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My colleague kindly invited me to spend the day with him and his family, and showed me some of the sights in and around Sule. We drove up the mountain to watch the sun set over the city.
This week, Facebook has been flooded with news of the UK’s heatwave, and the hot and sweaty plight of my friends and family (us Brits are unused to warm weather as a rule, and are not built to cope with it).
It was extremely tempting to mock them all with the fact that’s it’s 46 degrees here, and has been pretty consistently for the last month, so therefore 2 days of 30 degrees is hardly unbearable. (That’s 46 degree celcius for you non-metric people of the world – about 115 degrees if you’re working in farenheit)
However, then I remembered that it’s also Ramadan, and my amazing Kurdish and Arabic colleagues are not only going out into the 46 degree hear every day to provide much-needed support to people, but they also can’t eat or drink any water for 17 hours straight. And they come in to work every day and do it all over again with a smile on their faces.
Trust me when I tell you that, based on past experience of my own grumpiness factor when my blood sugar level drops too low, if I had to go out into 46 degree heat everyday and stand in the sun distributing emergency kits without a single drop of water or food for 17 hours, I’d either collapse or start World War 3.
So I can express nothing but awe and MASSIVE respect to my incredible colleagues for continuing to come into work everyday and help all those people in need of support.
Here’s to ALL my Muslim colleagues and friends working hard in humanitarian emergencies this Ramadan all over the world.
You are incredible.
Ramadan Kareem!
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A recent trip up to Erbil for a workshop gave me a chance to do a quick bit of sight-seeing… Weird and strange stuffed bird found in a shop in the bazaar. Is it just me, or does it look … Continue reading
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A few pictures of places I’ve been at work. Some sobering moments for sure. This is one of the many chicken sheds that people who have run away from ISIS are now living in. A shop front in a village that … Continue reading
Yet more backdated updates!
This one is from March/April, when we celebrated Nawrooz, a spring festival in Kurdistan. We went on a picnic, which is also one of the Kurdish people’s national pastimes. Seriously, the Kurds could picnic professionally. If it was an Olympic sport, they’d win gold every time.
March 2015
And now it’s time for something completely different…..
Picture yourself, in the not-too-distant future, or perhaps in an alternate universe, only slightly different from ours.
This is Katie.
She lives in a small flat in the east end of London, . She’s a single mum with 2 kids, Kai (7) and Tommy (3). She works as an office manager in a printing shop down the road, and volunteers at Tommy’s playschool twice a week. Things are going pretty well for Katie, and life is good.
Then the bombing started. Continue reading
Oh deary deary me. It’s been MONTHS since my last post! I keep drafting them and not getting around to finishing them or posting them, which is terrible – I’m such a bad blogger!
So, reviewing the many drafts that I never posted, and attempting to get them into some form that will be suitable for the public domain, I’ll start with this – a post I drafted back in Jan/Feb ish, when I stopped to reflect on last year’s triumphs and pitfalls…. (Shameful to be only just posting my New Year’s reflections in June though! 😛 )
Jan 2015
As I look back at the past year, I must say that 2014 was a year of big achievements for me, and some pretty major milestones too…
2014 was the year I was published in a book for the first time (Chasing Misery – buy your copy now and nudge me towards getting an actual royalty cheque….)
2014 was the year I appeared live on TV for the first time – hosting the show no less! A nerve-wracking but interesting experience. Continue reading
Oh dear me – I drafted this post long ago, and then got pretty busy at work and never posted it! Time to get back on the horse and get writing a few more – LOTS to say, so here’s this one from weeks ago…
So, on to a bit more about what I’m doing out here when I’m not posing in front of mountains or being called Wayne Rooney by the Peshmerga (no, I have not gotten over it and I don’t expect I’ll stop being offended for quite some time).
After arriving in Kurdistan, I moved south to visit some villages and IDP camps along the southern border areas between KRI and Iraq. The battle with ISIS is still very recent and in some places still happening not too far away, so rest assured we are following security procedures as best we can.
On a visit to a particular town we were shown around the site of a car bomb which exploded less than 2 months ago outside the Government buildings in the centre of town. This area is now heavily guarded and there are several checkpoints, blockades, and a general decor of concrete blast protectors and razor-wire. It creates quite the sense of war-time ambience.
I was actually shocked at the extent of the damage. I mean, a car bomb doesn’t sound great, but I’ve always assumed the radius of destruction would be relatively small. I was wrong. I guess it depends on just how much explosive you have in your car at the time too. Anyway this particular carbomb took out an entire building, parts of the neighbouring buildings, as well as an entire building across the street.
So, now that I’ve caught you up on my hectic last few weeks, and given you the idiots’ guide to Iraqi politics, it’s time to do what I do best – tell you hilariously mundane anecdotes about my experiences of living and working overseas.
(And for those of you who don’t care for such things, stop reading now – this is my blog and I shall fill it with as much random crap as I like. So there.)
To start with then, how about a little weirdly uplifting tale? Kurdistan is the first and only country in the world where I have seen people consistently using their hazard warning lights correctly. Interesting fact or boring and mundane verbal diarrhea? That’s for you, dear readers, to decide…
All of the roads here are covered in fairly large potholes, secret hidden speed cameras, and speed bumps, which for some reason they have decided not to paint or make in any way visible, even when you’re essentially on a motorway doing 100kmh. So the fact that all these kind, thoughtful drivers who stumble across a stealth bump in the road use their hazard lights to warn other drivers of a potential hazard is really quite nice I thought!
Kurdistan of course is completely beautiful, gorgeous mountains everywhere, and incredible scenery. It looks as though a giant hand has reached down from the sky and gone “Scrunch scrunch scrunch scrunch scrunch!!” with it. The people here are lovely and incredibly friendly and nice. Most Kurdish people I’ve met have been refugees overseas at some point or other, which is a slightly weird concept for me. For example one of our drivers spent 10 years as a refugee living in the Netherlands, UK and Sweden before returning home, so he enjoys chatting about Manchester and other places in the UK he has been. Another of our staff is a Kurdish Syrian refugee who now lives in Kurdistan with his wife. It’s strange to think that both of these staff might have been on the other side of that line – they are working with us to help other refugees and IDPs when they themselves might have so easily ended up in those camps or cow sheds too, had their circumstances been a bit different. Continue reading
Shall I fill you in on some of the security context here as well? Bear in mind that my general knowledge of global political and foreign affairs is extremely limited, so I’ll have to give you the dummies guide to the context here, as understood my me…. (Disclaimer – I can’t be held responsible if this turns out to be hopelessly simplistic or just plain wrong).
I’m now here in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). A lot of people just call it Kurdistan, but you have to be a bit careful with that, as “Kurdistan” is often used to refer to the entire Kurdish region, which encompasses parts of southern Turkey, Northern Syria and Northern Iraq and parts of Iran, so that could be confusing. For now I’ll just call it KRI. Technically I think it is still part of Iraq, but in reality it’s more of a semi-autonomous region (or something to that effect).
(And on a side note, I also have to be careful how I refer to ISIS. I was informed that it’s ok to say ISIS, ISIL or Da’esh, but I should avoid referring to them as the Islamic State, because that might add a legitimacy to them that could inadvertently put me on the wrong side!) Continue reading
A space to share adoption stories that aren't always happy
One photographer's journey...
Stuff I've seen, and places I've been...
Stuff I've seen, and places I've been...
Stuff I've seen, and places I've been...
Stuff I've seen, and places I've been...
Had we but world enough and time... 