"Every time it breaks, I have to go to the market to sell some of my gold," she said, growing agitated while sitting in her neighbor's home, where she had come to visit. "They spend the money to buy tanks, on body guards for our ministries, on new cars. But it's hot at night. I can't sleep. I want to send a message to George Bush. Where is the power? This is my question. We don't need to have a good president of Iraq. We don't need this new political process. We just need to have power."
Iraqi engineers at Baiji echoed her frustration at the pace of progress.
The massive steam-generated power plant outside of Baiji in Iraq is undergoing repairs.
(Jackie Spinner -- The Washington Post)
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"It is going so slow," said Tahseen Zeki, the manager of a new mobile power station built by the Army Corps. "All the Iraqis, they just want to have electricity. The roads are open. The skies are open."
Zeki said he blamed the former occupation government. "It came down to this," he said, rubbing his fingers together as if they held cash.
In Baiji, USAID, through its contractor, California-based Bechtel National Group, is focusing on repairing six giant generators powered by steam turbines. Electricity is sent from the generators to a switchyard, where it is then passed on to the power grid. About 60 percent of Baiji's electricity is distributed outside of the region.
In the main control room one afternoon, Ahmed Taqi, a technical operator, monitored power distribution to neighboring provinces by observing a large panel of dials and blipping lights. Before the war, distribution was monitored by computer. Now Taqi does it by hand. Asked why the computer hadn't been fixed, Taqi simply shrugged.
Iraqi laborers are finishing up a brick wall that will surround the Baiji station, which comprises three separate power plants: the thermal plant, eight mobile generators and a gas turbine plant.
The Army Corps is responsible for the mobile generation and gas turbine plants, projects that will add 440 megawatts of power when they are completed. Florida-based Odebrecht Construction Inc., the contractor for the gas turbine project, has hired more than 1,000 local workers through seven major subcontractors and their various subcontractors.
Dan Spencer, a senior manager for Odebrecht, said the project should be completed by November, three to four months quicker than it would typically take to build a power station in the United States, he said.
"We were called to get power on the grid as quickly as possible," Spencer said last week, while workers in light blue coveralls moved beams and stitched together long cable wires. One worker had spread out his prayer mat and was bent in silence.
As a security measure, the U.S. contractors live in guarded compounds at the power station, which is near the village of Hanshe, a farming community that protected the plant from looting immediately after the war.
Washington Group International, of Idaho, the prime Army Corps contractor responsible for power generation in northern Iraq, built a new school for the village. The facility replaced a 26-year-old, crumbling school that villagers had built by hand.
A sign in front of the school reads in English and Arabic: "This school is built and funded by Washington Group International, a [p]rivate American company. It is dedicated to the children of Al-Hanshe. Peace on Earth. Good will toward men."
Hasan Ali Abraham, the school's headmaster, stood in the middle of a group of smiling, clapping children, who had dressed in their finest clothes to meet American soldiers stopping by for a visit.
The children played with the soldiers' radios, clamored to check out their weapons and eagerly posed for pictures.
Abraham said he was grateful to the contractors for building the school and to the 1st Infantry Division soldiers who patrol the area. The school "even has two air-conditioners," he said proudly.
There has been only one problem.
"There's not enough power for them to function," Abraham said. "In fact, all this village has very poor power. Think about it: We are neighbors with the power station."
Special correspondent Luma Mousawi contributed to this report.
