"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?