In pictures

We have come to the end of our time away. After 3 months in India followed by 3 months in Iraqi Kurdistan we are back in Aotearoa, New Zealand. It has been a tremendous 6 months with many highlights, and lowlights, many times of laughter and of tears, being shown how to love and learning the hard way. God has shown us a lot about himself and ourselves and he has also brought us closer in our marriage along the journey. Praise Him!

As a summary of our time in Kurdistan we thought we'd put it up in pictures rather than more writing. We also learned a lot from the proverbs of the Kurdish people, so we have added some where we thought they were appropriate. Many of the proverbs are open to interpretation. ;-)

"A home without guests, a village without shepherds, both are hopeless indeed."

 

Traditional Kurdish clothes. "Many women, many words." :-P

Backstreet Boys... Kurdish style. "God has created us brothers but has given us separate purses."

"He who loves a woman is a nephew of the sun."

Lake Dukan. "The man is a river, the woman a lake."

Forever spoiled for Pomegranates after this. "Patience is bitter, but it bears sweet fruit."

Our colleague and friend Nazm and his wife.

"If skill could be gained by watching, every dog would become a butcher."

Our good friend and taxi driver, Chya. "A good companion shortens the longest road."

"Eat and drink with your friends but do not trade with them."

"An illness comes by the pound and goes away by the ounce."

Test day for the students. "Study from new books but from old teachers." :-P

Some of our colleagues. "To speak is to sow, to listen is to reap."

Kids who are often playing football at  the centre.

"Those away from the battlefields boast about their swords."

Arbat, Syrian Refugee Camp.

600,000 pairs of shoes to be distributed to those in need at the Syrian refugee camps.

Syrian refugees queuing for operation Chirstmas Child boxes. "What you give away, you keep."



The little one whose mother Karina walked alongside during birth. "One can never repay one's debt to one's mother."

Jeremy's top student, Germyan, and his family.

Amna Suraka- The Red Building:
"Do you know what this room represents?" asked our guide who arrived late, or maybe we were a little anxious to get moving since it was our last day in the country.
"No, but it's beautiful." Karina replied as we simultaneously decided that we would go at the guides pace. "Each piece of mirror represents a person who died in the Anfal under Saddam's regime." He responded. "There are a hundred and eighty two thousand pieces in total. And each light on the ceiling represents a village that was destroyed, there are four thousand five hundred of them."

So much beauty and yet so much trauma and pain. Mixed emotions were the feeling of the morning as we went from rooms with statues of the torture to rooms filled  with beautiful carpets and pictures, hearing the stories of rape and the stories of those who stood in courage against what was happening.

Ten Pin Chaos.
As our time came to an end in Kurdistan we went for a spot of bowling with some friends who were generous with their time and words of kindness towards us. It was destined to be a brilliant showdown- three Kurds against three Kiwis! It was probably a good thing that none of us kept a close eye on the scores, because we looked more like 4 teachers, a reporter and a doctor than bowlers. Big ups to Aram- who kept asking questions about the rules but somehow looked like a seasoned pro at knocking down pins; Samira- most competitive bowler (ever); Gulala- most improved player, and John who bowled well but also doubled as our big brother for the three months we were in Kurdistan.

From left to right: Aram, Gulala, John, Samira, Karina and Jeremy

Jezhin Korban
It was the day when God asked Abraham to take his son up to the top of a mountain and sacrifice him. I don't know which was more unthinkable- that God would ask such a deed, or that Abraham would obey it?! Which ever way we might try to answer that question, we have to go on- Abraham made all the preparations to sacrifice his beloved son. He went all the way to obey God, but in the end God exchanged Abraham's son for a ram.
Was it Isaac? Was it Ishamel? Each year, the land of the Kurds celebrates Jezhin Korban- the day they remember when God provided a ram for sacrifice. Their practice is to sacrifice an animal in remembrance of the story as well as to atone for the sins that they and their family have committed over the last year. If you are a goat or a sheep, it is not a good time of year for you. For the people of Kurdistan it is such an important festival, that they take the whole week off to celebrate with friends a family.

Our day started early as we had plans to visit all our colleagues who are locals of Chamchamal. One visit equals one glass of fizzy drink (or something else sweet) as well as chocolate and probably some over-sweetened chai. I could see a liver attack on the horizon.
Although they may not have had our personal health at the top of their priorities list, I was reminded of how hospitable the Kurdish people are. One of our colleagues was keen to show us around the house that he had just built. It was quite a palace considering his circumstances, but then we found out that he had been given reparation money because of his family members who had been murdered under Sadam's regime.
On arrival to another house we were greeted by a colleague who was covered in blood. "Must've been a big sheep" I thought until he explained that he had decided on a cow instead (a cow covers 7 people whereas a sheep covers only 1).

The reality of what we saw and the Biblical narrative is pretty different though. Jesus Christ took our sins before we had any idea what was happening! Coming at it from this narrative, he did it motivated by a heart full of love for us. He cancelled our sins so that the sheep don't have to. In fact Christ dying was followed by something just as miraculous as his love- death isn't as strong as him, so it couldn't keep him dead. No more sheep needed because he overcame being "dead and buried". No wonder he is referred to as "the Lamb of God". 

Two friends

Meet S.

S is an average girl in Shorsh village. She lives with her parents and two brothers. She spends her days at home with her mother or playing on the street with her brothers. Sometimes they watch their dad at work with the sheep in the fields near the village.

She will go to school in a few years time and learn to read and write, she will join in the local community centre's children's holiday programmes, and eventually she will become a Kurdish teenager. Like many of the teenage girls in Shorsh she might get married to an older man and start having his babies. Or, with the progress that Kurdistan is seeing during these years of peace, she might get to go to University and study for a career, maybe teaching or nursing. Her school grades will determine her career subject, and maybe if she is fortunate her family will allow her to work after her training before she gets married.

She will start having children as soon as she is married, and will probably have 3 or 4 before she is considered to have fulfilled her duty to her family. Her journey won't be easy, what with the FGM* she had done as a child and the high rate of miscarriages in her community. She will get basic medical needs met at the local community centre's health clinic. In the evenings when she cooks and puts the children to bed, there's a good chance he'll be watching television while drinking tea or he might be down at the local football cage with his mates.

She will enjoy sitting out in her concrete yard drinking tea with the other women in her extended family. She'll make delicious flavoured rice and stuffed vine leaves and a huge range of other side dishes for the various festivals her country celebrates. She will learn to sew in the community centre where her mother finally learned to read Kurdish. On holidays she'll take her family outdoors for picnics and watch her husband barbeque kebabs while she and her friends line up and dance in their best traditional dresses. And they will rejoice in being Kurds.

Meet B.

B lives at home with his parents, 4 sisters and 1 brother. His father works as a guard at the local community centre and his mother looks after the house. During the day he goes to the local school, and in the evenings before dinner he plays with his friends.

He gets grazes on his knees when he plays out on the streets but he gets cream for them at the community centre's health clinic when he needs it. When he's not watching his daddy work, he's at the barbers watching his daddy and uncles trim their beards. In a couple of years he wants to join the computer classes with the other boys at the community centre. Once he finishes school he might go to university and train for a career, maybe engineering or business.

When he's older he will join a football team and play football at nights after dinner in the local football cage. When Barcelona plays Real Madrid each year, he'll be cheering as loudly as he can in front of his mate's TV. When he's on holiday from university he'll take the English classes at the local community centre so that he can get a better job later on.

He will look after his wife and make sure their family is secure amongst the village politics. When he's got extra time, he'll find extra work gardening or loading trucks at the local community centre. He will work hard to keep his family and aging parents financially secure despite political changes and regional uncertainty.

When he grows to be an old man he'll sip tea down the road at the tea stall and tell stories with his mates. He'll watch the trees in the community centre's orchard grow and produce fruit, and tell his grandchildren off for picking unripe pomegranates. He will rejoice in living a different life to his father and grandfather, a life of peace and security.

*FGM information can be found here

"Test everything, and hold on to the good"

Earlier on in our trip–back in India–a highlight was going to the barber's. But Kurdistan is a cut above ;) The local barber's in Shorsh is not only the place to get your hair cut, but also the place to socialise, get out of the hot sun, and catch the football highlights on the tele.

 

But the thing that I really liked about that place was the community feel. Twice while we were in their, people came in off the street for a quick trim. The first guy walked in, shook everyone's hands, made sure that each person's family was well before then picking up the spare clippers-machine and, standing in front of the mirror, proceeded to shave off his stubble himself. The second man did a very similar thing, but he decided to go for the scissors instead in order to shape his classic Kurdish moustache. On both occasions the men said a polite “spaz kaka” (thank you sir) and walked out of the barber's, without any exchange of money taking place.

Another side note about hair- to all the girls (and guys) who have had hair removed using thread to pull it out: I admire your courage and long suffering. It was the most painful cotton experience that I've ever had. As they say “beauty is pain”, so I can now say I have the most beautiful facial hair this side of Beckham. 

As we mentioned in our last blog, the local football pitches/courts are unused until after sunset due to the heat of the day. After dark, however, the locals move from the barber's shop (and probably more likely, their homes) to the nearest pitch to watch the matches happen. Jeremy has been playing a couple of times each week which has been a real highlight for him. Although he doesn't match the likes of the world's professional footballers, he is making his wife proud by managing to get a sort of celebrity status in the neighbourhood. On the pitch he is given the ball by the opposition when there is a dispute over which team's throw-in it should be. Off the pitch there are kids he hasn't seen before who “greet him in the street and the marketplaces.” Let's hope that he doesn't go from celebrity status to pharisee status!

 

Last weekend we went out for a day of fun with some friends. We asked to have a very Kurdish afternoon. We started with a very Kurdish idea–we went to the market, got material, followed by the tailors for fitting our traditional Kurdish outfits. After that, an Italian restaurant for a lovely dinner, and then onto Chavi Land–the local equivalent of Disneyland. We had a choice time watching fountains dance to music, eating ice cream, and debating theology.

Although our Kurdish afternoon didn't initially seem to be very “Kurdish”, I had to stop and think about what I was hoping for in a Kurdish day. One thing that struck me was how generous our friends and the locals generally are. Our friend Samira insisted on paying for Karina's dress fabric, not to mention that our other friend Aram insisted on paying for our meal, as well as the whopping 1000 Dinar (NZ$1) entry fee to get into Chavi Land. On top of that, Jeremy's haircut money was rejected by the barber, and taxi drivers here always try to do the same for the fare.

We want to take the same advice that the Apostle Paul gave to the Thessalonians: “Test everything, and hold on to the good.” The adventurous generosity and hospitality that we've experienced here are good that we want to make a part of our own lives more and more!

 

A few more pictures of enjoying life in Kurdistan:

 

A rifle with your carpet, madam?

A poster advertising stomach-stapling in a little hospital in the suburbs

Anyone else have a strange feeling about the way this cake is decorated? I think it's date jam in springtime...

Jeremy with his favourite drink - Mast-aw, natural unsweetened yoghurt with water and salt

In the depths of the Suli bazaar, in a tiny antique shop, we found a little bit of home!!

Turtles can Fly.

War is such a devastating thing. In Kurdistan you see the effects of it all over the place. Our colleague's father was killed during the attempted genocide of the Iraqi Kurds back in the early 90s, and somewhere during that time his mother disappeared too. He is one of so many!

There's a movie which was filmed in 2004 which is set at the beginning of the war in Iraq back in 2003. The title is "Turtles can Fly"-- it happens to be the inspiration for the name of our blog "Kiwis can Fly". It's about a village with a population which is mostly children and youths and their attempts at living a “normal” life in the place where they find themselves. I have to confess, it isn't a fun watch for the most part, but it does shed some light on the reality of this area just a few short years ago.

Here's the trailer if you fancy a film away from the average hollywood hits:

Another nearby war has been making an impact in Kurdistan recently. In a lot of ways it doesn't differ very much from what Iraq has been through in the past 30 years. We have spent some time, since arriving here, at one of the refugee camps nearby. Karina was so impacted by the place that she decided to write to the New Zealand Medical Journal. Guess what? They accept it! You can read it here for a pretty good description of life in a refugee camp:

It was like a hot, sleepy afternoon at a busy Coromandel camping ground in mid-February. It's not every day you get to experience a rapidly constructed refugee camp. House Officer Karina Cooper, currently volunteering with a primary health care clinic in Iraqi Kurdistan, explores a Syrian refugee camp and health clinic while working alongside Samaritan's Purse International Relief.

My husband and I had not been living in Kurdistan for two whole weeks before Kurdistan opened its borders and thousands of Kurdish refugees from Syria began to pour in. With the war in Syria and the violence and trauma the people there have been facing, they were becoming desperate to find safety and so are fleeing into various countries around Syria: Turkey, Lebanon and particularly for the Kurdish refugees, Iraqi Kurdistan. Kurdistan has had its share of unsettled times, trauma and refugee camps, but now as an autonomously governed region within Iraq it is experiencing relative stability. In fact, Kurdistan is so familiar with refugee camps it is becoming much better at logistics and coordination, all things considered.

Once the refugees cross the Syrian-Iraqi border, government buses pick them up and coordinate their relocation to a few of the various refugee camps in Kurdistan, one of which is in Arbat, about half an hours drive east from the city of Sulaimaniyah. The refugees arrive at their new home, often impressively within a day of their crossing the border. With this latest tsunami of refugees the Arbat refugee camp has sped up its construction, erecting more tents, setting up hygeine facilities and connecting electricity throughout the camp. Of the 200,000 thousand refugees (and rapidly increasing) that have crossed the border, there are now 4,500 thousand Syrian refugees for whom the Arbat refugee camp is now a temporary home. Across the dusty, treeless flattened dirt there are rows and rows of white tents: each family unit stays in a large one-room tent sleeping around 8-10 people, with an air cooler set up at one end in order to ease the 40 degree heat. Alongside the rows of tents are rows of port-a-loos and shower cubicles, each with electricity and an individual water supply, approximately one toilet and shower per four tents. Families obtain water from a large water bladder in the centre of the camp, collecting water from a communal tap with large plastic containers and anything else that might carry water. Wheelie bins and rubbish dumpsters and the occasional rubbish truck indicated a functioning rubbish disposal system.

Samaritan's Purse International Relief is one of the various NGOs that has steeled itself for the latest refugee influx and been a part of the first response wave. I was invited to join the team in visiting the camp and taking much-needed commodities with the possibility of needing to help with distribution. We arrived with several tonnes of rice, sugar, lentils, chickpeas, milk powder, oil, and a whole truckful of disposable nappies. The relief team had coordinated with the Ministry of Health to provide those items that were most needed, and met with the Arbat officials on our arrival to the camp.

What we were told was encouraging. Our white faces would not be needed to help with the distribution of the commodities as the distribution system at the camp was already set up and functioning well from the large concrete storage depot in the middle of the camp. In fact, current needs were being met well enough that our supplies were able to be stored rather than immediately distributed.

Our team took a brief wander through the camp, greeting refugees, listening to their stories and hearing their needs. Communication was mainly in Arabic and the Syrian dialect of Kurdish, often supplemented with gestures. Two elderly women invited us to sit with them in the shade of their tent, they told us how many children they had, who had come out of Syria and how many sons had stayed. We listened to them speak of family members who had been lost or killed. We smiled together about our language barrier, admired nearby grandchildren and laughed about which of the team were married and which women were still eligible. Families very readily shared that they were being well cared for, and that all their immediate needs were being met. They felt safe, secure, and felt the blessing of being in a camp that seemed to be so well organised. Their only need now was additional clothing. Local Kurds in our relief team who had had personal experience in refugee camps in years gone by were impressed and amazed at the facilities and provisions, and declared that these refugees were blessed.

I made a beeline for the Red Cross/Red Crescent health clinic, the only medical facility in the camp. One long pre-fab unit divided into a pharmacy and the doctors office, with two pharmacists, and one doctor. While speaking with the doctor I was astounded: in his 6 square metre office, he saw roughly 100 patients each day, and was on call for 24 hours for 3 days straight. There were 4 rotating doctors that shared work at the Arbat camp, followed by work at government clinic roughly 35 km further east in Halabja. The doctor I spoke to had had 7 months experience as a doctor, worked alone and unsupervised with emergency support from a more experienced doctor in the Arbat town centre or the hospital services in Sulaimaniyah should patients require more treatment than the basic clinic could offer. The facilities in the clinic were meager: an examination couch, desk, stethoscope, thermometer, gloves and small slips of paper for each patient. At nights he slept on his examination couch in the corner of the office.

Mostly the patients he saw were children, patients with fevers, sore throats, chest infections and a considerable amount of diarrhoea despite the provision of hygeine facilities. The main problems were the lack of doctors to help share the load, and a lack of certain medications in the pharmacy. My visit was shortly interrupted by a father bringing his infant for a check, and a mother with her baby shortly after. Privacy and confidentiality was non-existent. The patient sits at the desk and speaks with the doctor, and the waiting patients stand behind the desk, squeezed into the air-conditioned office to wait their turn.

Overall our team was impressed and encouraged by what we had seen. The facilities had been well set up and further accomodation was being constructed for more refugees expected to arrive in the coming weeks. While we have heard a lot about tensions between the coordination of various efforts, what we saw was proof that, for now, immediate needs are being met. Rather than meet immediate needs as we thought might have been necessary, our team was able to turn our attention to upcoming needs: the local Kurdish women at the community project's sewing centre would be able to provide women's clothing and Samaritan's Purse International Relief 'Operation Christmas Child' boxes are available to give to each child in the camp at our visit next week. Having initially felt like white-faced, camera-flashing tourists, our team began to be more encouraged by the needs that were already being met, and the needs that we will be able to meet in future weeks.

The Samaritan's Purse International Relief team is committed to the Syrian refugee relief effort in Kurdistan for at least the next month, with further extensions should many more refugees cross the border. Coordination with government agencies ensures that we meet relevant needs, fill in gaps and contribute to the combined efforts of various other local and international organisations such as the UNHCR and Unicef.

For more information on Samaritan's Purse International Relief visit http://www.samaritanspurse.org.
For more information on the Syrian refugee crisis and a regional overview, visit http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php.

The refugee children before receiving Operation Christmas Child boxes (in October)

Jeremy with two of the refugee men- being adult males made it easy to make them guards- notice the machine gun.

Probably the most famous Kurdish proverb ever is "The Kurds have no friends but the Mountains." While we are here, we are trying to convince them otherwise.

One Sturdy House is Worth a Hundred in Ruins.

Choni bashi from Iraqi Kurdistan!

Almost a month has come and gone since walking into the 42 degree heat of the Middle East. Acclimatised and finding a moment to breathe, we have put together a quick post of general life.

4 days a week we call the small town of Chamchamal home. We live and work at a community centre run by Samaritan's Purse International Relief. Apart from us there are two couples, and a single woman, Christy, who we share our house with. We are all more or less the same age, except for lil Ezra, our team leaders' baby.



Shorsh, Chamchamal from the water tower at the centre. It's not Paris, but it's not bad.

Karina spends her mornings in the clinic from 9-11.30/12.30. She works alongside two other Kurdish doctors (called GPs here because they aren't specialists yet) and is mainly focussing on gynaecological complaints and pregnancy. Doctoring here doesn't really put any emphasis on the inter-personal aspect of the job so a lot of the patients are distrustful of any 'system' and expect immediate results. She's beginning to start setting up guidelines for clinical practice at the clinic, particularly for pregnancy care and antibiotic use.

Jeremy has English classes with university students mid-morning, and then has a elementary class and a 'pre-zero' class (whatever that means?). Two of his students are on staff here. They have less English than his Kurdish so it's a game of charades for the most part.

We spend lunches with the international and Kurdish staff members together at the Centre. The culturally appropriate seating at lunch is women at one end of the table, couples next to each other in the middle, and men at the other end.

Two nights a week the seven of us internationals get together for a combined dinner. We take advantage of the moment to share the good and the bad and pray together.  Our apartment in Chamchamal is much more comfortable than expected, with 5 bedrooms and 7 bathrooms!

But it isn't all bedrooms and bathrooms in Chamchamal -- this town has the reputation for guns. Not bad considering the country we are in! A few nights back we went for a walk to check out the neighbourhood. I was advised to take a decent stick to warn off any stray dogs. Shortly after setting out, one of the off-duty security guards from the centre spotted us and invited us into his house for chai. After sitting with his family for a bit we decided it was getting late and it was time to go. The guard offered to walk us home because it was late. He then proceeded to take out a machine gun from under the cushions we had been sitting on. He and I walked home with linked arms. He with his semi-automatic Kalashnikov in one hand, and myself still wielding my stick!

The Centre in Chamchamal

When we aren't in Chamchamal,  (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) we're in Suli for rest and Kurdish study. Taxis are the way to travel at a whopping $4 each for the 45 minute journey. While in Suli we house sit for a young family, in a lovely two-bedroom place with a garden and pot plants and a grapevine-covered pergola. The toilet here is a squat toilet so Jeremy tries to get his timing right to avoid it at all costs.

Home- Suli style.

The Bazaar has kept us busy. If you want it fresh, cheap, or tailor made the Bazaar has got it. Between that and Burger Fuel we don't have much to complain about. As mystery shoppers for Burger Fuel, we have plenty to report when we arrive home. 

East meets West in the Suli bazaar

The best marketing ploy ever: Dye your baby chicks different colours and put them in the Bazaar. How could you not want one?