen on listening tonight, though, because there still was (and is) plenty of things to do, even after 14 hours of work.