Let's Talk About Maps

Personally, I love maps. So when I go places, I love pulling up the map and looking at where I am. With all the international travel I do, it’s also really hard to keep an imprint of the entire globe memorized in your brain. So I need maps. :)  I pulled up a few screenshots of some maps here so you can see where we are in Syria and where we are in relation to Erbil as well. And where we are in relation to other countries, and where the conflict currently is. It did occur to me that I’m disclosing location information (and driving routes) publicly, but I got permission from our security officer to write this blog in the first place. (I don’t exactly have a big blog following anyway…) He said that we are well known to be working in this part of Syria- we are the only international NGO working in the entire North East region, and there are only a handful of other INGOs working here at all. We’ve also been here since the beginning of the conflict. We do try to keep a low profile, but in general we have really strong working relationships with all the local players around here.

We are not, however, working in the government-controlled areas of Syria, and are managing this program out of Iraq and Amman currently, plus our offices in North East Syria.  Although I’m 3-400 miles away from the conflict areas, we do have 4 other offices in towns with guest houses also (which we have for expat staff who live and work there) and we are providing both immediate need assistance, and longer-term recovery assistance in many of the areas just outside of the active conflict. Today I said goodbye to Corine, a Lebanese woman who was staying in the guest house with us this weekend and we had a lot of fun cooking and eating a big dinner with last night. She’s headed to Kobani and will be working outside of Raqqa, which are much, much closer to the front lines and therefore riskier. But she’s doing important work- training local Syrian partner organizations- like small local community groups - on how to deliver aid, how to manage it, and measure its effectiveness. It’s a tough job because their capacity is low and many of these local organizations aren’t used to working with the international standards for quality that we expect. This model has, however, been very effective in other areas since it’s more sustainable in the long run, and it can multiply how many people we can reach, much more quickly than our own direct implementation only.  

I happen to have read a program summary document today for one of the programs in our portfolio, funded by the French Government. I was taken aback to read that the city of Raqqa was at least 80% destroyed by the conflict, and then I did a google maps search of photos and found before and after photos of the same areas, and it really is shocking. Corine says the photos of Aleppo are even worse- imagine having an entire city pretty much bombed to the ground. Not only is it terribly tragic for the people who lived there, it’s also such a huge waste of beautiful development and a massive, wasted cost to eventually rebuild it. They bomb out the water supply systems for example, and then we rebuild them, using international aid money from a whole number of countries donors. Sometimes it just seems short-sighted when better diplomacy might have prevented all of this- or should have anyway. Syria was, in fact, a relatively well developed country before the war- I know a lot of people who lived and worked there previously and raved about it. Mostly the work we’re doing here is relief distributions to IDPs and host families, plus reconstruction of some basic infrastructure such as minor water supply systems and irrigation channels. We are also working with farmers and small businesses to try to restart the economy and give people a sense of self-sufficiency. Not only has the physical infrastructure been destroyed, but much of the economic and commercial infrastructure, which also affects people living in other parts of the country.

Crossing the Border from Iraq to Syria

Border crossings are always the things that get people anxious- it’s also the point at which trouble often happens. So even though we had several detailed security briefings, all of which said this would be no big deal, I still wondered what it would be like when we got there. The driver picked us up promptly at 9, and it ended up just being Hanna and myself. We were originally going to be 4 of us, with two people coming from the regional office in Amman, to join us for the training. They were delayed because of overbooking on their flight and had to postpone to travel Friday instead. So we set out with the Mercy Corps driver, Ashti, in a regular agency vehicle 4x4 (think white Toyota land cruiser like you see on TV, though I think this one was a Kia actually). The drive was about 4 hours, via Duhok (not via Mosul, in case you wondered, though at the moment there aren’t really major security concerns with Mosul).

The countryside was pretty rural, green and rolling hills. A few times we passed small towns (other than Duhok which is a pretty major city) and also several huge refugee camps. The road was mostly really great, so other than some bad american music CD (like a falsetto lady Raffi singing bad lullaby tunes), it was an easy ride. They even have this cool portable wifi router in the vehicles so you can log on to wifi while traveling. Of course it wasn’t working when we were in the car - go figure - but really, do we have to be working and connected every minute of every day?

Duhok from the car window

Yes that's a roller coaster near Duhok, at some sort of mall/entertainment complex

Syrian refugee camp - we passed a number of them

When we got to the border, the driver basically handled everything. He took our passports and Mercy Corps IDs to this office just for foreigners and then we just had to wait, sitting in a little waiting room, kind of like in a doctor’s office. We waited maybe 45 minutes and then they told us our paperwork was ready, where we got a slip of paper, which was our visa- they do not put it in our passports or else we may not be admitted to other countries, such as Turkey, later. We got our luggage from the car, took it into a shed where it was inspected, much like at the airport but much less organized, and then a guy put a piece of duct tape on each one and markered “545” on each bag, and gave us a plastic laminated ticket that said 545 on it. We then got on a little mini bus and waved goodbye to our luggage being loaded into a big truck- see ya on the other side!

Ashti and Hanna

The border crossing itself was something else. Not a big deal, yet kind of crazy at the same time. The border is the Tigris River, so they used to load you in a boat for the crossing. But I guess there was an accident last year, so now they have floating pontoon things tied together as a bridge, reinforced by cables drilled into the rocks on shore. I mean, for everyone who’s worried for my safety from the conflict in Iraq and Syria, forget it. Crappy infrastructure integrity of floating pontoon bridges that huge trucks drive over is the real risk here. They closed the crossing a few days before because of high, rough water from all the rain.  Anyway, Hanna, myself and a few Syrian moms with a whole bunch of little kids made it across in our mini bus no problem- the river is pretty narrow so the whole thing took maybe 5-10 minutes. On the other side, the Mercy Corps Syria driver was waiting for us and took our paperwork to the various offices to get approved, which we happened quite quickly, and we got our bags and were on our way. I have to say that Mercy Corps’ team is very organized and efficient.

The drive from the border to Derik, also known as Al-Malikiya, was about an hour, mainly because the road was so muddy and covered in potholes from all the rain they’d had. We got to the Mercy Corps guest house and dropped our stuff in our rooms, and got a little tour and lay of the land from the housekeeper. She cooks a big lunch every day for the staff and so she had held leftovers for us, and insisted we eat, since it was around 3pm and we hadn’t had lunch. It was delicious tomato cucumber salad, baba ganoush (eggplant), fava bean salad, and rice with grilled chicken. Then we headed to the office for an operations and security briefing- also super thorough- and picked up the supplies for the training so that we could prep them Friday and Saturday at the guest house. Weekends here are Friday and Saturday so we’d be working on the large dining room table at the guest house. Again, props to the ops and security team here. The security briefing was super thorough- with detailed maps, and they gave us a local cell phone and taught Hanna how to use a sat phone. I peppered the guy with a million questions, mainly because I used to be partially responsible for security in a conflict zone in Sri Lanka, and I was curious about their protocols and preparations. This Syrian guy who is the lead security officer here (the head of security for Syria for us is based in Amman) really had it together, I was impressed. Then we headed back to the guest house to figure out the lay of the land, and settle in for the weekend- and the entire week we’d be here in Syria.

We had a lot of rain and overcast weather, but a peek of sun on here on the way to Derik- gorgeous countryside!

Arrival in Iraq: March 2019

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. 

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.

Sorry, not sure why this photo is sideways...but it tasted good!

Raleigh, Richmond and home

Friday we packed up and headed East, slowly making our way back to Baltimore. We spent Friday night with my friend from college, Deb, who recently got married. We love Pete! We had a nice, super yummy dinner out in Raleigh, and after relaxed on their deck into the night, catching up. Somehow I managed to forget to take any pictures the whole time! Except this random one Griffin took of his breakfast toast and bacon. And just so you don't think we have perfect social media lives, I'll note that Griffin's behavior all week was much better than we expected, but far from perfect. Unfortunately Deb and Pete didn't see his good side for most of our stay.  Thanks for having us though! And congratulations! 

Then on Saturday we headed to Richmond, VA, where we met my friend Jen and her family for a quick ice cream, before Steve, Griffin and I headed to the University of Richmond campus, my alma mater. Wow has it changed a lot! Tons of new buildings, mainly. It was super hot so we didn't stay long. 

Because every private liberal arts university needs a massive ropes course: 

Sophomore year dorm:

New gorgeous football stadium- go Spiders! 

We wrapped up the day at the Whealton's, with my friend Erin from college, her husband Jeff and their kids Max and Lucy. And Woody the dog and new puppy Maggie. We swam, had pizza, and sat by a fire pit roasting marshmallows and making smores- fun! And drinking all the North Carolina beer we brought. 😄 

In the morning, Griffin played with the puppy, met their bird and hampster, and they gave us a bunch of books that Max had grown out of. Which came in handy on the car ride home! 

For breakfast, we all went to a restaurant-movie theater that served breakfast, and watched Finding Dory. It was a great way to wrap up our trip. 

Yay for Babysitters!!

We drove all the way to Asheville, why not go out with a bang? So Jen booked a sitter and we left Griffin, Dalton and Dahlia (and the exchange students) home while we introduced Jen and Paul to the magic of Uber. We headed first to New Belgium Brewery (Fat Tire anyone?) then when it closed at 8, we headed to the main restaurant district of downtown Asheville. 

We first stopped at a cute cocktail bar, and met up with friends of Jen and Paul, who, as it turns out, are friends of Steve's cousin in Pittsburgh. Small (hashing) world! 

Oh and I almost forgot a shout out to Asheville politics:

We ate at an amazing place called Curate, supposedly impossible to get into without a reservation. But this girl right here walks in, and the hostess says "why yes, we've just had a four top cancellation, so why don't you follow me?" It was meant to be. Not to be convinced we were getting old for weeknight fun, we headed to the Wicked Weed for one final chocolatey porter. Thanks to the Bakers for being such great hosts!!