I started this blog years ago, first to write about my
experience volunteering for the Obama campaign in ‘08, and then to chronicle getting
ready for baby Griffin to arrive while we were abroad. I kept it up for the
first few years of his life, for family to follow stories about him and for me
to also jot little things down. Since then, I’ve re-opened the blog a few times
for particular trips, so thought of doing so again this time as I head to Iraq
and Syria.
Typically throughout my career, the nature of my job
rarely has me headed to any locations even remotely risky. I don’t even do
frontline disaster response, like Steve used to. We did spend 3 years in the
middle of a pretty nasty civil war in Sri Lanka, but that was never the plan-
the cease fire collapsed after we arrived to work on the long term tsunami
recovery program. So for me to head to a place like Iraq and Syria- on purpose-
is really a whole new thing. I thought I’d take a few notes while I go, and
bring you along the journey with me.
First things first. My assignment for this trip is to
conduct software training for our Syria program staff. That plus some
miscellaneous meetings with our Iraq team, and a field visit to our programs. I
mainly came to support a trainer who is on my team, charged with rolling out
new software which helps to manage program monitoring and impact indicators.
We’re in the final stage of global rollout, and we had so many countries step
forward and demonstrate readiness that our software training team needed help
from other members of my wider team, to get them all done in time. So yeah even
I get to roll up my sleeves to conduct training once in a while- though I swear
my colleague Hanna drew the short straw with me because while I’m a pretty good
trainer, I’ve been too overworked to prep thoroughly in advance, especially when I
don’t do this on a regular basis. But I can run a mean icebreaker so we’re good
there. We have 2 full days prep here so I’m hoping to catch up.
I’ve been in Iraq about 18 hrs so far and frankly it
seems pretty normal, similar to any other place I’d go. As soon as Hanna and I
got to the gate for our flight in Vienna, it was lots of families and also men
travelers. Everyone was chatting us up, asking if it was our first time going
to Kurdistan, telling us the good places to go. Once we arrived, I noticed early on that we are
very clearly in Kurdistan- I’m not sure I’ve heard the word Iraq once. I also
noticed how trendy people were- stylishly dressed ladies, and all the youth
wearing tons of Under Armour, which of course I always notice when I travel.
Erbil is the capital of the Kurdistan Autonomous Region of Iraq, which if you
brush up on modern international affairs, you’ll know that the desire for
Kurdish independence has been a key element dating back to post WWI, then the
90’s Gulf War, and more recently the Iraq war and the Syrian war. From what
little I know of the war history, the heart of Kurdistan has always been pretty
protected, so I don’t think Erbil or even the NE area of Syria that we’re
headed to, has seen much I(if any) direct warfare, but instead hosted many refugees from
the border-frontline areas.
Flying into Erbil in the afternoon you could see how
green everything is, but also flooded. They’ve had tons of rain lately and even
the border crossing we use to go into Syria, which crosses a river, was closed for a
day last week because of flooding. The airport was big, modern and orderly, and
a nice driver arranged by the office met us outside the baggage area. Honestly
other than the fact that the taxi driver had a radio in the car and radioed to
base that he’d successfully picked us up, I could have been anywhere I normally
travel to.
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| View from my hotel room in Erbil |
Even the hotel was the usual cinderblock with metal railings trying
to be nice but a little faded glory style you can find pretty much in any sort
of second tier country. I had a delicious dinner in my room of grilled chicken
skewers and Greek salad, took two conference calls for work (via pretty decent
WiFi) and crashed into bed. I woke up a bit after 5, calmed my mom in a text
since she hadn’t heard from me that I’d arrived (“yes mom, I’m in Iraq and it’s
fine”), and hit the hotel gym before getting breakfast (where the movie Grease was showing on TV- yeah!), packing up and heading
out for our journey into Syria.
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| Sorry, not sure why this photo is sideways...but it tasted good! |
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