Kurdish children

A slice of life - a recent trip to northwestern Iraq.

The time is going fast...

Days go by quickly around. Here is a typical day for me in June:

- wake up, shower, get dressed, grab by helmet, weapons, and body armor and head down to a meeting place where we live to receive the mission briefing for the day (it has been planned the night before by me)

- we go over all kinds of checklist items (are the vehicles ready, does everyone have ear protection, eye protection, enough ammunition, commo checks, etc.) and then we go "outside the wire" traveling in our up-armored vehicles

- typically we go to meetings with high level government officials, or we go review various infrastructure projects and report back to our headquarters on the project's status, or sometimes we combine our work meetings/activities with some goodwill mission. For example, yesterday we went to a hospital because some folks had to do some kind of assessment there. So I decided that while they were doing that my team would do a goodwill activity and hand out beanie babies and pens to folks in the hospital. I first went to the head nurse and introduced myself and explained why we were there. Then the way we worked it was that for the next 45 minutes or so we followed the head nurse as she handed out a beanie baby to either children, babies, or adults - one by one (that is why it took so long). But it was great because we got to visit folks in the children's ward, the pregnant mother's ward, and the older folks ward....and the hospital staff.

Why did we do that? Well, for one it is quite a morale boost after countless hours in the heat and driving around town sometimes not talking to too many people...and that we get to interact positively with the Iraqi people is quite a nice thing. The other reason is that I knew that some people in that hospital either activity support the insurgency or know someone that is in the insurgency, or are at least ambivalent about the whole thing. Thus, when we show up as Americans smiling and handing out gifts to them and their children, I have to believe that there are some of those folks out there that will be favorably influenced by our actions that we did yesterday. I cannot do anything about the hardened insurgents that want to die for Allah but my team can have some positive psychological impact on many others who are somewhat open to forming their own opinions about Americans, other than what some "biased" individuals are telling them in a mosque or over the radio or on television.

Either way, it was very gratifying to do such a thing and we will do many more activities at other locations while I am here.

The other day we went on a little sightseeing trip!

According to the history of the land, the Babylonian Empire was predominantly in what we now call Iraq. There are several key historical sites in Iraq such as the birthplace of Abraham (Ur), the city of Babylon, the city of Nineveh (ref: Jonah and the whale), etc. If there are Old Testament scholars out there, you will recall the story of the prophet Daniel, covered in the Book of Daniel.

According to the Bible, three Jewish friends of Daniel: Shadrach, Meschach and Aben-nego, refused to worship a statue that King Nebuchadnezzar had built for his people. Because they refused to worship they were thrown into a fiery furnace that had been heated "to seven times its normal heat." Not only were they unharmed, but they were accompanied by a fourth figure who "looks like a god" and was later identified by Nebuchadnezzar as an angel.

Why am I writing all of this? Well, we were able to visit the purported site of the fiery furnace. It is called the �Eternal Flame� by the locals and for some reason the fires still burn to this day.

So, being the adventurous guy that I am, I decided to get my picture taken while in this �fiery furnace�. Yes, it was hot - I actually walked through the pit being very careful not to step on the actual fires and not to breathe too much since it was so hot. And, by the way, the place really, really smelled of sulphur. But I am glad I got to see a biblical place.

The children here are absolutely beautiful. At times we will hand out beanie babies or candy or whatever we can get from the USA usually AFTER our meeting or site visit. I say after because mass crowds will appear from nowhere upon sighting of gifts from the Americans and it is definitely something you want to do when you are getting ready to leave some place as opposed to getting ready to start a meeting with someone....Aren't they cute!

...and here are a group of us, including me with hair....in Qatar getting ready to come to Iraq, a couple of weeks ago....Iraq has NOTHING on Qatar when it comes to heat. When we were getting ready to de-board the plane someone told us it was 138 degrees and when I stepped off the plane I believed them.

Here is a picture of me right after I got my head shaved. I have wanted to do this for some time....and it is very hot here so why not.

An ice cold Pepsi

Yesterday I was able to go "downtown" and meet/greet a local government official as well as I guess you could call him a state director of public works for the province where I work. I am finding a fairly predictable custom when one meets with these good people - usually an older man will come in shortly after we have shook hands (and I have attempted a few words/phrases in Kurdish which sounds, by the way, completely different from Arabic)....and bring out the "chai" for us which is basically tea with a lot of sugar. Then he will bring out bottled water, followed by ice cold Pepsi cans! ... the cold Pepsi is particularly appreciated (I pass on the chai) given the hot, dry temperatures we are in.

The weather is hovering around the low 100's and it really is the dry heat kind. I am very thankful that the weather here is not similar to the humid/wet heat of North Carolina - I don't do well in humid weather.

Looking forward to the rest of my guys coming in so we can officially start our deployment...in the meantime I continue to scope out all of the good deals, etc and basically pave the way for them to come in with the least amount of confusion and aggravation.

On another note, it seems that there are no shower curtains that come with the showers. Instead the bathrooms are built in such a way that any water runoff from the shower simply goes down a hole in the middle of the bathroom...I am okay with all of this as long as the water continues to look clean and comes out of the shower head at more than a trickle pace.

Where is my digital camera when I need it?

Yesterday visited a couple of camps where there are several hundred displaced persons/families that have no homes and are waiting to move into housing at some future point in time. The living conditions were pretty terrible but the people seemed (unbelievably) to be in fairly high spirits. It was a real eye opener to me viewing these areas and meeting with some of the officials in this area.

The Kurdish children are SO cute. I cannot tell you how many children's hands I shook or held; they all wanted to come up to the soldiers and touch them. We have received a number of care packages here; one such package was a bunch of beanie babies. So...I handed out my very first beanie baby to a beautiful little girl who was probably around 6 years old.

Went to church services this morning (Latter-Day Saints) which was very nice to be in a quiet, spiritual setting for about an hour.

I think I will have the opportunity to do some good things here.

My new mailing address

My new mailing address is as follows:

CPT C
B/451 CA BN
FOB Warrior
APOE AE 09338

If anyone is interested in sending me a care package what I need are those aerosol cans (compressed oxygen) that are used to clean out one's computer keyboard. I am sure they are at Best Buy/Circuit City/Staples. Any sent would be definitely used and much appreciated - they are used to spray out the sand/dust that accumulates in the weapon systems we have.

Planes, trains, and automobiles

The eagle has landed. After a few days in Qatar (wow, that is a furnace down there) and a few nights of sleeping, traveling, sleeping I am NEARLY at my final destination here in sunny Iraq. A few observations:

- all the lights going out inside the military transport plane as we were getting ready to land at an airfield in Iraq (it is part of the protocol they have hear to reduce the chances of planes getting shot at by insurgents - pretty smart really).

- the hugeness (is that a word?) of some of these US bases here in-country, complete with many of the modern necessities back home - even the chow halls are very good

- bottles, bottles everywhere: free bottled water and gatorade as far as the eye can see since we have been in the Middle East

- staying at locations that used to house some of the most wealthy/politically connected members of the Baathist Party back in the times of Saddam Hussein; for example I am visiting a recreation facility at one of the bases here (and using their internet facilities) which I think used to be one of Saddam's luxury hotels.

Overall, I am feeling great and looking forward to meeting some of the people I will be working with over the next several months.