Kurdish History with Erik

Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Episode 62 We're back with Erik! And he shares a more thorough walk through the old history of the Kurds. </p> Learn more over at <a href="http://www.ServantGroup.org">www.ServantGroup.org</a> and email Hannah with questions at hannah@servantgroup.org.</p> Here's a Rough Transcript! Hannah: Welcome to between Iraq and a Hard Place. I'm Hannah.</p> Colleen: And I'm Colleen. And we're here to tell you a little bit about life in Iraq. Woo hoo!</p> Hannah: Hey, this is Hannah. I just wanted to put in a little disclaimer about this episode. The audio is not awesome. That's what happens when you try to record internationally over Zoom. So don't get distracted by the people in the background. Just pay attention to the history. All right, here we go. Welcome back to Erik. We did two podcasts with him just talking about his life in Iraq, and now we're going to talk about Kurdish history. It's just me and Erik today. Colleen's taking a vacation, so I hope I hope you're ready, Erik.</p> Erik: Yes, I am.</p> Hannah: Okay. Yeah. So we're going to talk about the history of the Kurds starting at the very well, I guess, the very beginning. What's the what's the earliest that we know about Kurds?</p> Erik: Oh, I would love to have a precise answer for that. I think if, uh, to play it safe, I'm going to say very, very early. Okay. I think, uh, the Kurds like a lot of different groups that lived in these mountainous areas around Turkey, Iran, andSyria, they pop up a lot in historical records and sometimes, uh, play major roles in big, big world historical events, even though generally they're on the sidelines to a lot of those events. So, we see what some Kurdish nationalist historians would say that the Medes would be the early Kurds. So. Okay. So some would trace Kurdish lineage all the way back to the Medes. From what I've read, it's hard to prove that there's a self-conscious entity called Kurds moving through time without changing, without intermarrying, without shifting with other groups of people around those areas. But they do have a case for it as far as there's always been people living in these hard to reach regions that have been on the peripheries of empires that have resisted being kind of subsumed within bigger, stronger empires. They've always kind of sought their own independence and autonomy. So we have the history books and records go very, very early that there there have been groups of people living in these areas very much like the Kurds. And so they they'd be called by all kinds of different names, but sometimes they're called by their occupations. So, the Kurds had a long history of being, being shepherds. So sometimes they're called shepherds, sometimes they're called variations of different words sounding like Kurd, and at other times they're called by their language, which that happens later. But, there's all these terms floating around that have kind of attached to Kurdish. They've also been called very pejoratively by people that don't appreciate them. They've been called brigands and bandits. And it gives you an idea of the kind of reputation that these independent groups living in the mountains had for disrupting trade, disrupting routes of merchants and other groups that would try to get safely from point A to point B and just end up not getting there safely. Yeah. Because of these groups that would take advantage of their vulnerability. So there's always been groups there, and they've always been somewhat independent, played different sides on the kind of politics and history. And the Kurds would have been one of those. Actually, do you have any questions?</p> Hannah: Well, I do want to clarify. When you talk about the Medes, that would be probably a reference point for most people would be like the Medes and the Persians from the Book of Daniel. Right?</p> Hannah: Yes. The medo-Persian Empire, the Medes were early…built somewhat of an empire. And then the kind of merged or mixed, and then the Persians ended up being supreme over time. But there's a connection to some of those leaders. I need to look up which ones would have been part Mede. And so, I think if you read the history books and you go to ancient histories of these areas, whether it's in Syria, Turkey, Iran, or groups like the Elamites that are also mentioned in all over history, they're groups that basically reside in the mountains and then kind of descend upon the cities and sometimes destroy them and then go back to their ways. I should have said they've also been called nomads because they don't…haven't stayed put. You know, their are ways of life require, you know, grazing in different places with their animal. And so there have been sedentary Kurds, but there have also been the strong tribes would be the ones that are not tied to the land, but rely on others to work the land while they go on raids or other occupations. So, they pop up a lot. Yeah, yeah.</p> Hannah: I imagine that their nomadic nature really is part of the reason it's hard to pin down. Like who are the Kurds and who are not?</p> Erik: I think so, I think so. One book…I think it's called A People Without a State that was written by, I think, Michael Epel, which I really liked. He made a generalization talking about how important geography is to to understanding the history of different peoples. And so he would say, just as, say, the Arab peoples, uh, connected to the deserts and kind of ways of life that revolved around that kind of geography. You could say the mountains have played that same role for the Kurds or the Mediterranean, right? For the Greek world. So the mountains have played just very large in basically the way of life and their imagination of who they are and what they represent and what they are. So and you'll see that reflected in their writing, their songs and even their…even the way they speak today. The mountains loom large. So, I'm convinced that they have a long, long, long story, that's existed there for quite a while. Not always expressed in political terms, but they've always been there.</p> Hannah: Colleen has a theory that she wants me to ask you about since she's not here…and get your opinion on. She thinks that the Kurds could be one of the lost tribes of Israel. Have you heard that? Do you have an opinion?</p> Erik: You know, just off the top of my head, I'd have to look at what the merits are to the argument. I couldn't say. What we do know is that Kurds and Jewish people have lived side by side. And then there's been a number of intermarriages between the two groups. And a lot of Kurds would say that their great grandmothers were Jewish in different places, and you can find synagogues and across Kurdistan. So there's definitely a connection, and there's no doubt in my mind that there's been some, you know, intermarriages and stuff like that. But whether that makes them one of the lost tribes, I'm a little more skeptical of. But I haven't studied any of it. In general, I think that wherever the British people have been or Kurdish tribes have kind of been dominant. I think whatever the Jewish or Armenian minorities would have been a few levels down right from them. And you read…There's a I think there's a wonderful book called My Father's Paradise. In that book, I think they referenced that a lot of the Jewish people living in Kurdistan they would actually, this is fascinating, they would actually be the kind of merchants that would go through and sell things to the different villages as they did that. So they had, you know, networks of families in different places and moved merchandise from place to place. But because of that, a number of these Jewish merchants were also known as the storytellers because they would go from place to place and tell stories, and these house stories would spread. And so the Kurdish culture just loves stories and storytelling. So there's definitely a fascinating interplay between the two and even a certain kinship that at least expressed and if not literally just, in almost spiritual or cultural terms that they'll talk affectionately about each other.</p> Erik: So, so you'll find the Medes playing roles in various biblical events, in the destruction of Babylon, the day of Pentecost, and in a number of other places. So fascinating, certainly. I think we more clearly see Kurds emerging from the fog. I think like during the Middle Ages, the Crusades, stuff like that, you start seeing there being kind of powerful families that arise. So you have the tribal level, but then when one tribe becomes really strong or one family becomes really strong and is able to kind of influence and by your loyalty or force, right? A whole bunch of other tribes, then then you get kind of what would eventually become like an Emirates or a Princedom where you have a now a kind of political entity that's not necessarily ethnic or national, I think, but definitely a political entity based on a family that has a lot of power. And so a famous example would be the Ayyubid dynasty, which was the Saladin's, um, family. So when Saladin, um, played his role in the Crusades across Egypt and Syria, um, what he left was the Ayyubid dynasty, a strong, strong dynasty of rulers that were Kurdish. Uh, and so these, these kind of and so the Kurds are just like a bunch of other groups that might have, um, these kind of emirate like or Princedom. Right? They emerge, but then they're subsumed or crushed within larger empires. So you start seeing those come up all around the Crusades time. And it's kind of chaotic because there's there's just a lot of different groups during that time. And so that then if I can just skip ahead because okay, so, so there's all these, all these groups, all these tribes living in this geographic, these geographical areas. And what you have are the rise of the Turks and also the Persians. And there's a religious divide between both empires. And so you'd get all those smaller entities would have to kind of pick sides or side with the one that's closest and strongest and able to compel them the most. The Kurds end up being in between both of these empires, um, that are fighting. But, uh, diplomatically, you have different Kurds who've always played a role in these bigger administrations. Right. And so there was a very, I believe his name is Idris Bitlisi. But like, okay, don't quote me on that. I may need to I may need to fact check myself later. I don't have my notes.</p> Hannah: If you're wrong, we'll put a correction in the show notes.</p> Erik: Yes.</p> Hannah: You got that.</p> Erik: So so he. Between this conflict, he rose in the Ottoman courts. He was a he was this figure that was able to kind of tour Kurdistan and convince a lot of tribal leaders on the peripheries of the Ottoman Empire that could have gone either way. He convinced a lot of families to side with the Ottomans. Part of that sort of religious reason, because they were Sunni. Right. And so there. And but also because the Ottomans were promising more decentralized arrangement with these tribes on the areas. And I think, I think at the time the Persians were a bit more, a bit more. Um, so anyway, in the 16th century, there was a big battle that was fought called battle Calderon. And that set the boundary between Persia, Turkey, and there were basically Kurdish families on both sides of that. And so some, some were more in the Persian area and many, many others were on the, um, Turkish side. And so. Yes?</p> Hannah: Is that boundary where modern day Iraq would be now, or more towards Turkey or more towards it's Iran?</p> Erik: Um, if you go north, I think Iraq is maybe shifted, but if you go north, it's roughly what the boundary is between Turkey and Iran.</p> Hannah: Okay.</p> Hannah: So the number one way that we get new people in Iraq is by other people telling them about Iraq. So maybe you're not interested in going, but maybe you know someone who is. Tell them about this podcast. Tell them about Servant Group International. It would be a big help.</p> Erik: So anyway and so that starts this period, this kind of more modern period for the Kurds where they are, you know, there always seem to always be divided between various spheres of influence, whether it's nation states and empires or other things. There's never a full unity. But there are common ways of life. And so, uh, the arrangement is that there are… Oh. And then and then, of course, Turkey and Persia kind of compete over, uh, Iraq, uh, modern day Iraq and, um, Baghdad and uh, other cities in Iraq. So, so the arrangement between the Ottoman and the Kurds is decentralized. This is very, very common between patron client relationship is that the patron grants you certain privileges and you grant them, you give back loyalty. Uh, the patron might arm your tribe and with with the understanding that you will pay your taxes and fight for them when the time comes against their rivals. So this really works for the Kurds because they they can essentially ignore the central government most of the time and occasionally pay taxes or… it's a decentralized arrangement in which they're free to develop. Right?</p> Hannah: Right.</p> Erik: Okay. So this is where I think the I, the Kurdish political kind of expression starts to get more pronounced because they then have space to kind of fight amongst themselves, but then have different strong, uh, strong families arise that then arise to a higher level than tribe like a confederation of tribes, which is one family or one leader commanding many, many tribes underneath them. Right? And that functions on a decentralized level, or the empire. Eventually, these are called emirates. And these emirates get really, really strong and to the point where they can even fend off Ottoman armies that come to try to make them submit. There's a wonderful scholar named Martin Van Bruinessen, and he's written lots of articles that are for free on academia.edu. He's just one of the most fascinating writers on the Kurds, and he writes really cool stuff about this period of time and the complicated social arrangements during this time. Anyway, so they get so strong that eventually the imperial governments decide, we can't have this anymore. And so they're just, we can't control them. We need to crush them. They sent armies in. And this coincides with the time that the Ottomans realized they've got to get their act together and centralize their empire and modernize it, or else they're going to be left behind by Europe. And so they actually go and they crush these emirates, and the emirates become fragmented and they it devolves back to kind of like the lowest level of organization of tribe, which is smaller, smaller tribes with no mediating authority to kind of adjudicate their disputes. So, they become kind of anarchic again. And there's a lot of bloodshed and a lot of fighting. And so unfortunately, they created a bigger problem by having no authority or no law. But the emirate period is really important for the Kurds because this is where like these are almost semi states in which the ruler has all this wealth and resources and is able to patronize the arts, Kurdish language. And so you have a lot of these kind of writings that have been written, stories that are important for the Kurds. Those are written during this time. A lot of poetry. And so a lot of that kind of national identity that you see now was planted during that period because there was, you know, relative prosperity and an ability to create culture during during that time.</p> Hannah: Because it's really the first time that they're, that they co-identify as like, hey, our tribe is not the only tribe that has these, these cultural things. There are all these other people too. And we can get along and we can get together.</p> Erik: That's a good point, actually. Yeah. I think that their, um, one of their poets laments that everybody encroaches on us and divides us. And, and so there is I think there is an understanding, although it's not again, it's not a unified political understanding of who they are. But there's a linguistic, more connections, uh, are made. So even when these emirates are crushed, those cultural products, creations endure. And people have kind of rescued those from the past and use them to tell the Kurdish story in our times. So that's that's pretty cool. There's um, I'll just say this again, if people like reading, um, there's a famous Ottoman traveler named Evliya Çelebi, and he traveled through the Ottoman Empire during this period of time. And he I mean, it's incredible because sometimes he's just fleeing for his life because someone in the emirates wants to kill him or the his patron decided they didn't like him anymore. But it's super entertaining and he just it's a good historical record of a traveler who went to these places and lived under the the permission of the rulers of different places and told just great stories. And some of some of the stories are a bit fantastic and hard to believe, but it's something else.</p> Erik: So that period of time, um, I think the Kurds, if we went way back, we'd go before Islam for the Kurds. But. Okay. Um, the Kurds eventually did become Islamic over time under these different empires. And so, so there's always been a level of there had been a level of loyalty between Kurdish tribes and the imperial center of the Ottoman Empire, um, because of religion. And so that's always been there's always been a you have the ethnic identity, but then you also have the empire, which is also united to a strong religious identity. So some of those kind of work against each other sometimes. And so at least politically. So if I were to go to the next period of time, okay, eventually there does again kind of build up some, some form of law and, uh, tract after this period of chaos. Different important. Religious families are able to eventually mediate conflict, establish law again, and become kind of influential and able to rule the Kurdish areas again. And so after this is 19th century, early 20th century, you have big groups again, and instead the Ottomans and others, instead of trying to kind of just crush Kurds, they would instead just try to pick the winners, decide will pay you to um, and will arm you. And then they those groups would then become the strongest out of the rest of the groups and be hopefully be loyal to the Ottomans. So that was a new kind of imperial policy of trying to modernize the empire. Also take take the kids of the ruling Kurdish families and have them grow up in Istanbul and learn the ways of the empire and stuff like that. So I think then because of those, those sons and daughters of these important families getting educated in the Imperial Center and reading all of what's going on with, the different nationalisms in Europe and they begin to foment their, their own sort of Kurdish nationalist. Yeah.</p> Hannah: So it kind of backfires.</p> Erik: Yeah. And try to promote that with, with their own families and you know, some, some tribal leaders kind of are like, that's interesting. I'll use some of this for myself, but they're not entirely nationalists. It's this kind of what they call proto nationalism. Um, World War One happens, and, um, the Kurds are not able to capitalize on the moment to get their own nation. Um, instead, they're.</p> Hannah: The Ottoman Empire kind of falls apart at that point.</p> Erik: Yes. Fell apart and, um, and the pieces were kind of a lot of people were trying to pick up the pieces. Yeah. So you you have Greeks, Turks, um, the French and English carving out spheres of the Middle East. And, and so the Kurds were not able to… they they weren't able to get the same kind of support, um, for their nation.</p> Hannah: Advocate for, hey, we are a solid group. We should have our own space.</p> Erik: Yeah.</p> Hannah: As the Europeans kind of come in.</p> Erik: Right. And then the there were a few treaties that seemed to suggest that they could. But then I think the real world kind of power politics came in when the Turks were able to reassert, uh, control over, over parts of Turkey. And that eventually meant that the Kurds were not able to really unite. It was it's it's a big mess. Soo anyway, once again, I guess in the 20th century, uh, you find there being a reality of Kurdish existence, a Kurdish ways of life and with a historical basis for their being on the land that they're on. But you also have the fact that they're kind of folded into now a lot of other spheres, nation states. And, you know, unfortunately, like an empire isn't just necessarily defined on ethnic lines, but like a nation state is. So they're very much losers in each of the, uh, nation states that they're put under. And they, they, they begin to be, um, suppressed on, on a language, on culture, on, ethnic grounds, whether it's Arabization policies and in Iraq or, Turkish politics in Turkey, uh, or Persian politics. So the 20th century was a really hard century for Kurds everywhere. Yeah.</p> Hannah: Can you talk a little bit about Arabization and what that means?</p> Erik: Um, well, I think in the context of Iraq now, I think there's there's a more complicated story to the Kurdish story in Iraq than just Arabization, because there was a number of interplay between the central government and the Kurdish tribes. And that wasn't always, um, at odds. But Iraqi politics gets more nationalistic and and goes away from monarchy towards like republic. And there were… it was kind of a tumultuous. And in 1958 there had been a lot of coup attempts by military officers that had been kind of schooled within Syria and other places in ideas of Arab nationalism. Right. And so, so any weakness on the part of the monarchy towards minority groups would really upset these nationalist officers that wanted a strong Arab state. And so there had been a lot of coup attempts. And in 1958 one succeeded and the royal family was was executed time forward there, there was only just a lot of assassinations and coup attempts successively by by successive leaders. But so the kind of that kind of politics ended up, um, much more aggressive against, you know, Kurdish separatism or Kurdish desires to be autonomous or Kurds just not wanting to play play ball with central governments. So I think Arabization this comes later during, I believe during the, the Baath Party. Um, there are certain valuable areas of Iraq like Kirkuk in which, um, that had Kurdish majority areas. And so there would be persecution of Kurds making their life difficult, or forcing families out of some of these cities and then bringing resettling Arab families from the south into cities like Kirkuk. So what you'd see is the goal over time was to make a city… shift its demographic balance from from Kurdish to Arab. And so that's super messy.</p> Hannah: Not so much like we want the Kurds to act and behave and co-marry with the Arabs so that eventually they go away. But we don't want the Kurds to be in the city, so we're going to send them somewhere else. So we have control of this area?</p> Erik: Yes. I don't think it's, uh, trying to dilute, like dilute or make, um, you know, make everyone intermarry. It's more thinking in terms of group and one group that policy pursued during the Saddam years. Um, but I think it was I think it was also practiced in other, other places with a strong Arab nationalism like Syria. I think the Kurds are are survivors of history. Um, they've somehow, um, clung on and been able to… it's incredible that they not disappeared. Um, right. And they have lived through some of the toughest realities of the 20th century. When it comes to warfare, towards how groups adjust to nation states and state building. Uh, they got they got some of the hardest parts of that. Um, I know we haven't talked about the some of the major things in the latter half of the 20th century. We go to the Kurds, but, um, yeah.</p> Hannah: Yeah, I think we have some old episodes where we talked to Dave about Iraq history, where he goes into some of that more modern Kurdish history.</p> Erik: Yeah, yeah.</p> Hannah: From Saddam on, at least. It's always a pleasure to get to talk to you.</p> Erik: Uh, one other thing. I, you know, I mentioned the Emirate period and then later period and, uh, spoke pretty generally. But I think one of the things I really just find a lot of joy in is that when you're dealing with a group as unique and independent as, uh, Kurdish tribes and Kurdistan, you're not you're not going to get the same sort of leader as you find other places. And so what I find is, you know, larger than life characters who are utterly unique, who are able to command with their charisma, uh, great loyalty from their followers. And it's not like you're not getting the lowest common denominator of person. You're you're getting these… just how how does this person exist? You know what? What created this person? They're so interesting. And it's really a joy to just read about them and and just admire them. So I, I recommend.</p> Hannah: Well, we are out of time. But we'll talk to you again soon.</p> Erik: Sounds good.</p> Hannah: All right. Thank you so much, Erik. Bye.</p> Colleen: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Servent Group International on Facebook or Instagram, and you should check out our blog and complete transcripts over at ServantGroup.org.</p> Hannah: And it's really helpful for us if you share our podcast or leave a review on whatever platform you listen to this podcast on, it helps us know that people are listening and you can let us know what you want to hear next. Thanks for listening.</p>

00:32:28

Car Crashes and Kurdish Culture

Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Episode 61 Part 2 of our interview with Erik about life and culture in Iraq. Also, an amazing story of how he survived a 100mph crash on a highway!</p> Learn more over at <a href="http://www.ServantGroup.org">www.ServantGroup.org</a> and email Hannah with questions at hannah@servantgroup.org.</p> Here's a Rough Transcript!</p> Hannah: Welcome to Between Iraq and a Hard Place. I'm Hannah.</p> Colleen: And I'm Colleen. And we're here to tell you a little bit about life in Iraq. Woo hoo!</p> Hannah: So we talked about female and male dominated spaces when you were around Kurdish or Arabic women. Did you? How much of that tension did you feel? Was it uncomfortable? And how much of that do you think came from what you know and like women actually being like, hey, don't talk to me.</p> Erik: So in general, I almost never speak to women publicly, that I don't know. Sure. Right. So if I'm at a restaurant and it's very natural common just to be ignored, Right. Because girls go out with girls and they you know, that's that's their time. And there is a lot of it is a bit of a dance, though, right? Because there's dynamics between, you know, the guys and the girls. Right. Even if they never speak to each other, there's stuff going on, right?</p> Hannah: Yeah. Yeah.</p> Erik: And so and everybody's kind of very closely curating their image, through both phones, social media and presence in public spaces. So that's, I would say that. But in general, don't really get to talk or don't talk to people that I don't know. And now if I if I have students and their families, then by all means always show respect and greet, greet people publicly when you recognize them. And it's people do like to be recognized and publicly. So whether you're, you know, a guy or a girl, if you're if you're talking if you recognize someone, it's it's good to I think recognize them publicly. Tensions? You can't think of a lot of tensions that I that I've that I've felt I haven't been in too many difficult situations. I think when moving between communities. I think I felt more tension or at least been more aware because things are changing based on the community I'm working with. So I was very comfortable around Kurdish people, right? I taught, taught them, had a lot of interaction. But when I moved to Yazidis, well, that's a whole different story of, of what's, what's going on there. And then there's Christian communities, too. So I think moving between communities, it's the process of kind of learning and being just very observant, right. Of your surroundings and how your how you're treated as a guest. So being a guest is a, you know, superpower and skill that you have to develop to be a good guest. And they are extraordinary hosts, right? And that's also something we have to learn. I think think the ladies have to learn that a lot with greater detail because they'll get really judged if they're bad hosts. Right.</p> Hannah: Yes.</p> Erik: And and I'm people would just assume that I would be clueless about that because I'm a guy and and I'm, you know, not married. So they would just assume that I'm not able to host or cook or do anything. But so so there's differences there. But then when I was in southern Iraq, I was really on high alert because I had no idea what I was doing there. And there's other complications of, you know, having spent no time there before, and then totally different religious community that I'm working in. And then I was teaching at an all girls school where all the conservative families sent their sent their daughters so that they would have no interaction with men. So that was that. Then I was super trying to be on my best behavior, but that without knowing all the rules. In general, I think that the reason maybe I haven't felt a lot of tension is that Iraqis overlook faults a lot for foreigners and they are very generous. And if you do say something that's horribly awkward or wrong, they'll try to rectify the situation for you or it'll be left unsaid and you'll never know about what you did, right? Yeah, but everybody else will. So I've probably, you know, made many, many mistakes that people have generously overlooked. It's a real lesson in hospitality, the fact that people are not quick to take offense, but to kind of sidestep that for your sake. When I first went to Kurdistan, I definitely felt nervous around ladies because I had no idea, I expected it to be a lot more conservative than it was.</p> Colleen: How did you see the expat community change while you were there or in the different places that you were?</p> Erik: So I think the expat community was a lot smaller and more tight knit when I when I first arrived and and composed of a lot of a lot of families actually that had been working in the area for quite a while. So a lot of people who had a lot of context in the cities they lived in and the places they lived in. And over time there's just been so much more turnover and so much more volume of foreigners coming through. And not just Westerners, not just Americans, but people from all over. Right? Aid organizations, international aid organizations from all sorts of countries have been through. So for the place they have gotten used to seeing a lot more foreigners pass through work and leave. So I'll say like there's way less of a wow factor now when when a foreigner arrives, you might get stopped on the street. People will always want to know where you're from, what you're doing, and that that's an area of interest that will stay. But it's a little less of a novelty to society that that there'd be someone like you there working. So the kind of work has changed. There's a lot of aid that's come in. And between 2015 and 2017-18, there was just a lot a lot of organizations. Since then it's become very small again. So there's far fewer organizations working in Iraq. And and so it's becoming a smaller community again, from my observation. Those organizations are still there, but maybe they've pulled their offices out of Suly or Dohuk and maybe they have one big office in Erbil. And then they have, you know, whatever whoever their staff are will be local partners in, you know, Suly, Dohuk or any other region. And they won't actually have a lot of foreign workers in those places. And a lot of those aid organizations shifted to southern Iraq, to Mosul after 2017. Now, I'm not sure where they are. So the cities have grown a lot over those same years. A lot more shopping, a lot more malls. The cities have grown quite a bit in the last years and over let's see, yeah, over the last seven years, the biggest growth, I think in like a city like Dohuk or Erbil has been from people moving from southern Iraq into the Kurdish cities. You have lots of lots of Christians and Sunnis and some Shia groups all relocating their homes to to these northern Kurdish cities. So that's the biggest growth.</p> Colleen: Did you find most of your friendship and community in the expat community or in other places?</p> Erik: I think while I worked at the high schools, most of my community was my team and the students and their families, and that was a really, really wonderful experience, being so connected to families. So most of my community would not have been expats during the first years, but after, when I moved to Dohuk, that kind of flipped. Most of my community at that time were the, you know, international workers and people working in the camps and my team. And so I think some of that was a difference between maybe Suly and Dohuk, but also just having less of a foundation in Dohuk with with families. And I think Dohuk is a little bit more private of a city. So because of that, most of my community were expats in Dohuk, my own team, or non-native people in Dohuk. What I mean is not people from Dohuk. So I had a whole bunch of Christian friends from Mosul who who were displaced out of Mosul. And I'd hang out with them a lot or a lot of Yazidi friends from Sinjar or even even Syrian friends who'd come over from Syria. And now we're living in Dohuk. So basically, I found that a lot of the families who had migrated to Dohuk were up for starting friendships, right, in relationships and up for having having me over to their homes and connecting or going out. And so it just shifted because it seemed that a lot of people from Dohuk were pretty well established there. And I find that the circles of friendships go really deep, but sometimes the circles are rather small. In my case, I ended up connecting with more people from outside. That's not to say I don't know people from Dohuk, but …in general.</p> Hannah: I noticed that more in Dohuk than even in Hawler (Erbil) that it was like they didn't know how to be friends with people outside of the friends that they kind of grew up with, because Dohuk is a little bit more village-y, and everybody that's there is there and has been there forever. And their grandparents were friends. And so there was a little bit of a like, we like you and we want you to be part of this, but we don't know.. we're not quite sure how that works.</p> Erik: Yeah, I'd agree because I think the people in Dohuk are very, very respectful people. They treat you very courteously wherever you go, generally. But the, you know, the how you connect and be friends. That's a different question. And I think that that's, you know, a testament to actually, up until recently, it has been a very small place with not a lot of foreigners there. So it's understandable that that's kind of an adjustment. Also there they have a, you know, a long history and, you know, deep, deep connections to families and neighbors and very close with cousins and siblings and big families. So if you think about it, they have a very rich social life already, right?</p> Hannah: This is the middle, the middle of the podcast where we interrupt ourselves to tell you things. And the only thing I really want to tell you is that you should go to Iraq because it's awesome and we'd love to get you there.</p> Colleen: Did you have a favorite food while you lived in Iraq?</p> Erik: I think the best food in Iraq is home food. And again, I didn't spend much time in people's homes. So, but actually, I love Dolma, Yaprax, and there's some some meat dishes that I really like. I really like Koozi, which is like this slow cooked lamb over rice. That's just very tender and delicious. They've got a lot of good food.</p> Colleen: So if you ever go out at night with with the guys and do the Serupe, the head and foot soup.</p> Erik: Definitely did do that. Yes. And actually, it tastes really good. So. If you can get past the description, I, I kind of liked it.</p> Colleen: Great. Did you have any favorite adventures or experiences?</p> Erik: Oh, man. Let's see. I mean, of course. But there's just. There's just a lot to choose from. I think I did survive a high speed taxi crash on a highway. And I've gotten I've gotten a lot of mileage out of that story over the years. Should I should I go there?</p> Colleen: Yeah, you should.</p> Hannah: Tell a story. It's a good one.</p> Erik: Well, it was I was on my way to to get a flight out of the country for Christmas to meet a cousin in Germany. I got in a cab between Suly and Erbil to get there, and it was. It was a full cab. So I was in the back middle seat with no seat belts. The back seat almost never has seat belts. And the two people in the front did have seat belts. So we were going and he just when it came to the, you know, straight straight portion of the highway between Kirkuk and Erbil, he just started going so fast. And I think when I last looked at the speedometer, we were going 160km an hour somewhere, somewhere near like that's I think that's about 90. [It's actually closer to 100mph.] But eventually somebody tried to cut us off and we lost control of the car. And we, we slid into the divider of the highway and crashed into it and flipped over. And then the vehicle started rolling across the the oncoming lanes of traffic. And as we are rolling, my door bends off the car and then I fall out of the car with the two two other guys. So this all happened very fast. Uh, the next thing, the next thing I was aware of was that I was out outside of the car, face down in a field, and I had all this, like, kind of moist dirt in my mouth. And so I guess I wasn't aware of whether I had legs or not or whether the car was on top of me or what what was going on. But so I just thought figured I just lay there. And when I when I looked over, there was another guy face down and then to my left and the other guy on my right was in the same position. But I just look at them and they just they just hopped on their feet immediately and just kind of like casually, like brushing off the the dirt from their clothes as if like, nothing had happened. So we work perfectly fine. I had we miraculously landed on a field with with moist dirt between Kirkuk and Erbil. And I stayed there just a little longer laying down because I didn't want to hurt anything. And while I was there, somebody like picked up my glasses and brought it over to me and someone else picked up my phone that had flown out and brought it to me. And by that time, I finally did get to my feet and the car was totaled. So it was a it actually was a bit emotional. Once when I called my parents, when I called my parents, that's when the kind of release came. It wasn't I hadn't realized how much tension I had in my body, but I went over to the taxi, got my stuff out, and somebody else offered me a ride and I got in the next cab and made it to Erbil to get my plane on time to make Christmas with my cousin.</p> Hannah: Um, no major injuries or?</p> Erik: I was really sore. My ribs were really sore, but, um, I mean, not a scratch, really. Not a scratch. Physically.</p> Colleen: Your glasses and your phone were both fine.</p> Erik: Everything was fine. And the other. The other thing about that, which was funny as I was driving away, which is a very, very Kurdish thing, the the other taxi driver that offered me a ride as we were driving away, he kept on looking back at me in the back seat and trying to explain that he had seen everything and just to simulate it, he would yank his steering wheel back and forth just to show that he saw that what happened to our car? So, um, and I realized after the fact that as we rolled across the highway, I involuntarily screamed just this involuntary thing out of my body, and no one else made a sound. So, I was a little embarrassed after that. I was the one that couldn't just, you know, just take it silently. But that was that was that was amazing. I've had a lot of funny experiences in in people's offices. Anyway, I'm really grateful that was. Yeah. That that story didn't end badly.</p> Hannah: Oh, my goodness.</p> Erik: Other important, other fun things. I think if you're in Kurdistan, there's so many cool places to go. So I loved going to Lalish, which is the Yazidi, most important Yazidi temples and then going to Korek mountain and, you know, being up in the mountains in the snow and getting a renting a cabin there. But there's there's a lot of cool, historic things to do in Kurdistan and have a lot of good memories of going there with friends and teammates. There's a lot to see.</p> Colleen: What do you miss most?</p> Erik: Um, like, I really like walking through cities and I like that Dohuk was really walkable, and it's neat because in a small place or in a place like that, people really get to know you everywhere you go. And so it's even though it's not a small town, Dohuk, I mean it's a big city. But but everywhere you go, it's like you're known and you have these little personal relationships with every little shopkeeper and every place you go. And if you're coming from a city in America, that might not be an experience you have often, but it actually does fulfill something in your heart, I think, to have all these little connections and to be placed right, even if there's some discomforts from being an outsider. There's a lot of little things that I appreciate about it. And so I lived for a while. I lived above a mish mish, which is a sweet shop that delivers cakes and sweets all over Dohuk. And in the morning sometimes I just go downstairs and help them, you know, set the tables or just sit down and, you know, just a lot of just very familial kind of casual friendships where you just you just hang out. And I do really miss that. Yeah, I missed the hikes as well. There's a lot of cool places to hike in Kurdistan, and it's a real fun activity to go, you know, put some food together and go up a mountain and spend a morning up there. And I miss people, of course. I miss them.</p> Colleen: Of course. That was assumed already.</p> Hannah: Yes.</p> Erik: Yes.</p> Hannah: Well, we've talked some about reverse culture shock coming from Kurdistan back to the US. What's it like for you going back to Mexico? What things are like, wow, this has really changed? Or just, because it's been a long time since you've lived in Mexico, right?</p> Erik: I'm like 18 years.</p> Hannah: Wow. Okay. Yeah.</p> Erik: Yeah. So I think to back up, I didn't have a lot of culture shock when I moved to Iraq, and I credit that partially because of my background here in Mexico. Some something about that wasn't completely, totally foreign to me. So I can't say that I feel a lot of reverse culture shock either. It's really nice to step back into Mexico and I've desired to do that for many years. I think that whatever the shock is, it's just because of it's it's a life life transition, right? And so taking on a new job or stuff like that. But Mexico is a very warm culture as well. And so I've actually the city I'm living in right now reminds me of Dohuk. It's surrounded by mountains. It's super small and walkable and people are rather conservative. So like, you know, people are glancing in my shopping cart, you know, inspecting my items, you know, as I'm in the lines, you know, there's like not a lot of personal space. And so there's a lot that reminds me of of Iraq. And I'm actually I'm actually really enjoying it but it feels a little more like home. So I am an outsider in the new city. I didn't grow up in northern Mexico, so that means I am there's a lot of cultural things that I'm having to learn here because it's just there's a lot of different differences between North and South. So yeah, um, I'm still kind of learning things culturally. I don't know if that's a good answer to the question.</p> Colleen: But it makes sense. I mean, I felt like some of those things that for me, moving to Nashville, culture shock or reentry was eased in some part by the fact that the South is such a different culture than where I grew up. It was easy to treat it as, Oh, this is just another foreign country, rather than like recognizing all the things that were different from where I grew up or that, you know, it wasn't how I experienced it growing up.</p> Erik: I'd say the other I think maybe I'm just fortunate that the place that I have landed here has a really kind of tight knit special community and they're very hospitable. So it's it's not like I'm starting out as a stranger. And and so I think I would feel I would feel the loneliness probably a lot more if I were starting out, like in a new place completely alone. Right. That's really nice.</p> Hannah: Your Spanish is all coming back to you?</p> Erik: Well, well, yes and no. I think, you know, after so I am a native and fluent speaker, but there's a lot of work to do, let's just say. And people do make fun of me. That's nothing new!</p> Hannah: You have like Kurdish words come to mind instead of the Spanish one or I mean you got a lot of languages floating in there.</p> Erik: Oh, man. You know, I know in Kurdistan I would certainly sometimes Spanish would be it wouldn't be an issue until I spoke to someone on the phone in Spanish. And then the next day in class I'd mix in some Spanish. Um, but actually, no, there are Kurdish expressions that come to my mind when living life. And I hope I hope that's always the case. I want it to be with me forever. So. And if I lose it, I have to go back to Kurdistan and get some more. Yeah.</p> Colleen: We've taught our roommates over the years several Kurdish phrases that are still a part of our lives. So yup.</p> Hannah: And we we frequently ask each other like, "What time is it?" in Kurdish, because it's easier to think of it that way than in English, which is bizarre.</p> Erik: But yeah, I think with at least with my even with my siblings, we grew up speaking English to each other inside the home, right. And Spanish in other places. But, but now when I reconnect with siblings, we basically speak in Spanish. And what that says to me is that this is the time that we shared together. Right. And the place that we shared most of our lives together. So speaking of Spanish cuts past everything else and goes right to home. Right. And so I think it's an unconscious thing, but that's what that's a way of being kind of close to each other. And so I think that's I could do that with, you know, teammates from Kurdistan too, you know, a little a little Kurdish word here and there brings back a lot.</p> Hannah: Yeah. Well, thanks for talking to us.</p> Colleen: Yeah, thanks for giving us your time. Yeah.</p> Erik: Sure thing. Very, very nice to talk to you.</p> Colleen: We'll have to touch base again with some stories from Kurdish history.</p> Erik: Okay.</p> Colleen: And or Kurdish myth, maybe. I don't know which where those stories all fall, but it'd be fun to have you share some of those stories with us.</p> Erik: I definitely need to polish up and get some student consultants.</p> Hannah: There you go.</p> Erik: To help me out with that. But yeah, I'd love to.</p> Colleen: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Servant Group International on Facebook or Instagram, and you should check out our blog and complete transcripts over at ServantGroup.Org.</p> Hannah: And it's really helpful for us if you share our podcast or leave a review on whatever platform you listen to this podcast on. It helps us know that people are listening and you can let us know what you want to hear next. Thanks for listening.</p> Erik: Excuse me. ACHOO!</p> Hannah: Bless you!</p> Erik: Edit that out.</p> Hannah: It's going to go in the end, the bloopers part.</p>

00:26:50

Being a Single Guy in Iraq

Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Episode 60 Hannah and Colleen interview our friend and teammate, Erik, about his life and experiences teaching and living in Iraq as well as his studies of Kurdish history and culture.</p> Learn more over at <a href="http://www.ServantGroup.org">www.ServantGroup.org</a> and email Hannah with questions at hannah@servantgroup.org.</p> Also, here's a link to the book Erik recommends in the show! <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Kurdistan-Global-Stage-Kinship-Community/dp/0813563526">(https://www.amazon.com/Kurdistan-Global-Stage-Kinship-Community/dp/0813563526)</a></p> Here's a Rough Transcript!</p> Hannah: Welcome to Between Iraq and a Hard Place. I'm Hannah!</p> Colleen: And I'm Colleen.</p> Hannah: And we're going to tell you about our life in Iraq.</p> Colleen: It's going to be fun. I hope so.</p> Hannah: Uh, we have our first international podcast, Colleen. It's very exciting.</p> Colleen: That is exciting.</p> Hannah: We're going to talk today to our good friend Erik. Erik served with us in Iraq for many years, seven, seven ish years. Um, and he started the same time as me. So we've been in this for a long time. Not as long as Colleen, but we're trying to catch up. Um, so Erik grew up in Mexico, and that's where he is currently. He lived in Suly and was on a team with you. And then he was in Dohuk with me for a little while and then has also done some stuff in Southern Iraq as well. And so we're just going to talk to him about his life in Iraq, because we're not men, so we don't know what it's like there for men.</p> Colleen: You have a unique perspective.</p> Hannah: Yeah. Thank thanks for coming, Erik, or thanks for being there and recording with us.</p> Erik: Well, really happy to be here and to have been there with you.</p> Colleen: We thought we might make you try to tell us which of our teams you actually enjoyed being on more, but we decided that you're really nice and that wouldn't be fair to you. So we're not going to ask you that question.</p> Erik: I would say something very even and diplomatic.</p> Colleen: Yes, because you are diplomatic and we appreciate that.</p> Hannah: Yeah. So I guess our first question for you, which is our first question for everybody who works for SGI, is how did you how did you hear about SGI? How did you get started with us?</p> Erik: So I would have heard about SGI actually somewhere in middle school or high school. I'm not sure if I would have actually put together that it was SGI, but I began hearing people that my parents knew talk about it, specifically Jerry Brown. So I was aware of work in Iraq and that there was a group in Nashville working in, in the Kurdish region. And, and I kind of slowly pieced piece things together from there. I think I heard a lot more about it right as I was getting ready to leave college. And that was because Jerry contacted me very directly and said, hey, consider consider SGI. And, they're amazing.</p> Hannah: Yeah, that's great. You got that real personal contact.</p> Colleen: So was Jerry the main reason you chose SGI or Iraq or like, what kind of got you the rest of the way, right?</p> Erik: So I hadn't been shopping around for like, organizations as I was just I had studied Middle East history and I had a general interest in the Middle East. And really it was Jerry's personal note and kind of right at the right place at the right time, right as I was about to start the job hunt. And and he he basically said that SGI and Iraq and Kurdistan are would be a really, really good first entry into the Middle East And to getting a sense of whether that was something for me or not. And he gave me examples and we really had a good relationship. So the fact that he kind of vouched and then provided a personal connection with with the director of SGI, that really helped me. And as soon as as soon as we actually spoke directly, that then it was almost it was settled very quickly that this was a this was an organization I could work with and that I could respect. Yeah.</p> Hannah: So what did the interview application process look like for you? Like I lived close enough that I could come for an interview. How did you how did you do that one?</p> Erik: I think I was not in person. I did submit an application. I remember that. I can't remember what I wrote, but it was a it was a Skype call with Dave, and I think I did that the day after I graduated from college. So it was yeah, it was on a beach, actually, and I interviewed with Dave, so.</p> Hannah: That's fantastic. I guess I also didn't know that you had done Middle Eastern history for college. Was there like when you were doing that, was there a specific country or people group in the Middle East that you were like, Yeah, think this is what I want to do? Or were you just kind of open?</p> Erik: It was a general personal and academic interest of mine to get into Middle East studies and history. And I had an incredible professor at the university that really mentored me in studying Middle Eastern history. And I wasn't I wasn't sure. On moving to the Middle East or ever working, working there. But it just happened to come together as an opportunity right at that point. So I wasn't honed in on Iraq, but actually because there was some family history in Iraq, though. So that was in the background. My dad went to, left Mexico and went to the Kurdish region in 1992, right after the first Gulf War and right after Saddam Hussein's kind of big take back of land and kind of retribution on people who rose up against him during the Gulf War. And so he went on a on a project to dig water wells in different Kurdish villages. And he spent a few months in the country. And he came back with with all kinds of stuff, with Kurdish clothing, with literal machine gun bullets and all kinds of cool things to show me and stories. And he was so moved that he had actually considered moving our family out there to continue living there. It didn't work out that way. But from that was around when I was seven years old. So I was aware of some part of the Kurdish story from way back. And so and that was always in the background. So I can put it together now that that was that was something leading me there.</p> Hannah: Yeah.</p> Colleen: Yeah. What you're saying is we got to start recruiting with the the first graders.</p> Erik: Yes.</p> Hannah: Oh, man. That's going to be…</p> Colleen: I mean, that's kind of what I trace some of my story back to as well, is like having a map of Iraq on the back of our door and looking at all the places mentioned in the news.</p> Erik: And yeah, and it helps having, you know, some little family story that you can tell when you're first getting into Iraq and meeting people. And it really it's really served me really well to have a story connecting my dad to Iraq and basically saying that, you know, it runs in the family. You know, yeah, I got this from my dad.</p> Colleen: So can you tell us a little bit about some of the different roles and projects you were a part of while you lived in Iraq?</p> Erik: Sure. I so the first time I went, I was I hadn't studied education, but I went in as a middle school teacher. So I got to teach. I think the first my first year, I taught eighth grade history and literature, 11th grade health and economics. Yes. And let's just say.</p> Hannah: What an interesting combination!</p> Erik: You can guess which one was a stretch for me. But the but I loved teaching humanities classes and I ended up teaching, I think, a ninth grade history and literature as well. And then some some 12th grade, a 12th grade class as well. And then so, yes, for a few years I was doing the high school and middle school work. Then I very briefly taught at the American University in their academic preparatory program. So the program that gets students up to the level to be admitted into the American university. And then I was out of the country for a time. And then 2014, 2015, during the ISIS takeover of parts of Iraq and the displacement of Yazidi communities and other minority communities in the country. I spoke to SGI again and a project came up to do schools for displaced children in Yazidi camps right outside of Dohuk. And up until that time I'd only worked or lived in Suly, but that just seemed like the right thing to do. So I moved to Dohuk and helped get that project going as a technically project manager. And so I, I helped facilitate two schools in that camp with all with Yazidi students. But as Sinjar, the city that they're from, is run by two different education systems. So we we actually put two schools in one and ran it ran the two schools on different shifts. So that was a real education of how education works from a different perspective. And it was a real privilege to be able to do that with SGI.</p> Colleen: And it was a really neat school area and you guys were able to accomplish that really fast from what it seemed like, things normally run in the speed.</p> Erik: It was it was remarkable. Yeah. And probably, you know, some of that's the country in crisis. But but we also just had so much so much blessing and favor in the eyes of all the authorities to be able to navigate that. And so I was shocked. I was shocked by that. But it was also it was so encouraging. Yeah. To just just to see that school go up so, so quickly and then to see it fill up immediately with students. It was a really big deal. And yeah, that was an unforgettable time.</p> Hannah: Yeah. So I was living in Dohuk at the time and teaching at CSM and our students sponsored, I think you guys got them going on putting together backpacks for the students in the camp, which was an amazing part.. way for me to feel involved in that project. And our students too. And yeah, opening opening day, we we brought a bunch of our high school students and did all of that. And, you know, it was a great way to get our students who are upper middle class and upper upper class involved in that refugee and IDP situation in a way that they think had been a little bit afraid to do before.</p> Erik: It was really I think it was really interesting to have yeah… become a link to for our students connecting to to those communities. It actually turned out to work out to actually students Colleen and I had taught in Suly who graduated out of CSM and went to university, their universities contacted us to do volunteer projects and a lot of those students came all the way from Suly to our school without our really, you know, orchestrating it. It was just the fact that that relational contact was there that allowed them to volunteer at the camp. So that was really sweet.</p> Colleen: That's so cool.</p> Hannah: Yeah. Did you feel like your time having already lived in Iraq and you got your Kurdish studies master's at that in the in between time, so you know, you weren't wasting your time by any means. How much do you feel like that helped you with those connections and overcoming some of the the cultural weirdnesses?</p> Erik: So that's a good question. And it's hard to answer. I think that… Okay, so my sequence of living in Iraq first and then doing a degree in it, I think was really good because that you need some grounding in reality. Right? And what you know isn't necessarily what's true for all times of, of of the groups and people in Iraq but that grounding in in the Middle East and the sense of how culture works just from your own personal immersion in it really is an important foundation, especially if you're not a native from Iraq. So that immediately, like if I had gone into it without that, that would have been a problem. I would have been lost. But then the, you know, Middle East Studies, Kurdish studies, it was helpful because it gave me a broader knowledge of where the discussions are and related to, you know, history, ethnography, anthropology of, you know, Kurds, Yazidis, communities in Iraq. So it was really helpful to get a broader exposure to literature from from people who have studied this and also I felt that it really helped get it giving more of an ethnographic basis, ethnographic basis to knowledge. So there's a lot of there's a lot of good ethnography that's been done on Iraq and the communities there. And so the fact that we're working with displaced Yazidis communities from from Sinjar, I think that really did provide me a lot richer context to kind of be aware of what I was… who I was working with. Right. So you can't go wrong, you know, doing a little research and reading. But but I think that personal exposure to to the cities and communities in Kurdistan, that was really helpful to get first.</p> Hannah: Yeah. Because you didn't have to overcome some of the like how do we get around and how do we communicate and you already had that right.</p> Erik: And just just a sense, I think. Just a sense of actually knowing the rhythm of life within your own sensory experience, right? If you have that, you'll be thrown by so much less or you won't be thrown as much. If you've been exposed, like your senses have been exposed to life. And so going back that second or third time, I'm able to deal with other kinds of conflicts because those small living ones, those are already settled. So, you know, you're already kind of at home.</p> Hannah: So the number one way that we get new people in Iraq is by other people telling them about Iraq. So maybe you're not interested in going, but maybe you know someone who is. Tell them about this podcast. Tell them about Servant Group International. It'd be a big help!</p> Colleen: So as you did do that studying, what… did it change the way you saw Kurds or the way you saw Kurdish culture or how things functioned there? Was there anything that gave you like, Oh, that's why that functions that way or…</p> Erik: Well, I think it gave, because the at least the degree I took was, you know, academic so it tries to stay above the fray of, you know, identity arguments or, you know, which which national arguments are correct. So it provides a little bit of distance. And I think as a guest in any culture, you need to develop that distance anyway, right? So that you're not completely a partisan in conflicts that have nothing to do with you.</p> Hannah: Right.</p> Erik: So I think it helped me, I think maybe be a little wiser with things I might, you know, knowing the relationships between ideas and families and all of that, you still pick that up living, living there anyway. But I think, you know, a lot of people make claims about history and so it just made it more complicated because with any history that's thousands of years old. Right. It's hard to make really, really strong, definitive claims. I don't want to offend anyone. Or it did make me appreciate all the stories I have heard. Right. And so and I really love jumping into stories and where people where they get their stories, who they get them from, how those stories have been inherited over time. And that's one of the kind of joys of being among Kurds and Yazidis and all the other groups is that they have so many amazing stories and it's really fun to get into those.</p> Hannah: I think we're going to maybe have to do a whole podcast where you get to tell us some of those stories because I now want to know. Yeah, and we did a… we did a brief series on Yazidi mythology and theology. So if you don't know who the Yazidis are, go listen to those episodes. They're great. Well, I think they're great because I did all the research, but they'll they'll fill in some of the gaps there. Is there anything that you learned in in those studies that was like a surprise that you didn't already have some inkling of?</p> Erik: So, yes. I think there was other than like little historical moments that I wasn't aware of, I think Iraq is very, very much… It's all about the village, Right. And so things are things are very local and people's attachments and sense of place is really, really important. So people who've done fieldwork in these villages and have done observations and talked and developed relationships over many years, have a lot of valuable things to share. So I think I read a book by Diane King called Kurdistan on the Global Stage, and I was really surprised by her providing a a richer layer of context to things that you might just assume are really simple concepts like, say, honor, shame, you know, honor, shame is really important. Well, it is, but why is it important and what makes it meaningful? Right. And so so I think reading her observations about how kinship works in families, you know, how how gender works, marriages, connections between families and lands and then and inheritance. Right. How how identity is passed down through fathers right to their children and how how all three of those interplay right to create a rich honor culture. And so I would have generally thought, okay you got to respect people because honor is an important thing here. But but actually, there's all these other relationships that make it really important and make you understand the why. Right? And it's you step into another culture and you sometimes we're tempted to make assumptions that this does not make sense. This just does not make sense. Right. To to your framework, but actually it's profoundly meaningful.</p> Colleen: Yeah.</p> Erik: Everything you see. And so some of this literature really has brought out a lot more, giving me more, more of a framework for the meaning of the place, right. And what I'm trying to navigate there. So yeah, I just make that plug for that book, but also to always be just developing questions and asking questions because there's just… I think it'd be a shame to go all that way to Iraq and leave, not like with just a richer appreciation for what you what you've been in the middle of. Which is really special.</p> Colleen: Well, we can definitely link that book in the show notes. You mentioned honor, shame and relationship to gender and marriage. And so some of our questions definitely have to do with some of the gender differences and the way those affect your life versus, you know, the way they affected our lives. Did you enter any spaces that were like obviously male or female dominated? And how did that make you feel?</p> Erik: So yes, I did. So what I say is like my experience, right? I wouldn't basically try to paint with too broad a brush. But so generally I mean, just as a general thing, I think the the home is very, very much family space and female space. Right. So so I my whole time in Iraq, I've been a single, single guy. And so as a general rule I don't spend much time in homes. In fact, it's very, very rarely do I go into someone's home. If someone does invite me over, they're probably a really good friend. And the fact that if I if I do go into the home sometimes I probably either just very briefly say hi to the mother or sisters, but they're probably in another room and they come out and serve us some tea or food and then go out again. So that's just it's just a space that, you know, single guys aren't in. If you are, if you had a family, that'd be a different story. So as a single guy, most of the time I'm out in public in cafes and restaurants and going on picnics or going up to different sites with friends or going to places to play games with other guys like me. So that would be the closest to like a female dominated space. And my like, you know, female colleagues actually spend quite a lot of time at homes and they get to spend the night at homes and they they get, you know, almost I'm almost envious of how much access they have. They might feel more restricted. Right. But actually, I see that there's a lot more liberty in some of their relationships with with families than than I could ever have.</p> Colleen: Yeah. I can see that.</p> Erik: Now if I'm in public, you know, there's a lot of interaction between men and women. It's, it's not like it doesn't happen, especially if you're colleagues at schools universities there's, there's plenty of interaction. But that's… the space is different. And now if you go into an office, a government office, you could also go into an office with, you know, a woman sitting in the most important seat. Right? But you'd be wrong to think that's a female dominated space, right? The question it would be. Okay, whose daughter is she? Right. Who what are her relationships? Right. That connect her to this position. And more often than not, they'll be, you know, some family important family relationship that's not disconnected from male leadership. Right. It's not not saying there's no not a meritocracy or that there's people aren't good at their jobs. It's just that the assumption that, okay, she's in an important position, therefore it's a female dominated space would be different, right? Yeah. So most most public spaces are male spaces. Right? And you'll see that even in how the layout of things are laid out in, in restaurants and other places, the family space or the female space is a little more removed the more public space is where all the all the men are sitting. And this I mean, we could talk and talk and talk about this. I think you're you don't you never get away from what you are as a as a man or a woman in in these places. You're always interpreted that way so you have to… I think that's part of the nuances of working there over time as you get used to like making these judgments yourself and realizing just how much is going on, right? It's really easy to live there and not really think about what's going on. But the longer you're there, the more you see it. It's actually kind of nice. There's I'd say that most of my friendships are male friendships, though.</p> Hannah: Yeah. And I think we would say that most of our friendships are female friendships and that's just the way that it is. I think it's easy for us as women to get frustrated with the freedom that we see our our male teammates have. But yeah, I hadn't really thought about how you guys don't get invited into people's houses and it makes total sense to me why it is that way. But yeah, I think most of my my team time was with families or other single women, but always wanted to know what is it like in those cafes that only men can go in?</p> Erik: What do you mean?</p> Hannah: Like. Like what? What do you guys do in there?</p> Erik: Oh, man, it's… I actually miss it. Um, so I think it's, you know, it's just. Well, it's really a lot of guys on their phones and smoking, right? And, um, and watching, watching sports or music videos.</p> Colleen: And you miss it?</p> Erik: Playing, playing sports, or cards, or backgammon. Um, but, but that's not the aspect that I miss, but it's, it's the fact that you can just sit with a group of people over a long period of time and you don't have to… The conversation does not have to be interesting you can just sit there and then you can you can laugh, you can talk, you can go silent. It's just it really it's just about being with your friends and and in Iraq, you know, wherever you go in Iraq. Friendship is just such a high value. And the there's there's quality of friendship. There's depth of friendship. There's a lot of expectation with friendship, right? So you end up spending just a lot of time with people that consider you a friend. And so there's something there's something unique about that and really special about that. Once you've been in it. It can be exhausting. But it's also really it's really sweet so…</p> Colleen: I mean I think that's kind of a lot of what the time for women in the homes looks like is that same.</p> Hannah: Just less smoking,</p> Colleen: Yeah, less smoking.</p> Colleen: Yeah, but the same sense of just being together and that that is enough to grow your friendship without having some grand deep sharing or like something that you've accomplished or like any other thing than just presence.</p> Erik: Totally. Yeah. I'm trying to think what else goes on. I mean, just a lot of, lot of talking. So and that's the other thing. I think the number one form of entertainment is talk so people talk and talk and talk and it's just a form of entertainment and so it's it's a lot of fun.</p> Hannah: Are the men gossipy this this may or may not make it into podcast</p> Erik: O for sure.</p> Hannah: Yeah.</p> Erik: Yeah. Oh I think so yeah they talk about all kinds of stuff. Probably. I wonder though. I'm not going to say that if you're in a cafe, sometimes the talk can go deep, but a lot of times it's surface level. Right? And if you're with with another friend somewhere else, it might be, you know, because people are always weighing who's around them and how they speak. And so trust can be low in a in a super public place. You know, you always have to be mindful of how you speak about your friend because you don't want to hurt your friend's, um, image or reputation. So I think, you know, a super public space lends itself to a little bit more surface level talk. Not to say you can't have good conversations in those places, but if you really want to have a, you know, deeper conversation, you might or more personal, you might need to be around a few little less people. And I imagine that in the home that's different. I think I think ladies would go deeper, faster within the privacy of the home.</p> Colleen: Provided you have the language skills.</p> Erik: And language skills. Yes. Yeah.</p> Colleen: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Servant Group International on Facebook or Instagram and you should check out our blog and complete transcripts over at servantgroup.org.</p> Hannah: And it's really helpful for us if you share our podcast or leave a review on whatever platform you listen to this podcast on, It helps us know that people are listening and you can let us know what you want to hear next.</p> Both: Thanks for listening.</p> Hannah: But it's okay. I know that the Suly team was better, and it doesn't hurt my feelings. It's totally fine.</p>

00:30:40

Parks and Rec Iraq Department

Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Episode 59 Hannah and Colleen embark on the many uses of the Iraqi Kurdish Park and the many varieties of Recreation available in Kurdish parks. There's workout equipment, food carts, fairs, amusement parks, roller skating, strange statues and more! Come take a walk with us through our favorite and least favorite parks in Northern Iraq. </p> Learn more over at <a href="http://www.ServantGroup.org">www.ServantGroup.org</a> and email Hannah with questions at hannah@servantgroup.org.</p> Here's a rough transcript of our episode! Hannah: Welcome to "Between Iraq and a Hard Place." I'm Hannah.</p> Colleen: And I'm Colleen. And we're here to tell you a little bit about life in Iraq.</p> Hannah: Woo hoo! Today we're going to talk about something that would make Leslie Knope very happy if she was a real person and, B, she cared about international parks at all.</p> Colleen: Okay.</p> Hannah: You don't know who Leslie Knope is, and that's okay. It's from a show called Parks and Recreation.</p> Colleen: Right. That's what you said you wanted to name this episode was "Parks and Rec."</p> Hannah: YES! And so we're going to talk about parks, less about recreation, although there is inevitably recreation at parks.</p> Colleen: I mean, the parks were definitely made for recreation.</p> Hannah: Yes. I was thinking more like community programs.</p> Colleen: Oh, yeah. Not that kind of rec. There's no rec center with, like, community soccer teams or anything.</p> Hannah: Art programs.</p> Colleen: No, not now.</p> Hannah: Yeah, but parks are a big part of Kurdish city life. Because as we've talked about before, Kurds really like to be outside in the green when it's green or at least outside.</p> Colleen: Yep. And picnics and having space outside which most of their homes if you remember back to episode one, don't have because everyone has a garage and like a courtyard, most people don't have lawns. Right?</p> Hannah: Or even like garden gardeny tree areas.</p> Colleen: If they do, they're real small. So parks are essential.</p> Hannah: Yeah. And I feel like most neighborhoods have a park of some kind. They're usually pretty small. I think the smallest one I've ones I have seen are about the size of a house, a house in that neighborhood, like the lot that a house would be on would be about the size of the park.</p> Colleen: Right. My neighborhood was mostly pretty new and still kind of being built. So we didn't actually have a park at first. And then, yeah, one was put in and it was probably about the size of three homes. It was really just a strip of green.</p> Hannah: Yeah. Like, here's some grass.</p> Colleen: Yeah, some lights, a bench.</p> Hannah: I feel like the park that I went to the most in Dohuk was within walking distance of our house. And it was, it was actually a fairly not big, big. But it was a fairly large neighborhood park. It was probably probably the size of maybe a city block there. And it had a big sidewalk, essentially, that was kind of everybody came and walked around and there were some small trees and bushes and stuff. But it was it was it was mostly just grass.</p> Colleen: Yeah. Occasionally some will have a piece of, like play equipment.</p> Hannah: Or exercise equipment.</p> Colleen: That's my personal favorite is that the exercise equipment generally becomes play equipment.</p> Hannah: Yeah. Like, I had an apartment complex that I lived in for a very short while that had a little patch of grass and a playground and exercise equipment. But the exercise equipment I only ever saw get used by the kids.</p> Colleen: Right. One of the bigger and more well known parks in the city that I lived in is called Azadi Park. It means Freedom Park, and it's the site of some horrific things. But it was next to one of Saddam's old prisons and like it is both a Memorial and Park. And it's huge. Yeah, at least for four there it was really big and we would go there and walk because it has a big, wide path around the whole outer edge. And along one portion of the path had exercise equipment set up and kind of like I don't think I've ever seen exercise equipment like this in the US anywhere. It's all like bodyweight resistance, maybe hydraulic pressure stuff all sunk into the concrete, a lot of spinny things.</p> Hannah: Do they have like the they're kind of like an elliptical, like, you stand on it, your arms go back and forth. That was one that I saw pretty typically. But yeah, then they have the ones where you're like, supposed to like, twist your body.</p> Colleen: Right. And it's like a little platform that you stand on.</p> Hannah: A standing ab workout kind of thing.</p> Colleen: And then like ones that you sit in and push with your feet like a leg press kind of thing.</p> Hannah: Yeah, I don't know that I ever saw that. Or maybe I saw it and didn't know what it was for, because that's the other thing. They don't have any instructions on them.</p> Colleen: Right? You're just kind of guessing. Yeah.</p> Hannah: Yeah. The kids would get on the elliptical ones, one on each, like one kid on each foot, foot place and swing back and forth on them, which was really amusing to me. I was like, Yeah, I mean, that seems fun.</p> Colleen: I did occasionally see men actually working out on them, but that was only really early in the morning when we would go to the park. It was the one place in the city where again, really early in the morning women could run or bike or exercise. And so we would go like 5:00 in the morning. I mean, it was also cooler then. It was only like 90 or 95 degrees. So we would go and some of us would walk and some of us would run. We met up with a bunch of other women there for a while.</p> Hannah: Yeah, there was a big park like that in Erbil that we always just called Sami Park. It has a big long Arabic name after some person, and it was pretty big. I'd say the there's a walking track sidewalk that goes all the way around the perimeter of it. That's probably a half a mile all the way around. We went there for Newroz sometimes because there are picnics, you know, raised doing picnics in the park. They have a little like, tram that you can ride around. That's just like some guy driving like, like the trams that they use in Disney parking lots to get you to and from your car. Driving one of those around and it's like 1000 dinar to ride it and he'll take you all the way around the park. And we did that one night, one evening that we went, I don't remember why we were there in the evening, I think we were celebrating somebody's birthday and they did a nighttime picnic and there were lots of fireworks and super crowded at night. And every time I've been back there, when I go back now, like you can barely get down the street that it's on. I mean, it borders-- It's got four streets all the way around it two main arteries of the city and then two side streets. And they're always full of cars because there's no parking lot for it. Right. Because until recently, almost everyone got there via taxi because they didn't have their own cars.</p> Colleen: Right.</p> Hannah: But yeah, that was a big. A big deal. And like the park that everybody knew about.</p> Colleen: Yeah, that's definitely the same way people saw Azadi Park. Keep wanting to call it Parki Azadi because that's what they called it there. But they had a roller skating area and a pond and a kind of an amphitheater little section, depending on the day and the time of day. And especially if there was something going on in the evenings, there would be the little carts out with food. And that's also where they've more recently hosted like international food festivals and the international markets and some different stuff where people from a bunch of different places come together and do stuff. And yeah, it's the place where you go for an inexpensive party or wedding. I went there for a picnic once. For a wedding. I was where everybody went after the the photos and the all the pieces of the party.</p> Hannah: Yeah, there's another park in Erbil that's closer to the Citadel. I don't remember the Kurdish name for the park, but it, like, was translated to us as like Peace Park.</p> Colleen: Oh. Ashti?</p> Hannah: Maybe.</p> Colleen: There are multiple words for peace.</p> Hannah: Yeah, I don't remember exactly. It had like a historical museum in the middle of it. That was like they had taken concrete to try to make it look like a mountain with trees on it. And then there was like, art and history inside of it. But you could also walk all the way up to the top of it, but it also had a like a skyline… what are those called that like you ride in the little bucket and it takes you up and you go around and you come back down. But it's like suspended in the air,</p> Colleen: Like a funicular?</p> Hannah: Yeah, like kind of like a funicular, but a funicular is like on railroad tracks. Right. And this is like suspended in their gondola, gondola or something like that. Yeah. And I was never brave enough to go on that because I didn't trust it to not, like, get stuck with me, you know, 200 feet up in the air. And then you'd be …</p> Colleen: Just bring your water!</p> Hannah: Hot and sweaty and thirsty and yeah, I wasn't on board for that. So we never did that. But we did go in the museum and I think, yeah, I think they hosted like an international festival, a French festival there actually. I went with a roommate who spoke French and it was weird. It's one of those things that I remember now and I'm like, What a weird thing for us to have gone to.</p> Colleen: A French festival in Iraq.</p> Hannah: In Iraq, yeah. But they also outside of Erbil have started establishing parks specifically for Newroz picnics. Oh, where it's like this is a designated, like picnic area. There's a trash bin. If you put your trash in the trash bin, the city will send someone out. And there are like big pine trees. So it's shady. But I mean, it's like here are 20 picnic places and it's like…</p> Colleen: …here are 20,000 people.</p> Hannah: Yeah. It's not going to work out the way you think it is. I mean.</p> Colleen: It's a start.</p> Hannah: It is a start, but there's like a little place to park your car.</p> Colleen: Like a campsite.</p> Hannah: Yeah, but for picnicking.</p> Colleen: Which is far more important.</p> Hannah: It is. It is far more important.</p> Colleen: There's also a newer, really large park that, again, is in honor of someone famous that I don't remember that was being built out just on the edge of Slemani. And it also had a big path, but it was more hilly and it felt in some ways like the beginnings of a more Western style. Park, like a hiking, like a hiking path or but like not hiking but still walking path, but like more of what we would expect out of an arboretum, say, or something like that.</p> Hannah: Right. Less central park and more state park.</p> Colleen: Right. Larger ponds, just larger space all together. Lots and lots of parking lots. And you know, it's definitely made just for more people. But it was in its early stages and very obviously so like all the trees were tiny baby trees and all the grass was brown.</p> Hannah: Just they're putting forth the effort.</p> Colleen: Yeah. They're working on it and that was that was exciting, I think.</p> Hannah: And there is there is a national park in or near Suly, isn't there? There's like a or like a preserve and nature preserve. I don't know if you ever went to it. I've only ever read about it.</p> Colleen: Is it the one where they like work to preserve the wildlife? Like leopards… that's it.</p> Hannah: Like leopards and mountain goats, I think.</p> Colleen: And maybe wild boar.</p> Hannah: Yes.</p> Colleen: Yeah. And I don't even know where that is. I've only ever read about it. And it was not something that I feel like was ever talked about while I lived there.</p> Hannah: Right. And I don't think it's it's open to the public in the way that we think of national parks or forests being open. It's more of a like nature preserve.</p> Colleen: Like don't go here.</p> Hannah: Right? There are leopards. Hopefully.</p> Colleen: Hopefully they have some leopards. Yeah, they have video of them.</p> Hannah: The other park that I spent time in was in Dohuk was the Gelli Park that is built. Below the dam for Dohuk lake.</p> Colleen: Oh Yeah.</p> Hannah: And so that one's kind of interesting because it's a mix of, like, Nature Park and small amusement park. Like they have bumper cars, and there's a little arcade that you can go in and play games and like, a little restaurant.</p> Colleen: And, like, everything's painted in slightly garish colors.</p> Hannah: So but there's also, like, a hiking trail, But you hike on the hiking trail to see these weird sculptures. Which, like, is a thing that people do even in the US. But for me, I'd never been on anything like that. And so when one of my friends was like, Oh yeah, we'll go and hike and look at the beautiful nature. And I was like, Okay, cool. And it was like, Oh, and these weird sculptures of like, Pegasus, which doesn't make any sense to me. And like, I don't know, it was just a very odd like, I do not associate these subject matters of art with Kurdish culture. And so it felt like we're trying to make it Greco-Roman art, but in Kurdistan.</p> Colleen: In Kurdistan, it's very strange.</p> Hannah: Hi, this is Steve. My wife and I have been with Servant Group International for quite a while now, which means that we're sort of old. And what that means for Servant Group is that we need more young, fresh faces in both in Iraq and here in Nashville. Love to have you join us!</p> Colleen: But I feel like several of the parks do border into amusement park. I mean, even Azadi Park. One corner of it is an amusement park and Dream City in Dohuk is also an amusement park that I went to.</p> Hannah: I actually never went to that one. By the time that I lived there, it was like, Oh, it wasn't cool anymore. And so nobody really went to it at that point.</p> Colleen: My favorite thing was the receipt we got from there. When for paying our tickets to get in said "Makes all your dreams came true."</p> Hannah: Did all your dreams came true?</p> Colleen: Wow. Such promise! No, I had a lovely, a lovely Ferris wheel ride.</p> Hannah: Yes.</p> Colleen: If I had heard some of the other stories. Or maybe that was before, I think. I think that's before anyone else. Some of the other… The terror stories of the Ferris wheel rides happened.</p> Hannah: But yeah, one of which is our our friend Mary, who she and John did an episode with us about raising kids in Kurdistan. But before they had kids, they went on this Ferris wheel. And Mary already is not like a big fan of heights and Ferris wheels and like… It's not her thing, but she was convinced to go on it for the experience. And I guess the way that it operated then was that if you wanted to get off, you had to like tell them, Hey, I want to get off. Whereas in the US it's like, oh, you get like three turns and then you got to get off. But they didn't know that. And so they just kept going around, and around and around. And she was like, How do I get off of this thing? And I think at one point they got stuck and she got stuck, like up in the Ferris wheel, stopped and like, wasn't sure if she was going to be able to get down again. Yeah.</p> Colleen: Yeah.</p> Hannah: We got to get her to tell that story sometime.</p> Colleen: It's a better story when she tells it.</p> Hannah: But yeah, that, that also contributed to me never going there.</p> Colleen: I mean, I had a similar experience, but on a different ride in a different city.</p> Hannah: Yeah.</p> Colleen: So me and some of the other teachers and some of our students went on a ride that was like a… it's a swinging boat ride.</p> Hannah: Yeah. Like the pirate ship.</p> Colleen: Yeah. Yeah. Which I mean, again, I don't love things like that. I do get motion sick and I got convinced and I went and we were on there for what felt like forever. And finally, not even at my instigation, someone else was like, Hey, can you let us off? You know, as we swing back and forth.</p> Hannah: Well, you get your money's worth, I guess.</p> Colleen: I guess! That was the last ride I ever went on in Kurdistan.</p> Hannah: That's probably for the best.</p> Colleen: No more, no more of this.</p> Hannah: We went to an amusement park in Kurdistan called Panc, which from my understanding, it was my first year in Kurdistan, so I didn't really have a good grasp of like directionally where we were. But I was told that it was near the Iranian border, but they had the pirate ship ride and I was like, No, thank you, I'm going to get seasick. I've already been driving on this party bus all day and I already feel like not great, but I think I did go on the bumper cars and this was all teachers from the school.</p> Colleen: Oh, nice.</p> Hannah: Picnic. So it was adults. They have that like anti gravity spinny thing that like, pushes you against the walls that a bunch of them went on. But they it was like branded as like the dance wheel because they played like really loud dance music as you spun around and there was like all these flashing lights and I was like, No thanks. I don't I don't want to be part of that either. Like, my ability to listen to music has been filled.</p> Colleen: Again, party bus, loud music, dancing in the aisle the whole way.</p> Hannah: Who needs a roller coaster like that when you go on a Kurdish party bus. But what I did end up doing was an alpine roller coaster, which a little bit on reflection, I was like, Hmm, that probably wasn't super safe either. But it was, it was a lot of fun. It's probably the best roller coaster ride I've ever been on. And I like roller coasters and it was really cool. So the park was along built kind of on a mountain-ish. So the the roller coaster went down into this gorge, essentially. So you kind of wind back and forth down into the floor of this canyon. You're just sitting on like a little cart that's on rails and you're in control of like your speed. So you have a hand brake that you use to, like, slow down and not slow down. Oh, and they just send you in twos. So it was it was me and my teammate at the time went down together, me and Anna. And so there are signs along the way that are like, Hey, there's a big curve. You should slow down.</p> Colleen: That's a lot of faith to put in a person who's never done this or like…</p> Hannah: And like, you also have to watch out for the people who are in front of you and behind you. Because if someone behind you decides to go faster than you want to go, you might get run into. Or if they stop suddenly in front of you, you might run into them and like you won't like crash and fall off. I mean, I guess if you were going fast enough, you could knock yourself off, but. We I think we ran into a couple of people, but it wasn't like it wasn't that big of a deal.</p> Colleen: Like you encountered them. You didn't actually run into them.</p> Hannah: I think we did run into one person or they ran into us. But it was really it was a really great way to like see the scenery of of that area.</p> Colleen: And like Kurdistan does mountains and canyons really well.</p> Hannah: Yeah, it was beautiful. And I remember thinking, I wish I had brought my camera with me to like, be able to take pictures of all of that because I was like, I'm never going to be up here again and see this again. So I just have to remember it in my mind and I do. But it's also been twelve years since then so it's fading a little bit, but so you get all the way down to the bottom and then your cart goes on to one of the conveyor belt, clickity things like on a roller coaster and it tows you back up to the top of the mountain.</p> Colleen: So you don't even have to hike up the mountain.</p> Hannah: Nope, You get a ride the whole way. It was really fun. There's one apparently in Gatlinburg, not far from here, but I don't know. I don't know if I could talk myself into doing it ever again, because it was really neat. It was a really cool experience and that was definitely a like, we're going to go out here and go to an amusement park, not just say like, Hey, there's a park that has this in it. Yeah, there's also a long standing-- I'm never sure it actually got built. And if it got built, I'm not sure it ever got used-- water park in Erbil.</p> Colleen: Really.</p> Hannah: With like water slides. Like the big ones.</p> Colleen: So as you drive into Suly from like the airport or Erbil or somewhere, you passed, I don't think it's there anymore. I kind of hope it's not the remains of a water park. Oh, only the upper part of like three or four different slides that are like those brightly primary colored tubes that end maybe one or two stories high. I don't even know. Probably one. One story high. Yeah. And then underneath is just a field of upright rebar.</p> Hannah: Huh? Terrifying.</p> Colleen: Looks like some sort of torture. But it's just a long defunct water park, that is no longer.</p> Hannah: I don't know. I don't know if Kurds would really enjoy a water park in the way that they enjoy their other parks.</p> Colleen: It would just be men.</p> Hannah: Right. I was going to say, there are a lot of other cultural weirdness around it.</p> Colleen: So, like.</p> Hannah: They would probably do like Women's Day.</p> Colleen: But they still are kind of out of doors.</p> Hannah: That's true.</p> Colleen: Someone could see from somewhere else. So unless you had an entirely indoors water park.</p> Hannah: Which do exist.</p> Colleen: Which do exist, it's just that's a lot of work to go to.</p> Hannah: Right.</p> Colleen: For women,</p> Hannah: That's true.</p> Colleen: In their mindset.</p> Hannah: Sure.</p> Colleen: Kurds really do like their outings with their whole family and everybody being together. And that's part of what the parks serve is it's a public gathering place that you can bring your whole family, even at night like they are hopping.</p> Hannah: Yeah, they definitely utilize parks in a way that I don't feel like most Americans do. Like we may go to the park to exercise or for like an afternoon picnic.</p> Colleen: Kids to play at. You know.</p> Hannah: And it's not like we're going to be here for the next 7 hours or we're going to spend the whole day.</p> Colleen: Right? We don't bring multiple meals worth and set up on the grass.</p> Hannah: And like, I feel like people in America would get mad at you if you did that to some extent. Like somebody would be upset that you were taking up park space for that amount of time. Like here, if you want to do that, you have to like reserve the pavilion. And pay to be there for that long. This is a totally different, totally different way of interacting.</p> Colleen: And like, people don't use that big green space to play Frisbee or baseball or soccer, really. I mean, some kids will do on the side, but.</p> Hannah: They dance, though.</p> Colleen: They dance. But it's not it's not like this green space is here for large sports, which is kind of the way I feel like American parks are set up. Like, I mean, there's weird stuff in the Kurdish parks, right? Like benches that look like enormous pieces of fruit.</p> Hannah: Or butterflies, we saw some of those, too.</p> Colleen: Like giant concrete structures and random bushes and trees.</p> Hannah: If I think about Centennial Park, which is the big downtown park here in Nashville, there's that big open field. And like, sometimes people are out there picnicking. But a lot of times as people like running their dogs out there or playing Frisbee or kicking a soccer ball around.</p> Colleen: Throwing a football.</p> Hannah: Throwing a football, it's definitely used as like, this is where we like are active, not this is where we.</p> Colleen: Lounge.</p> Hannah: Lounge and listen to music and dance and like it's utilized differently.</p> Colleen: Right? All the people who are there for picnics and things are tucked in behind the trees and, you know, in the picnic tables and benches and, you know.</p> Hannah: Yeah. And the pavilions that are set up specifically for that.</p> Colleen: Yeah.</p> Hannah: Yeah, but, Parks, we should go to more parks.</p> Hannah: We should.</p> Hannah: That's our. That's our resolution from this podcast. Go to more parks.</p> Colleen: Go to more parks!</p> Hannah: Hang out in the park.</p> Colleen: Tell us about your park. Yeah.</p> Hannah: Let us know how long you can hang out in a park before someone's like, Hey, why are you just, like, hanging out in the park? Don't you have somewhere to be? I wonder. Now I want to do a social experiment.</p> Colleen: Social experiment? I think Americans would be, too. Uh, I don't know. Unlikely to tell you what to do or comment on it.</p> Hannah: I don't think that's true.</p> Colleen: I don't know.</p> Hannah: I think they would. Somebody, somebody would get their feathers ruffled. Especially if you went with, like 15 people.</p> Colleen: Well, maybe.</p> Hannah: All right, check out your parks. Let us know. And if you live in the Nashville area, let us know of a good park we should go to. Besides Centennial Park. We've been there. We've done that. Give us somewhere new.</p> Colleen: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Servant Group International on Facebook or Instagram, and you should check out our blog and complete transcripts over at servantgroup.org.</p> Hannah: And it's really helpful for us if you share our podcast or leave a review on whatever platform you listen to this podcast on. It helps us know that people are listening and you can let us know what you want to hear next. Thanks for listening.</p>

00:28:54

Helping After Another Earthquake in Turkey

Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Episode 58 This is a special update episode! Hannah and Colleen interview Robin, who helped SGI rebuild schools in Turkey after the big earthquakes in 1999. Those connections and relationships have opened up paths for us to serve in relief work and hopefully with rebuilding after these more recent earthquakes. We're sending teams to help build shelters in the short term and hopefully continue to serve the area as they rebuild. <a href="https://servantgroup.org/relief-work-in-turkey-team-heading-over-soon/">https://servantgroup.org/relief-work-in-turkey-team-heading-over-soon/</a></p> And here's a rough transcript!</p> Hannah: Welcome to "Between Iraq and a Hard Place". I'm Hannah.</p> Colleen: And I'm Colleen. And we're here to tell you a little bit about life in Iraq.</p> Hannah: Woo hoo!</p> Colleen: Today we have a guest with us, our dear friend Robin Dillard.</p> Hannah: She's been on the podcast before.</p> Colleen: True. But today she's coming to us in a very special capacity as she was part of a team years ago with Servant Group that served after the 1999 earthquake in Turkey. And so that seemed particularly relevant right now as we are continuing at looking at ways of serving in Turkey as Turkey suffered another major series of earthquakes. So we're very excited to hear what you have to share today, Robin, and how everything's connected, the work then and the work now.</p> Hannah: So our first non Iraq focused episode. Mm hmm.</p> Colleen: Yeah, ooh. Is that a problem?</p> Hannah: No. We're just gonna have to call this one between Turkey and a hard place.</p> Robin: Uh, well, it's interesting because when the earthquake of 99 happens in Turkey, Dave and I had been working in Iraq already for eight years or something like that. And so our work was centered on the Kurds in Iraq and hadn't thought about working in Turkey. So when the earthquake happened there was a church in Nashville or a supporter that went to one of our supporting churches and said, Hey, this is a really devastating event that's happened in Turkey. I'd like to send the director over to Turkey and get him on the ground and just see what the people could use there. And so with the $1,000, that was the donation it paid for the the travel. It got our director, Douglas, over to Turkey on the ground. And when he was over there, he met with several friends who had been living in Istanbul and some other team members from Europe met him there. And together they went to the center of the earthquake region, which was Izmit. That earthquake was 7.4. So it was it was pretty major. It was what they were calling at that time, the event of the century. This was about you could take a boat ride from Istanbul. It takes about an hour if you get on the ferry. So it's pretty close to Istanbul. And so the team came together and went on site and it was just devastating, how many people were homeless. Actually, after the earthquake, there was a tsunami in the Sea of Marmara that killed another couple hundred people.</p> Colleen: Wow.</p> Robin: So just devastated. This earthquake killed about 17,000 and about half a million people were left homeless. So when they went there, they just met with the city officials and said, what can we do? How can we help? You know, and what besides needing shelter, they really wanted schools. Everything was devastated. Their kids had no place to learn. So that was sort of the takeaway. They want us to build some schools. He flew back to America. And brought Dave in the office and said, Aren't you an engineer? And Dave said, Yeah. And he said, Isn't your wife an engineer? Yeah, she's an engineer. Hey, can you build some buildings? And we were like, What? I mean, it's specialty earthquake design is a specialty in structural design. And so my college degree was in structural design, but I didn't do much earthquake design at all. But we had friends who lived in the Pacific Northwest who were very accustomed to that kind of design. So they had the technology we needed and were willing to come alongside of us.</p> Colleen: So you guys decided to build schools?</p> Robin: Yeah.</p> Colleen: In Turkey?</p> Robin: Yeah.</p> Hannah: Earthquake resistant.</p> Robin: Schools? Yeah.</p> Hannah: How was the timeline on this? Like, how long from Douglas getting back? Was he like, okay, you guys are going to go?</p> Robin: It was like less than a couple of months. It was so fast. It was fast. Yeah. So we had, we had the $1,000 that was all that was given. We started raising money for this huge project and sent our first team over to build several concrete structures. Which that was sort of the first prototype. It was much more difficult, but it got us on the ground really fast. And we took teams there, contractors from Nashville and people that could just pick up and go right away. And that was the first team that went. And in the process, Dave was supposed to go over and he got appendicitis.</p> Hannah: Oh, no!</p> Robin: I don't know if you guys knew that he was really, really ill because his appendix burst and so he was bed bound for like weeks. He was so ill. So he was the person who was supposed to be in charge of everything. And here he was stateside. So we sent the teams. They did really tremendous work, working with local contractors. And so that was the first two school buildings that were built and everyone was happy. And it gave us favor. Like, I mean, the government officials were like, come back, we need more. We need more. So. It gave us a little bit more time. To to say, okay, just pouring these concrete structures on site is not probably the best way. There's got to be better construction and maybe we can build something in America and have it partially shipped over. So we called FedEx and they were on board to to help us get materials to Turkey. So they were sort of our logistics person, FedEx. And and we linked up one of our contacts in the Pacific Northwest had developed this earthquake resistant building system recently and it was sort of a combination metal and concrete system. And so we really we learned how to use that system and how to detail and design using it. And what we ended up doing is building some of the frames just in our parking lot in Nashville and having all those things figured out, the frames built, shipping them over, using FedEx. They arrived on the site and once we got on site with our teams, then we started pouring concrete and much more efficient system, much more light gauge, lightweight, earthquake resistant and just doable. Like it was quick and you could put up a building just like in a week. Literally. Just tilt it up. It was tilt up panels a little bit different than we did before.</p> Hannah: What's a tilt up panel?</p> Robin: Yeah. So you have a metal frame that's done and that's what we did in Nashville. And and you set it on the ground. You sort of. It's like making brownies, sort of.</p> Hannah: Okay.</p> Robin: Here's what you do. You line like you have a form on the ground and you put like you spray it like with Pam so it doesn't stick. And then you lay your metal into it and then you pour your concrete on it and you let it dry and then you pick it up. You just tilt it up and that becomes your wall system and your roof system for a building. And it's extremely efficient, lightweight, fast. And what you have to bring from America are like the anchors that hold it all together. And that's what we were shipping over besides the the metal, we shipped all these anchors over and it was crazy. So I think, um, we took in the process over several years we built six structures. And probably involved several hundred people. Building and going over to Turkey like either involved in Nashville building frames or on the ground. You know, putting these buildings up, finishing the buildings, all that. And probably that thousand dollars was the seed money it turned into several hundred thousand dollars being raised is probably was 200 to 300 people being involved from $1,000 seed money.</p> Colleen: That's a big project.</p> Robin: Amazing. So the last building we built was for our team members who wanted to stay in the region and continue to help the people of that city. And so the second to the last building we built was the police headquarters in that city.</p> Colleen: I've seen photos of that one.</p> Robin: So that one was the smile of the city. And man, everyone loved it and felt safe in it. And from that point on, our team members like they had the kiss of of the mayor. And the last building we built was was a house for our team member to live in. So he stayed in that region and helped the people. Help them with industry, business. As well as helping the refugees that would later show up and that all along the coast from Syria and Iran and Iraq. And so he's been there over 20 years.</p> Hannah: Yeah. That's amazing.</p> Robin: Yeah, it is.</p> Hannah: And now they've had this this huge, bigger earthquake, right? 7.8 was the original one. And it was devastating. And they've recently had some more big ones. And probably by the time this gets out there, we'll have more accurate numbers. But they're in the hundreds of thousands of people presumed dead at this point. Right.</p> Colleen: I don't know if it's quite hundreds of thousands.</p> Hannah: Tens of thousands?</p> Robin: Tens of thousands. Yeah, it's over 40. I think we're looking at 45,000.</p> Hannah: So we are still working with with folks there in Turkey still right now, it seems like the thing they need is, is funds to be able to feed and house and and work on some rescue operation type stuff.</p> Colleen: It sounds like most of what's going on is passing out food, blankets, diapers and then building tents or these other kind of temporary metal structures.</p> Hannah: Yeah, we are sending teams?</p> Colleen: We're sending a team next week.</p> Robin: Yeah. It's a discovery trip. And yeah, they'll survey the land and see and see if they can get all the materials they need on the ground. But it will be a shelter, shelter building. I mean we're hoping to I think we are with another agency raising funds for 100 structures. Right. That's the first phase. Yeah. 100.</p> Hannah: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think we are hopeful that we can send interested Americans over to to help build that. And that will be pending information. Keep an eye on the website for information about that. If if you're interested in in going, that might be possible. So yeah, we're just again amazed that it's been 20 some years, 23 year since then. And and we're back. We're connected still through all of this. Yeah. Well, thanks. Thanks, Robin. Anything else?</p> Colleen: Thanks. Glad to be here.</p> Hannah: Are you going to build us some earthquake proof shelters here in the US.</p> Robin: What do you think? Do you like concrete?</p> Hannah: I think the back end of the office needs to be shored up.</p> Robin: I think you're right. That makes me a little bit nervous. Actually. I agree with you.</p> Hannah: Oh, man.</p> Hannah: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Servant Group International on Facebook or Instagram, and you should check out our blog and complete transcripts over at ServantGroup.org.</p> Colleen: And it's really helpful for us if you share our podcast or leave a review on whatever platform you listen to this podcast on, it helps us know that people are listening and you can let us know what you want to hear next.</p> Hannah: Thanks for listening.</p>

00:14:59

Visiting the Team in Iraq

Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Episode 57 Learn more at <a href="http://www.ServantGroup.org/Iraq">www.ServantGroup.org/Iraq</a> and email Hannah at <a href="mailto:hannah@servantgroup.org">hannah@servantgroup.org</a> with questions, comments, or suggestions!</p> Here's a rough transcript!</p> Hannah: Welcome to Between Iraq and a Hard Place. I'm Hannah.</p> Colleen: And I'm Colleen. And we're here to tell you a little bit about life in Iraq.</p> Hannah: Woo hoo!</p> Colleen: Welcome back, Hannah.</p> Hannah: Thanks.</p> Colleen: You were gone a lot over the last few months.</p> Hannah: I was, not all of it relevant to this podcast, but some of it.</p> Colleen: But some of it was because you went to Iraq.</p> Hannah: I did.</p> Colleen: Which I will say is one of the most fun things to tell people randomly when they ask, Oh, how are your roommates? Oh, my roommate, Hannah, she's in Iraq. And they're like, What?!</p> Hannah: That's true. I went to a meeting of a different volunteer organization this week and people are like, We haven't seen you around. Where have you been? And I was like, Well, I was out of the country and they're like, Oh, where did you go? And I was like, I went to the Middle East. Oh, where in the Middle East? I went to Iraq, and they're all like, Oh, I have no follow up questions. Well, some of them had follow up questions, but.</p> Colleen: But yeah, it definitely is a little on the shocking end of things. Why, Hannah, would you ever go to such a country?</p> Hannah: I mean, aside from the previous, you know, 50-ish, how many episodes have we done?</p> Colleen: I don't remember.</p> Hannah: We're going to call it 50 because that feels right to me. This particular time it was to visit with our staff who are living in Iraq and, you know, some of the other folks that we work with in Iraq as well. So it wasn't just hanging out with Americans time. We also hung out with some British people and some Kurdish people.</p> Colleen: And some Kurdish people. Good, good.</p> Hannah: Yeah. And I think for both you and I, that was one of the things we really appreciated about Servant Group in our time living in Iraq was that, you know, the director at the time and someone else, at least one other person, usually came and visited us once or twice a year.</p> Colleen: Yeah.</p> Hannah: And so it's kind of fun to get to be the person who does the visiting now. It feels powerful. I mean, it actually sometimes makes me really nervous to be like, okay, I got to, I got to be as good as Lisa was. It's a lot of pressure.</p> Colleen: Yeah. Yeah. I think it was key having people come and be able to see the changes that had happened over time and the ways we maybe grew as teachers or the ways our classes had grown or the changes in the schools, some of the changes that were good, in ways that we couldn't see because we're on the ground and like it happens incrementally. And then also just a better understanding of what day to day life looks like and the challenges of the things that happen on a day to day life, whether that's acquiring water or, you know, using the right amount of electricity to not flip your breaker or all of the other things that we run into that don't always get communicated in a weekly phone call because they're just the detritus of life.</p> Hannah: Yeah. I can remember on probably one of the first trips that Dave and Lisa made feeling like, Oh, they're going to come and like sit in my classroom and watch me teach and I've never taught before, and they're going to be like super critical and like, it's going to be terrible.</p> Colleen: The judgment is going to come.</p> Hannah: Yeah. And it was 100% the opposite of that. And it was kind of interesting on this trip, our newest staff member, I think, kind of felt the same way about us coming to visit. We got a lot of text messages and emails ahead of time of like, So what are you expecting to do? Like…</p> Colleen: What do you need from me?</p> Hannah: Me? And then I told him I was going to come sit in on one of one of his classes and he was like, Okay, like, are you going to, like, give like report me to the administration? Like, is this just? And I was like, No, it's just me coming to sit in on your class to see what you're like as a teacher, what the students are like. If there's some way I can help you and give you advice, I'm happy to do that. But really, I just want to I just want to observe this is part of your life and I want to observe it. And he was like, Okay.</p> Colleen: But hopefully by the end, you had communicated that like you guys are there to be a blessing and an encouragement and to be a witness like that phrase, observe, like I think a big part of what we need as as people is that there are witnesses to our lives.</p> Hannah: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's definitely a big part of it. I think it also really helps establish trust between them and us. Because while John and I have both lived there in the past and it is known to the team, I think seeing us be there and be part of their lives and not and not be critical or not be demanding really helps them feel like they can trust us because we're not just saying, hey, we care about you. It's like, hey, I showed up here in your life today and, you know, we took you out to dinner or we took you on a little adventure or whatever.</p> Colleen: Yeah, the visits from Dave and Lisa or Kay or any of the others that we've had over the years were always times where the people visiting, like, were there to treat us well and like to… Yeah, we always would go out to dinner, we'd do fun, special things and spend time just talking or visiting some site or like it was not just, Oh, now we have to take care of these American people. It was never that it was. They've actually come to step into our lives and take care of us.</p> Hannah: Yeah, I remember on probably Dave and Lisa's first visit to me while I was in the country. Dave wanted to take Andy. He wanted to take one of the other staff members and and me to a music store so that we could get guitars because we both played. And he was like, Oh, it's really important for you to have a guitar like SGI will provide it for you. And I was like, Oh great, I know this music shop nearby. I have been living in the country for maybe, maybe three months at that point, but I was like, yes, 100%. I am confident I can get you there. I've been there once. And so we got in taxis and I told them where to go because I knew the nearest landmark to it. But the taxi took us in like a totally different way and like, instead of dropping us off on the side that I was used to of this landmark, he dropped us off on a different side and I was like, I have no idea where we are. I don't know where we are. I don't know how to get to the place that I know. None of us spoke any Kurdish because it was Dave and Andy and I and Andy and I had been in the country for two months, three months. And so we ended up walking around in probably 100 degree heat, wandering around looking for this music store and like occasionally stopping and asking like, do you know, dukan with like and the play the guitar, air guitar, guitar thing happening. And I think we finally found someone who called a friend who spoke English, and we were able to ask the question through the translator. They were like, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're going to go down the street that you're on and then you're going to turn left. And it was like, But where, where do we turn left? And it was just like, Well, it's just you'll see, you'll see it, you'll see it. And it was like, okay, I guess off we go to try to find this music store. And they were right. It was like we went down the road, we took the first left and as soon as you take that left, you saw the music store and it was like, Oh, thank goodness. We were really close. And I think Dave gave me a hard time about that. For the rest of that trip, he would be like, Well, don't ask Hannah where to go. I think I finally redeemed myself eventually, after I had lived there and I was like, No, I do actually know how to get places now. But yeah, but it was like that was one of those bonding times of like, you're here lost in this country with me and we are both experiencing this. Like, I don't know where to get where I'm going. I don't know how to ask for help. I don't know where I am. But you're helping me figure this out.</p> Colleen: Yeah. And as much as Dave gave you a hard time for it, it was all in good fun.</p> Hannah: It was good fun.</p> Colleen: Not in actual frustration or judgement.</p> Hannah: No, no, not at all. I think he even stopped at one of the shops and was like, here, water for everyone. We're all super dehydrated. And we got our guitars. So, you know, happy, happy.</p> Colleen: We like to take good care of our our, our team members.</p> Hannah: So another one of the things that we do is we bring stuff to them. So I filled my suitcase this time with about 20 lbs. of brown sugar. Which was the only thing that really got asked for, which is fine. It's fine. I'm happy to bring brown sugar. I think maybe someone who did a security check on my bag was like, What in the world? And all of my clothes smelled like brown sugar the rest of the trip. It was awesome.</p> Colleen: That doesn't sound awesome to me.</p> Hannah: It was so great. Brown. Sure smells so good.</p> Colleen: It does. But I don't think I would want my clothes to smell like it.</p> Hannah: Yeah, but one of the weird things was when you and I lived there, there were specific things that we were like, We cannot find this anywhere. This does not exist here. And we went into one of the shops with our team and it was like, You can buy brown sugar here. Oh, it costs like $10 for half a pound. So it's not cost effective.</p> Colleen: It's a little expensive.</p> Hannah: But you couldn't get it at all. No. And they had like all kinds of weird like keto stuff and sugar substitutes. And I mean, it was not a cheap store.</p> Colleen: But when I first went people were asking people to bring in peanut butter because you couldn't get peanut butter.</p> Hannah: You could get peanut butter.</p> Colleen: I mean, by the end of my time there, I could get peanut butter.</p> Hannah: I think they even had Fruity Pebbles, which I feel like you can't get in every grocery store in America. Not that I look for them, really, often. I think that that was kind of a a fun aspect of it for me was like, what are things that I know that they can get? That I don't have to think about bringing them or things that they could get here. But it's too expensive that I can be like, Well, let me just let me just buy it for you. Yeah, this will make your life more convenient and easy. How can we problem solve this for you? And I think John got wrangled into actually fixing a couple of things in the women's apartment. Yeah. That they were Sure. Hey, you're an engineer. Can you fix this? And he did happily.</p> Colleen: I think the other thing is that often we end up bringing over our packages from family members or sometimes mail, letters and cards, birthday cards sometimes, or Christmas cards. And I know when my family came to visit me, my mom and my sister came. They brought me Christmas decorations. Nice. That was super fun and books. We would do a lot of books because the the whole digital reading was a less common solution to the lack of, you know, your local public library.</p> Hannah: Yeah, I think it changes maybe not year to year, but it changes frequently enough that it's like, oh, this thing that like in my mind I will say the one thing that has not changed is chocolate chips. You still cannot get chocolate chips there.</p> Colleen: How odd.</p> Hannah: I mean, you can buy a chocolate and chop it.</p> Colleen: Chop it up, I mean which it does work.</p> Hannah: But yeah, I think they melt. I think that's the problem when they get shipped.</p> Colleen: Because they don't plan to ship them in the refrigerated units the way they do the chocolate bars from Europe.</p> Hannah: Yeah. And maybe chocolate chips are like a surprisingly American thing.</p> Colleen: Maybe.</p> Hannah: I don't know.</p> Colleen: I've never tried to make chocolate chip cookies in Europe.</p> Hannah: No, Me neither. Never lived in Europe.</p> Colleen: Me either.</p> Hannah: Well, I'll have to find out. If you live in Europe, let us know. Can you get chocolate chips? Semi-Sweet ones. Semi-Sweet chocolate chips?</p> Hannah: So the number one way that we get new people in Iraq is by other people telling them about Iraq. So maybe you're not interested in going, but maybe you know someone who is. Tell them about this podcast. Tell them about Servant Group International. It would be a big help!</p> Hannah: One of the other things we did on our trip was we, well we did a lot of things, but we took the team out with our Kurdish friend to his farm for the day. And so for a news team member, it was his first time outside of the city that he's been living in, into the countryside. And we went with our our good this guy who's been working with Servant Group for like 20 years, I think. He is hilarious and really fun and his family is lovely and they're like used to Americans in our weird quirkiness. Yeah. And so he took us out to his farm about a 45 minute drive outside of town, and we had a very Kurdish sort of day, which I think was a little… I think our team was a little worn out. They'd had a really busy week, but I think they also enjoyed like we wandered through his fruit orchards and looked at his new building projects and he talked to us about like the villages and it was really close to like an oil refinery. And so he told us all about that. I felt like I learned a lot. It was also on like a small river, the the Zab,</p> Colleen: the little Zab, the greater Zab?</p> Hannah: Little Zab. And so that was kind of cool. I never really been aside from like picnic bus tours. I never really been that close to a river in Iraq. Um, and so I felt like it was a good chance for our, our new team members especially. But even the, the older ones to be like, this is very Kurdish and it's beautiful in spite of the fact that it's 102 degrees outside.</p> Colleen: There you go. And it's very different from the city, which is where our team members live is in the city. And a lot of those resources and a lot of those amenities don't exist the same way out in the villages is the way they do in the city.</p> Hannah: Right. Like his house didn't have air conditioning in the rooms that we were in, at least. I don't think there was even splits, the air conditioning and heating units. But he cleverly made almost like central air by creating vents, like when they built the house, putting vents in and then he has swamp coolers.</p> Colleen: Yeah. Swamp coolers work great.</p> Hannah: Blow into the vents and throughout the whole house. So if the swamp coolers are on, it cools the whole house. And I had never seen that in a Kurdish house before. And I was like, This is brilliant!</p> Colleen: One of the houses I lived in in Iraq had had a swamp cooler.</p> Hannah: I mean, I've seen the swamp coolers, but not like hooked up to a central air system like that.</p> Colleen: Definitely connected to things. Yeah, But yeah, it's amazing how well swamp coolers work in a really, really dry environment.</p> Hannah: Yeah, it was impressive. And you could tell when they were, like, out or when the power was out, it was like, Oh, it is uncomfortable. Not awful, but uncomfortable. It was a lot of fun hanging out with him and his family. They also did a very Kurdish… we did a barbecue. Uh huh. With lamb and chicken skewers, tikka.</p> Colleen: There you go. Did it have the the little grill pan with the the fan that you spin and you turn really fast?</p> Hannah: So I had the little grill pan, which is like maybe a foot and a half long and seven, eight inches wide. And then they put, like, charcoal, wood, charcoal on the bottom. But instead of having the little fan that you like crank the handle and it blows the he updated his methodology.</p> Colleen: Oh, really?</p> Hannah: And he has a tiny little blower that maybe it was like child like a child sized leaf blower. He plugged into his house and he just stood there with his leaf blower and blew on the coals with the leaf blower until they got red hot. It was like much more energy efficient.</p> Colleen: I mean, because I have seen people without the little crank fan ones just do it with paper or their lungs. And it always seems like a lot of work.</p> Hannah: This was very, very efficient. And he made John stand and heat up the coals. That was John's job. I've never been more thankful to be a woman than that day when I was like, I don't have to touch the meat. I don't have to deal with the coals. I can just sit here and drink my cold water and watch the men sweat over this.</p> Colleen: Do the barbecue.</p> Hannah: Delightful. I had a new thing for a Kurdish barbecue, at least. I've done this in the US, but a grilled onion, which was exciting. So they took a bunch of onions and put them on the skewer like they do with the meat and just cooked them over the coals like that. So you have to, like, peel the outer. They leave the outer papery skin on.</p> Colleen: Wait, you've never seen that before?</p> Hannah: I've never seen it with a whole onion. I've seen it with, like, pieces of onion or like the quarter the onion and skewer the quarter. But this was like an entire onion. And, like, I've done it in the US where we wrap them in aluminum foil and put them in the coals of a charcoal grill. But yeah, I'd never seen it there.</p> Colleen: Wonder if that's just more of a eastern Kurdistan thing.</p> Hannah: I think it must be a Suly thing because they're from Suly originally, but his mom I think was like. I want an onion. Put an onion on the grill for me. And then he was like, Does anyone else want an onion? And I was like, Oh, me, I want an onion. And so he just did a whole skewer of them.</p> Colleen: A whole skewer of onions.</p> Hannah: And I think it made his mother happy that I was like, Yeah, grill me an onion too, man. Yeah, it was really fun. And I mean, we did other things besides just team check in. We use those visits as reconnection in person with the school administration. There were some new administrators that I had never met before, so it was really good to meet them. While we were there, they asked us to do some teacher evaluations. So just sitting in a classroom watching non-American teachers teach. And that was really fun for me because a year ago I did teacher training, so I got to sit in for some of the teachers that I had trained and so I could be like, Hey, they listened or maybe there are more things we need to go over like next time. But yeah, even just like you said, to see the changes in the school and the improvements in the school and it's definitely very improved since we were there. I feel like the quality, at least of the teachers that I saw, has gotten a lot better. too. And I think it made our staff feel better too, because I did sit in on three of their classes, one class for each of our staff members. And so I think they felt like, Oh, you're not just sitting in on our classes, you're also sitting in on like normal classes.</p> Colleen: Kurdish taught classes.</p> Hannah: I did sit in on a Kurdish class and I was like, I don't know how to evaluate this. I don't know what they're saying. But then I realized I was in the wrong place and I was like, Oh, he's he ran over his time. It's not my fault.</p> Colleen: Ah ha! Like, so I'd like to evaluate this teacher on his usage of time.</p> Hannah: Yes. Yes, I did. I did note that on my evaluation paper.</p> Colleen: Evaluation paper.</p> Hannah: I only got to observe this teacher for like 5 minutes because the previous teacher ran over and we also went and visited / met for the first time. Well, I met for the first time some some new folks that were partnering with in Suly. Yeah. And so that's kind of an aspect that I think when I lived in Iraq, I didn't really realize that maybe Dave and Lisa were doing was like connecting with other people who were not part of the schools or any of that and and making those connections. Um, so again, it was kind of like getting a peek behind the curtain except like, I'm already on the other side of the curtain.</p> Colleen: You are the other side of the curtain.</p> Hannah: I know, it's so weird. Yeah. And then we also got to go to church with our team, which was new for John. I. I'd been when I was there a year ago.</p> Colleen: Right.</p> Hannah: But our team, really, like, in all of the talks that we had with them up to that point. Were really like, We really want you to come to church. We really want you to see what it's like and have this experience. Yeah, so we did. And I think it was, again, one of those things that's like encouraging to them. Gives us a better picture of like just what church life is like for them.</p> Colleen: Was it what you expected? Like in the sense of it felt like an American church service? Or was it different than your… I don't know that saying a standard American church service seems a little bit silly, because there is not a standard. But..</p> Hannah: I think it very much… And it's a Baptist church. And so I was like, yep, this is a Baptist church. It seems very much like a Baptist church.</p> Colleen: No major surprises.</p> Hannah: No major surprises, except there were. Uh, a group of I think they were Pakistani guys in the back who were having the sermon translated for them, which I don't really see in American churches.</p> Colleen: No, really?</p> Hannah: Yeah. And it took me a minute to be like, What is going on? Because there was one guy with, like, the sheaf of papers that he was flipping through and talking, like whispering quietly with the other guys. And I was like, are they doing like some kind of paperwork in church? And I was like, Oh, no, he has all the sermon notes. And so he is like translating the sermon while it's being given to these guys. Ok, cool!</p> Colleen: I love it. I love, I love international church.</p> Hannah: It was really cool. They they also have a QR code that you can scan and choose your language to have the sermon translated to on your phone so you can listen on your phone with your headphones to a live translation.</p> Colleen: Wow!</p> Hannah: And I think it's only in like Arabic and Spanish and maybe Kurdish.</p> Colleen: Yeah.</p> Hannah: Which is why the Pakistani guys had their own personal translator. But yeah, I was like, What a cool thing! Not a thing that existed when I lived there.</p> Colleen: I ran into that when I spent a couple of summers in Japan. The church there did did that. But yeah, never in Iraq. The joys of technology. It sounds like you had a good time.</p> Hannah: Yeah, it was a good time. It was short. It was shorter than our trips usually are. But we also usually, if we're going that far, go to like several different places. And so this trip, we really only went to Kurdistan and we were primarily in Hawler, except for the day trip that we did down to Suly. So it felt nice to just kind of be able to be in one place most of the time. Yeah, not, you know, Greece and a different place in Greece and then Iraq and then a different place in Iraq and then a different place in Iraq.</p> Colleen: And then Turkey.</p> Hannah: And then Turkey. Yeah, I feel like it wasn't it was intense in that it was short, but it wasn't intense in that I was like, I have been traveling for three weeks and haven't slept in the same bed for two nights in a row for 80% of this trip.</p> Colleen: You didn't seem to have too much trouble with the the jet lag coming back and seemed to recover okay.</p> Hannah: Yeah. Yeah, it was good. The worst part of the trip was Chicago, but we're not going to talk about that.</p> Colleen: Okay. I think we all have our favorite and least favorite airports at this point.</p> Hannah: Yeah, it's one of those things that it's like, I know better. I know better than to fly through Chicago. And yet, I keep doing it.</p> Colleen: It's the cheap way to go.</p> Hannah: It is the cheap way or the shortest like travel time.</p> Colleen: Yeah.</p> Hannah: Yeah. So are you going to go with me in the spring?</p> Colleen: I'd love to. I'm working really hard on getting enough volunteers lined up for my English classes that I can leave them.</p> Hannah: That would be awesome.</p> Colleen: That's my hope and my plan.</p> Hannah: And then we'll do a podcast from Iraq.</p> Colleen: That would be so much fun. We should totally do that!</p> Hannah: Yeah. All right. So you got to get the time off. Or the volunteers to fill in? And I got to remember to bring the microphone. So, you know, my job is the harder of the two for sure.</p> Colleen: Oh, yeah, for sure.</p> Hannah: For sure.</p> Colleen: But more suitcases to bring more gifts to our Iraq staff is also more fun.</p> Hannah: It is more fun. All right. You heard it here first, folks. Next podcast from Iraq…</p> Colleen: No, no. We're going to record one before then. That's going to be the spring.</p> Hannah: A future podcast, not live streamed, from Iraq.</p> Colleen: We could do a live stream.</p> Hannah: No, we can't. I don't want to.</p> Colleen: It could be fun.</p> Hannah: No, the filter is very important for me because sometimes I say things that should not be on the podcast and I can edit them.</p> Colleen: Okay.</p> Hannah: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Servant Group International on Facebook or Instagram, and you should check out our blog and complete transcripts over at servantgroup.org.</p> Colleen: And it's really helpful for us if you share our podcast or leave a review on whatever platform you listen to this podcast on. It helps us know that people are listening and you can let us know what you want to hear next.</p> Both: Thanks for listening.</p> Hannah: Just Chicago. Something always goes wrong.</p>

00:29:41

Tourism in Iraq (Dohuk Region)

Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Episode 56 Learn more at <a href="http://www.ServantGroup.org/Iraq">www.ServantGroup.org/Iraq</a> and email Hannah at <a href="mailto:hannah@servantgroup.org">hannah@servantgroup.org</a> with questions, comments, or suggestions!</p> Hannah: A special mini episode for you! It's the last ten minutes of the previous episode about tourism in northern Iraq. This one is just about Duhok, baby! We realized that we were really running over time, so… Here you go! Special mini episode on Duhok tourism, starting now!</p> Hannah: Duhok itself has the Duhok Dam…</p> Colleen: …which is like the number one place all Kurds want to go!</p> Hannah: It's huge and it's painted to look like a giant Kurdish flag.</p> Colleen: Which, I mean, what more could you want?</p> Hannah: What more could you want. It's earthen, primarily earthen, dam. So the Duhok Lake is behind it. We just always called it the Geli, which maybe is the Kurdish word for dam or for ravine, but that whole neighborhood is just known as the Geli, which I lived in the Geli neighborhood for a little while.</p> Hannah: It's also touristy, like they have a mini golf course and an arcade at the bottom of the dam.</p> Colleen: And a restaurant?</p> Hannah: Yeah.</p> Colleen: Like, I've seen the restaurant!</p> Hannah: And an ice cream stand. Apparently Duhok is famous for its ice cream…</p> Colleen: No kidding!</p> Hannah: I did not know this until I lived there and they were, like, "Yeah, Duhok has the best ice cream." And I was, like, "Well, ok."</p> Colleen: All the ice cream I ever ate was from Turkey.</p> Hannah: They make their own in Duhok. It's pretty good.</p> Colleen: I mean that would be famous compared to places that don't really make their own.</p> Colleen: There are two other caves-ish there. The one I remember visiting we always just called the Zoroastrian cave and it's got these four pillars and, like, obviously things had been burned in there--it's kind of black and sooty. There are stories--again, I feel like people don't really know what it was for--about, you know, different goddesses or the Mithridaties.</p> Hannah: Sure. It a very weird…</p> Colleen: It's one of those, you know, mystery religions ones that maybe they were part of that or it was their temple…</p> Hannah: Or maybe it was theirs first, and then the Zoroastrians got it.</p> Colleen: Yeah, that was the only place I ever actually met tourists from Mosul.</p> Hannah: Oh, really!</p> Colleen: You know, because you walk up on this hill and its got this plaque down at the bottom about Zoroastrianism, and, um, yeah, made some friends, got some pictures with people.</p> Hannah: Nice! What's the other cave?</p> Colleen: It's the one that I've never been to but that Victoria talked about going to--the Halamata cave--which has actual carvings and is Assyrian, I think.</p> Hannah: Yeah, it's up on Zawa mountain, which Zawa is a tourist attraction, too. Again, for Nowruz, all the Duhok people go up on Zawa and set off fireworks. It's not as beautiful as Aqrah, but it is cool because you can look down on all of Duhok. It's really cool to be up there. We went up there once to watch the sunrise and the moon set, because they were happening at the same time. So we went up on Zawa to watch it. It's the coldest I've ever been in my life. It's really cold.</p> Colleen: Yeah, standing on mountains in Iraq is definitely one of colder, colder times I've had. We did up that on Azmar Mountain, which is the mountain, large hill, that overlooks Suly, and we went up there for Easter morning sunrise service! The wind was whipping through there and were all huddled in a circle and trying in some sort of Easter song. And it was too cold!!</p> Colleen: Yeah, um, the other thing that only really knew about Westerners or high school kids doing is hiking up to Flag Mountain, which is a mountainside that overlooks Duhok that's basically just rock but someone has painted the Kurdish flag on it.</p> Colleen: I mean, again, what more do you want?</p> Hannah: I guess. I never went up there, because I never understood why…</p> Colleen: When we were looking up different things that tourists go to see in Kurdistan before we did this episode, just to make sure that we weren't forgetting anything drastic. One of the things that was mentioned a lot by different people was all of the murals and the mural art in different places.</p> Colleen: There are some really awesome murals!</p> Colleen: And there are a lot of really cool murals and, because of the intensity of the sun and the low quality of the paint, they change fairly frequently, because they fade so quickly. And so, there are ones that I remember seeing that are definitely not there anymore or got repainted over with something different. But it's definitely a fun part of being there and going to different places and seeing what kind of paintings there are on rocks and dams and old military barriers, checkpoints, and along the side of the road.</p> Hannah: The military barriers are pretty popular for murals. There was one town that I do not know the name of that we would drive through between Erbil and Duhok that had a mosaic mural that went along the side of the highway on one of their walls, which was always really cool…</p> Colleen: But the most common is definitely paintings of the flag of Kurdistan.</p> Hannah: Oh yeah, super common! Super common. I think the only one we really have left is Zahko bridge, which is popular with everybody!</p> Colleen: Yeah, I never made it.</p> Hannah: That's too bad! It's pretty cool. I say that. The last time I went was when I was in Duhok the last time I was visiting.</p> Colleen: So not while you will lived there!</p> Hannah: Not while I lived there! One of my students and her brother took me up there. There's an old Roman bridge built across a very tumultuous river, still in use, in Zakho. You can walk across it. It's definitely touristy. The day we went there it was rainy, so there weren't a lot of people. But yeah, you can walk across it. It might be the only thing there is to do in Zahhol.</p> Colleen: I know that, like, the people who went there when we took high school students around different places one year and different stuff like that, that it was just the thing you were going for was to see this bridge.</p> Hannah: And I think I was told by one of my students that the reason that it's famous was that there were some forbidden lovers who threw themselves off of the bridge to drown in the river in protest, like Romeo and Juliet kind of thing, and so the bridge has never been demolished to commemorate their love. Everything that I read about it is that it's just a really old Roman bridge, a stone arch bridge, and there is a modern bridge now, too.</p> Colleen: But, I mean, there are a lot of star-crossed Kurdish lovers in Kurdish poetry. It is a very popular theme.</p> Hannah: Yeah, it is.</p> Colleen: But I think that about covers it.</p> Hannah: There are definitely things that we left out.</p> Colleen: Well, there were a lot of things that we left out that we could not a) find on the internet, identify by name, things we randomly saw.</p> Hannah: Yeah, I mean I've seen pictures from students and other friends who find these, like, beautiful places that I'm like, "Where is that!? How did you get there? Why did you never take me there!?"</p> Colleen: My favorite one of those is one called Deralok Dam, which the photos of it look magical with this stunning teal, blue water, and when I first saw it I was like, "That is photoshopped!" And they're like, "No, no, it's real."</p> Hannah: So is there actually a dam?</p> Colleen: There is a dam.</p> Hannah: With water behind it?</p> Colleen: There is water behind it, I think.</p> Hannah: Because I know there's also some sort of natural spring that also has turquoise water, but its white stone with turquoise water--like it looks very Mediterranean.</p> Colleen: Yeah, I do feel like this did look Mediterranean to me, but I don't think any of what I saw looked like it had white stone. But there are a couple of different areas of it. There's like a family area and then like a mens' area.</p> Hannah: Maybe it's the men's area. The only reason I say that is because my male friends are the ones who have posted certain pictures.</p> Colleen: But yeah, I never even heard of that while I was in Iraq.</p> Hannah: I'm sure there are some that we've missed that we just never saw, and I also feel like things continue to be discovered: little magical, beautiful gems of places. It's definitely, there is always something more to explore carefully.</p> Colleen: Carefully.</p> Hannah: And with a guide, if you can get one. Yeah, tell us about your places that you've visited that are maybe off the beaten path. I know there are a ton of places where I grew up that I love to go to that I won't tell other people about because I don't want to ruin it. So if you have those special places, maybe don't give us details, but let us know! Some magic gem you found somewhere along the way, and we'll be back… to talk about prison.</p> Colleen: Probably. Yeah, I don't know that that's our next one!</p> Hannah: Prison!</p> Colleen: We'd love to hear from you! You can find us Servant Group International on Facebook or Instagram and you should check out our blog and complete transcripts over at servantgroup.org.</p> Hannah: And it's really hopeful for us if you share our podcast or leave a review on whatever platform you listen to this podcast on! It helps us know that people are listening and lets us know what you want to hear next!</p> Colleen: Thanks for listening!</p>

00:11:19

Tourist Sites in Iraqi Kurdistan (Suly and Erbil)

Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Episode 55 Learn more at <a href="http://www.ServantGroup.org/Iraq">www.ServantGroup.org/Iraq</a> and email Hannah at <a href="mailto:hannah@servantgroup.org">hannah@servantgroup.org</a> with questions, comments, or suggestions!</p> Here's a rough transcript!</p> Hannah: Welcome to between Iraq and a Hard Place! I'm Hannah!</p> Colleen: And I'm Colleen! And we're here to tell you a little bit about life in Iraq!</p> Hannah: Wooho!</p> Colleen: Today, we're going to take a bit of a trip through Kurdistan…</p> Hannah: A tour, if you will…</p> Colleen: Indeed, we're going to be tourists--or tour guides--for all of the different places we've been and some of the places that are really popular that maybe we haven't been and some of the places that are really just gone to by Kurds and some places that are really just gone to by foreigners who visit.</p> Hannah: Tourism is kind of not necessarily a new concept in Kurdistan. It's still a little bit of a Wild West kind of a concept, I guess I would say.</p> Colleen: Well, they definitely have two major groups of people who are coming: there are people from other parts of Iraq or the Middle-East who come and then, you know, there's this desire to get more and more of Europeans or other Asians or Americans.</p> Hannah: And we do have to also qualify that for both of us, it's been quite a while since we've been to some of these places. Things change.</p> Colleen: Things change. That whole Wild West thing applies even when you're talking about ruins that are thousands of years old.</p> Hannah: It's true. I will say, though, for me two things always surprise me about going to significant places in Kurdistan. One, if you went somewhere ancient you were allowed to get up close and personal, like there are no barriers or guards or people standing there being like, "Please don't touch that."</p> Colleen: Right.</p> Hannah: Like they're they're a little bit taken for granted.</p> Colleen: I mean there are a lot of them!</p> Hannah: That's true.</p> Colleen: That seems a little bit fair.</p> Hannah: And the second one is that, in my experience with, like, natural beauty… You know, in the US we have tons of state and national parks so that when we go to see a waterfall, you can go up to it and like play around in it and it's just a bunch of people playing around in nature where, in my experience in Kurdistan, it's like "Look at this beautiful waterfall with a restaurant that's built right next to it!"</p> Colleen: Yeah, and like all sorts of little boats and flags and paintings on the rocks.</p> Hannah: Or you could pay to like go up to the waterfall and get in it. It was just much more tourist trap-like, commercialized in a way that I'm not really used to. Like, Americans value wilderness as wilderness on some level…</p> Colleen: Yeah, at least some.</p> Hannah: And perhaps that's a more recent history for the US than long term, but those are always the two things that I think about when I think of Kurdish tourism. Like, yeah, you can get up close and personal, but also sometimes it's very commercial.</p> Colleen: Not exactly the pleasant experience that we would hope for as an American, but that's not to say that our Kurdish friends didn't really love some of those places.</p> Hannah: Yeah, they absolutely did! They absolutely did.</p> Colleen: So where should we start? We have a long list of different things, some of which we will mention very briefly.</p> Colleen: Yes, we're definitely not going to get into all the details. And if you've been to Iraq and we miss your absolute favorite place, write to us and let us know.</p> Hannah: I think we should also say that some of the places we've been we don't know the names of, because, again, Wild West, not everything is named.</p> Colleen: There was this one rock covering that we encountered up in the mountains with zero signage. Zero. I could never find that again, probably ever, because we went on a hike, and there it was.</p> Hannah: It's always an adventure! Let's begin with Suly.</p> Colleen: Suly is where I lived so there are a lot of places there that I think you have not been to.</p> Hannah: I have not been too much in the Suly area.</p> Colleen: Did we never take you to the Amna-surika, the Red House?</p> Hannah: I have been to Sulay, like, three times and you weren't there for any one of them</p> Colleen: I'm sorry, I would have taken you to Ammasurica, maybe. It's an old military center for Saddam and prison and so it's not exactly a pleasant place to go. They have it set up with kind of reenactments and you can see people like in the position of being tortured. Not actual people, but like, mannequins. It's kind of awful.</p> Hannah: Well, now I'm not sad I never went there.</p> Colleen: But there is this one hallway that the entire walls are covered with mirrors, little tiny, broken bits of mirror and the ceiling is covered with little tiny fairy lights, like Christmas lights sparkling so it's magical walking in there. But the symbolism of it is also really heartbreaking because it represents the villages and the number of people who were killed by Saddam during Anfal, during his genocide of the Kurds. So it's sad, but also really beautiful and also, weirdly, a really difficult place to photograph.</p> Hannah: Because how do you capture sparkly, sparkly, sparkly….</p> Colleen: Yeah, because there are no other lights in there besides those Christmas lights and they're all reflecting off these tons and tons of little bits of broken mirror.</p> Colleen: Connected with that and outside of Sulay, not in Sulay, but in another place that is another place that a lot of people go as a tourist in memory of all of that genocidal tragedy is Halabja, and there are some really big statues and a large graveyard and it wasn't open, because it had partly burned down before we went on our trip there, there's a museum you can go and see there.</p> Hannah: And Halabja is the city that had chemical warfare that really kind of kicked off getting help from outside: pictures and videos from that really really really sad that sparked a lot of international outrage as they ought to have.</p> Colleen: Also in Suly there's Sulaimani Archeological Museum that a lot of people go to. It's free and it's interesting, especially if you could go with someone who can read and translate the signs for you.</p> Hannah: Because they're all in Arabic? Kurdish?</p> Colleen: They're all in Kurdish. The first time I went I was like, well, I can kind of read it, but I have no idea what it says because that vocabulary is not really in my vocabulary.</p> Hannah: Right, it would be specialized.</p> Colleen: Also outside of Sulay we did a lot of hiking and there are some really beautiful places. There's a cave called Hazar Merd, which has this whole story about this woman with a 1000 husbands and…</p> Hannah: That's too many!</p> Colleen: I heard different versions of it and none of them seem to make a lot of sense to me, but, you know, you just ask a local person.</p> Hannah: Did she go to the cave to get away from the husbands? Did husbands lock her in the cave??</p> Colleen: I got the impression that's where she kept them.</p> Hannah: All right.</p> Colleen: But again, there were multiple versions, and it's a fun thing you could ask someone about there.</p> Hannah: Is it like a big cave?</p> Colleen: It's a really big cave.</p> Hannah: So she could fit a 1,000 husbands in there?</p> Colleen: Maybe that's why they said she had a 1,000. It's a really big cave!</p> Colleen: Also out that direction is a place called Chami Rezan where there's ancient carving--some Zoroastrian and Assyrian style carvings there--and there's a hole in the wall, really high up in this cliff face, and there's a little staircase that goes up to it now. Itt's metal. It's been added. And also a lot of interesting stories regarding that one. Some people were like, "Oh it's a tomb!" And some people were like, "Oh, it's a bathtub!" And some people are like, "Oh, it's a place where they would hide out and wait for approaching armies to see!" Because you can see pretty far out from there, like a lookout tower! But yeah, I also don't know what that one really is again: that whole sense of like these old things, they're just here and no one's ever really taken the time to know what they were there for and no one really cares.</p> Hannah: Not a lot of archeology. It's hard to do a lot of archeology in generally unstable region.</p> Colleen: The other place that we often went or places that tourists often go are waterfalls. And we'll talk about several waterfalls, I think, today. One of the ones that is very popular is the Ahmad Awa waterfalls and they've got these giant, not stairs, but like stairs.</p> Hannah: They are like steps.</p> Colleen: Steps for giants, really, because they're like knee to hip height. It's more of a climb than walking upstairs. Also very crowded with people, a lot of trash, a lot of…</p> Hannah: Tomfoolery?</p> Colleen: Tomfoolery. And, you know, a restaurant right next to it, but also a genuinely cool waterfall. Sergalou is another area that's like a tip-top picnic spot in the spring. Beautiful water, kind of running down a mountain side, not really a waterfall, but little tiny waterfalls along the way. Also just really full of trash and people. We would drive through there every spring as we kind of took a little tour of the scenery when it's beautiful and green. Kids would be out on the side of the road near the villages selling bunches of Nergiz flowers, little daffodils, and we would end up driving through Sergalou and…</p> Hannah: It's also really fun to say.</p> Colleen: It is. Is is!</p> Colleen: As we drive out of Suly towards Erbil, there are a couple of other places that are really high traffic tourist areas. Rawanduz and Soran are really close. Rawanduz is a valley or canyon. It's really beautiful!</p> Hannah: Yeah, it's like the Grand Canyon of Kurdistan.</p> Colleen: The top of it has like a resort and ski slopes and stuff up there, at least in the winter.</p> Hannah: Is that like Korek mountain?</p> Colleen: Yeah. Yeah, now that you say that, though, I may be confusing the two. There's something at the top of the Rowanduz area. It might not be… no, you're right. Korek Mountain is where there's the ski slopes, which is also up that direction. I've never been there.</p> Hannah: Me neither. Not big skiers…</p> Colleen: Well, it didn't really didn't take off until after I left.</p> Hannah: I remember someone taking me to Rowanduz, but not telling me that they were taking me to Rowanduz, and just coming around a corner and being like, "Holy Cow!!" Huge, beautiful ravines with water at the bottom and, like, not anything I expected to see.</p> Colleen: Yeah!</p> Hannah: It was a nice surprise, but it was also a little bit like, "You couldn't give me any warning?" You could have been like, "We're going to go see this really cool thing!" You were just like, "We're on a roadtrip!"</p> Colleen: The other big city, not big city, but the other city that's on the way to Erbil that we've both been to that's a popular location is Shaqlawa.</p> Hannah: Ah, Shaqlawa.</p> Colleen: What do you remember of Shaqlawa?</p> Hannah: Shaqlawa. The first time I ever went on a Kurdish picnic we went through Shaqlawa. That was part of it. And it was definitely hyped to me as like this beautiful mountain town and it's so lovely and the weather is so nice and you're really going to love it and we ended up just kind of, like, hanging out in the main shopping street. And like, I mean, we wandered up and down the streets and ate nuts from different vendors and like, but I was just kind of, like this is not. I don't get it, I don't get why people love this and I went back to Shaqlawa later to stay with some friends and it is beautiful, beautiful countryside, but I mean also grew up in Western North Carolina where everything is beautiful all the time, so my standards maybe a little different.</p> Colleen: Yeah, I remember getting talked about as, like, this really like stunningly beautiful place, and to me it didn't look that much different from most other small mountain towns.</p> Hannah: It is the place, though, that lots of people from the South have houses, because it's cooler. More of a resort town, like a vacation getaway kind of place.</p> Colleen: I mean it certainly is cooler than Bagdad</p> Hannah: Or Erbil, even.</p> Colleen: Yeah, well, Erbil I will say is pretty stifling in the summer, especially. A little bit of mountains is nice.</p> Hannah: For sure.</p> Steve: Hey, this is Steve, my wife and I have been with Servant Group International for quite a while now, which means that we're sort of old, which also means that we need some fresh new faces here at Servant Group. We love for you to join us!</p> Hannah: In Erbil, though, there's also lots to do. I think we talked about this when we talked to Victoria about Erbil being one of the longest continuously inhabited cities, and that specifically is downtown, the Citadel, which is kind of at the center of the city.</p> Colleen: It's upon a tell, so its an ancient mound of city built on city built on city for generations and generations.</p> Hannah: And that's one of the places where there has been a lot of archaeological things. My first year living in Erbil the people renting the house next to us were Italian archaeologists, Italian and French archaeologists, who have been working at the citadel, which was kind of neat. They were loud, but…</p> Colleen: They were Italian!</p> Hannah: There's a lot more signage up there telling you about what what all the different things are and how old they are.</p> Colleen: There's kind of neat little museum up there, too, with explanations in English and Kurdish.</p> Hannah: There's two musueums up there now, because there's also a textile museum.</p> Colleen: I think the textile one is actually the only one I've been to.</p> Hannah: Because there's a textile one and then there's the archeological one.</p> Colleen: Yeah, I don't think the archeological one was open when I was up there.</p> Hannah: It's pretty cool and they're working on restoring it because it's in pretty much disrepair. Even in the ten years since I first moved there they've really done a lot to make it beautiful. And then the citadel kind of looks out over the main bazaar in Erbil, which still feels very old school. It still looks very ancient and they built a big fountain and a park on one side of it now, which is also very beautiful. And they're kind of trying to build like a new sparklier bazar, but I don't know if that ever went through because I think most of the Kurds are like "No. Why would we want that? Why would we do that when we have a perfectly functional, lovely ancient bazaar, right here?"</p> Colleen: Yeah, there's there is a little bit of that competition between the old and the new that I think you find in almost every culture. Some people want something flashy and new and other people are, like, "but the old is good…"</p> Hannah: So that's probably the biggest tourist thing in Erbil. It's really easy to get to. There's also an old mosque out there. I went to a really cool photography exhibit in the old bath house at the top of the citadel.</p> Colleen: Huh!</p> Hannah: It was weird, but very cool, very artsy. But yeah, it was pretty cool, and that's the only time the bathhouses has ever been open for people to go in for the artist exhibit.</p> Colleen: That's pretty awesome.</p> Hannah: There's also a really big park in Erbil, Sami Abdul-Rahman Park. It's several acres. And, I mean, it's a park: green grass, trees, people wandering around. There's a train, like the little trains that you can ride like in the zoo, that drives around the park and you can pay like, I don't know, 1000 dinars to drive around the park in the train. And, I mean, the park is big enough to justify a train!</p> Hannah: So that's kind of fun, too! They do a big Nowruz stuff in the park.</p> Colleen: Oh, and there's a really big, beautiful mosque there that I never went in, but if you drive past it you know that it's the big, beautiful mosque.</p> Colleen: Yeah, I've seen pictures and, I mean, I've probably driven past it, but… It's blue, mostly blue.</p> Colleen: Very blue. And near where I lived in Erbil there is a really, really, really, really old mosque that they recently have been restoring. I noticed it the last time I was in Erbil. It was just the tower and minaret, but they've rebuilt the mosque next to it and it's also really beautiful in a very modern sort of way. I don't know if it's touristy, but definitely people within Erbil, are like, "Oh yeah. Have you seen that mosque? It's really beautiful."</p> Colleen: Ah, OK. You mentioned Nowruz as one of the things that is parties in the park. The place that has the biggest parties is Akre, right?</p> Hannah: Yeah, Akre. So that's a city built into the side of the mountain.</p> Colleen: That's not far from Erbil? A couple of hours?</p> Hannah: Maybe an hour and a half? So a lot of the houses are actually, like a house front, but the inside is like a cave. I'm pretty sure that's to keep it cool in the summer time.</p> Colleen: That is nice.</p> Hannah: But every year for Nowruz they do, like, a fire walk where everyone in the town gets--or a lot of people in the town have--torches. And they walk up the side of the mountain to the very top and light a big bonfire and have fireworks at the top. And all around the sides of the mountain, because it's pretty much sheer rock in most places, they have long Kurdish flag banners that they drap all along the sides of the mountain. So it's very spectacular!</p> Colleen: There are videos. We'll have to link some in the show notes.</p> Hannah: Yeah, I never actually got to be in Akre for Newroz, but I kind of always wanted to go because they do it at night, so it's like this line of fire winding up…</p> Colleen: It's really spectacular!</p> Hannah: It's really cool.</p> Colleen: I've also never been there in person, but I've seen videos.</p> Hannah: The city itself is beautiful.</p> Colleen: It's also the city that was the encampment of Alexander the Great. I think he theoretically founded it.</p> Hannah: Alright. He wasn't there when I was there…</p> Colleen: Really? That's too bad.</p> Colleen: That was the one place we never did actually find or get to go to. We decided it was maybe a little too close to Mosul, but, like, the battlefield of Gaugamela, where Alexander the Great defeated the Persian army or had a battle with the Persian army or something. I used to know more about that.</p> Hannah: Yeah, there are definitely places that it was like I really want to go there, but we never could, because it was never safe enough, but there's not not plenty in the North to see.</p> Colleen: That's true, because we're only half-way through our list!</p> Colleen: The next place over that I was thinking of Amediya.</p> Hannah: Or Amedi. I think that's a Bahdini-Sorani difference, but I don't know.</p> Colleen: I actually think it's a Kurdish-Arabic difference because on the maps and things it's Amadiya, but there I always heard it called Amedi.</p> Hannah: Yeah, I had a lot of students who Amedi was their village, like their family village, in Duhok.</p> Colleen: It is beautiful!</p> Hannah: It is really cool!</p> Colleen: It is built on a high plateau, but like the city is built all the way to the edges of the city on the plateau.</p> Hannah: It's kind of a plateau in the most classic sense, like there are no other plateaus around it. There are some mountains. You can get up on a mountain and look down at Amedi.</p> Colleen: But you can get to it from there. It's far enough away. It's surrounded by flat space.</p> Hannah: Yeah, and it's cool when you're in the city you can look out, down, at the plains of Dahuk or between Amedi and Duhok. It's very cool! But also a Roman City.</p> Colleen: Right, and it's got an old Roman road leading up to an old Roman gate that you can go see and that a lot of people go see. It's certainly not the road anyone uses to get in now. It's not in good enough repair and it's also narrow, too narrow for cars.</p> Hannah: I think there's also some Biblical person's tomb up there. This was another one of those someone said that to me after I had been there, but they couldn't tell me who it was. I remember kind of seeing like a churchy, tomby looking building, but I don't know. But it is really popular for Kurds and Westerners to go up there.</p> Hannah: On the trip where we went to Ahmadi with some American friends who were very explorey: Katrina's husband, Kinley. Kinley and Katrina, I should say, took us on this trip and one of the places we went was Dwin Castle. And there were actually two different places that we stopped and I'm not actually sure which Dwin Castle, if I'm being completely honest, because it's kind of it's off the main, beaten path and I don't think you could find it unless you knew where you were going specifically.</p> Hannah: So one of them is kind of up on a hill and its ruins of a castle, but they're still a tower standing and then the other one is as you come down off the mountain there's kind of this, I guess it would be like a really small tell, more like a hill, like you can walk up it very easily. But it also has the ruins of a castle on the top of it and so I'm not sure which one is which.</p> Hannah: But I think for the lower one the story was, kind of like, that no one lived there as a castle: it was kind of like a look out so if something was going down, everybody would flee there, but that there was some princess who was fleeing her father and locked herself into it and it got knocked down and that's why it was in ruins. But it was one of those places where there are no signs, there are no, like, guard rails, and so we have pictures of us climbing just like all over this ruins of a castle. And it was really cool! Again, I couldn't tell you where or how we got there, but it was pretty awesome!</p> Colleen: That does sound awsome! It reminds me, actually, out in that same area, somewhere out on the way to Amedi, we visited one of Sadam's old palaces that is also a ruin, not necessarily just from time, but definitely from active destruction and, like, vandalism and attack on this particular space. And I don't have very many photos up there because the walls were just covered with all sorts of profanity. It was an interesting place to see the demise of someone who, you knowm, was like, I don't know, part of history that I was alive for, right? Not as in ancient history where no one knows the stories of like these things and it's all vague. It's like here, everybody knows, and they're still made about it.</p> Hannah: Yeah, for sure! Let's talk about some secrety places…</p> Colleen: OK. So Lalish is the center of Yazidi faith and area and culture.</p> Hannah: We talked about Lalish a lot in the episodes about Yazidi faith. I have never been there, much to my regret.</p> Colleen: That's really sad. It's really fascinating and beautiful. One of the distinctives I remember thinking was that they had a lot of trees on their streets and even in and around their temple and obviously it was an area that was well cared for…and those distinctive towers with the ridges on them.</p> Hannah: Yeah, they almost look like a citrus juicer but pointy.</p> Colleen: But pointy.</p> Hannah: Not rounded.</p> Colleen: Yeah, they're very distinctive and very, very beautiful.</p> Hannah: Yeah, they are very beautiful. A lot of history. We talk, again, we talk extensively about Lalish in those episodes about Yazidism.</p> Colleen: But that's a place that local people don't ever really go to. It's only really internationals who have some sort of interest in world religions that end up going there.</p> Hannah: Or Yazidis.</p> Hannah: So did you actually go into Lalesh? Did you go into the Temple?</p> Colleen: Yep. We got a full tour.</p> Hannah: Did you have to take your shoes off?</p> Colleen: Uh-huh. It was cold that day and we were able to ask a lot of questions and the people were incredibly hospitable and, you know, guided us through all of the inner areas where there's vats of oil stored and, you know, little cubby holes with fire in them. There's a tomb down there that people throw scarves at over their shoulders to get wishes granted to them.</p> Hannah: Maybe the next time I go to a Iraq I'll have to go up there. Because now that I know more, I really, really want to see it! The other place that I feel like many more people go to eagerly is Alqosh, which we do reference in the Chaldean Church episodes, because it's one of the seats of the Caldean church.</p> Colleen: Ancient. Historical.</p> Hannah: There's kind of three parts to Alqosh. There's the ancient monastery that's up on the hill.</p> Colleen: So the Rabban Hormizd Monastery.</p> Hannah: And there's a kind of a family that lives up there and maintains it, at this point, and that's really cool…</p> Colleen: Be careful. Go with the guide. You could get lost forever.</p> Hannah: Yeah, there are deep, deep caves that go way, way, way back into the mountain.</p> Colleen: And there's no light.</p> Hannah: No light! That probably is one of the freakiest experiences I've had as we kind of blithely just wandered into one….</p> Colleen: Oh dear!</p> Hannah: And got far enough back in there that, like, I was like, ok, at this point, I could find my way back out. If I go any further and we turn off in any direction, I'm not going to be able to find my way back. So I was like "Guys, I'm not going to go any farther." And I turned around and came back by myself, and I was like "I'm walking through the dark with a flashlight and if I get lost…" Like, this feels really dangerous to do this by myself, but I'm confident enough to know that I can get back. And I think they maybe had a guide at the front or the guy who runs the place went in after them, because he brought them back out like a totally different way.</p> Colleen: A totally different? I've been there multiple times and, like, I still have no idea how to get around in there.</p> Hannah: The main monastery part is not maze-like. It's just if you get back into the caves where they hid..</p> Colleen: Or lived.</p> Hannah: Or lived. But the main monastery is really beautiful. It gets a lot of light. It's on top of the mountain. It's all whitewashed inside, so it seems even brighter. And there are Scriptures carved into the walls in Aramaic, I think, which is really cool to see!</p> Colleen: It's a beautiful script, too!</p> Hannah: There are seven curves in the road coming up to the monastery and it's because Chaldeans use it as the seven stops on the walk of Christ.</p> Colleen: I don't think I knew that!</p> Hannah: You didn't know that? So it's really common--and we had some Chaldean people with us when we went-- for them to walk up the road and stop at each of the 7 sides of the cross and pray…which is dedication, because that is a steep hill!</p> Colleen: It also needs those seven switchbacks, because there's no way you're getting up it otherwise.</p> Hannah: And I think the people who decided to walk, I think it took them a good two hours. And I mean they were stopping and praying, but it took them a long time. We were all done being up there by the time they got there. And they are like, "Yeah, we're done, too."</p> Hannah: So that's the main one and that kind of looks out over the Nineveh plain. It's really beautiful.</p> Colleen: At the bottom of that hill there is another monastery, the new monastery.</p> Hannah: Also, the same name, though.</p> Colleen: Yeah, I think it's just the modern one, although, I mean, it's also a little old…</p> Hannah: And it has a big chapel.</p> Colleen: And that's where the monks live and still do work still.</p> Hannah: I think there's a boys' orphanage there, too.</p> Hannah: Also really beautiful. We accidentally stumbled into where the monks private living space was and were told to get out…very nicely. But still like, "You cannot be in here." And "We're really sorry! There were no signs." How are we going to know?</p> Colleen: Crazy woman running around in the men's monstery!</p> Hannah: Yeah…but also very hospitable people. They had, I think, water and oranges for us when we came down off the mountain and gave us a place to sit and eat lunch together. There's also museum and archive there with ancient texts which, if the right monk is around, you can get in and they'll show you some of them.</p> Colleen: Oh really!</p> Hannah: We had bad timing and the correct guy was not at the monastery.</p> Colleen: I'm not sure it even occurred to us to ask, because I think the correct guy probably was there. We met a guy, who, and I'm sure I mentioned this when we talked before about some of this, is the funniest, most interesting monk with his leather jacket and his black sunglasses and, you know, black jeans and doesn't look the way you think in your head.</p> Hannah: The cool monk.</p> Colleen: He was definitely the cool monk. And he was working on translating a lot of ancient texts into modern Arabic, actually, and putting them online so that the youth could have access to the ancient documents.</p> Hannah: Probably the guy!</p> Colleen: Probably the guy.</p> Hannah: Man! Missed your chance!</p> Colleen: I did. I didn't even know there was a chance!</p> Hannah: So if you go into, the town that's next to Alqosh, kind of the third part of Alqosh…</p> Colleen: I mean, the town is Alkosh. The monastery is not Alqosh.</p> Hannah: That's true. The town, not the monastery, there is an ancient synagogue, which is kind of mindblowing to me. I was, like, I did not even think about their being Jewish people…</p> Colleen: But there were Jews who lived all over Iraq!</p> Hannah: And the synagogue is ancient, but it's also hasn't been that long since it's been in use. The story that we were told was that during World War II, the Jewish families that were living in Alqosh decided to go to Israel once the nation of Israel had been established to kind of flee, I guess, and left the keys with their Muslim neighbours and asked them to take care the synagogue while they were gone. So you can go into the synagogue now.</p> Colleen: Provided you can find you can the neighbors with the keys.</p> Hannah: Provided you can the family!</p> Hannah: Which, if, in our case, a busload of white people kind of roll up to where the synagogue is, the neighbor comes out and he's like, "You want to go in?" And we're like "Yeah!"</p> Hannah: So, in the synagogue is the tomb of…</p> Colleen: Nahum!</p> Hannah: Nahum, yeah. Allegedly. I think there is some debate.</p> Colleen: I mean, there are some other places that claim to be the tomb of Nahum, so there is only that debate. I don't think there's any debate about, "Was it is somebody else?"</p> Hannah: Oh sure, yeah.</p> Colleen: There, it is the tomb of Nahum. His bones are not there anymore, though. They have been taken, I mean years ago, up to a Christian church and they are in the wall crypt…</p> Hannah: I can't say that word…</p> Colleen: Reliquery?</p> Hannah: That's the one!</p> Colleen: I don't know, but there's like a plaque on the wall and, you know, it says that this is where the bones of Nahum have been interred.</p> Hannah: The tomb of Nahum is really cool because there are Hebrew writings carved on the walls.</p> Colleen: All over the walls! It's really interesting, too, because the style of the architecture and the decor in there really is different. So all of the light fixtures, what's left of them, and the other decorative carvings on the walls have a very different feel than anything else you run into in Iraq!</p> Hannah: It is really cool! That's also the only place we ran into a fence.</p> Colleen: Yeah.</p> Hannah: They have the area where his tomb is kind of fenced off so you can't actually like approach it directly. You can reach through and touch it, but you can't like get up by it or on it, and I think the neighbour put it up so that people wouldn't bother it.</p> Colleen: There's a second tomb in there. Did you know this? So there's a second tomb in the same synogogue area. It's outside, kind of in a corner, and it's either Nahum's wife or Nahum's sister, whose name was Sarah.</p> Hannah: Oh! Cool!</p> Colleen: So they're both kind of equally cared for, which I thought was really neat.</p> Colleen: We'd love to hear from you! You can find us a Servant Group International on Facebook or Instagram and you should check out our blog and complete transcripts over at servant group.org!</p> Hannah: And it's really helpful for us if you share our podcast or leave a review on whatever platform you listen to this podcast on. It helps us know that people are listening and you can let us know what you want to hear next!</p> Colleen: Thanks for listening!</p> Hannah: Yeah, some things fall out of your brains.</p> Colleen: Yeah, they do.</p>

00:39:48

28 Days in Kurdistan (Not a Horror Movie)

Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Episode 54 Hannah and Colleen have a conversation with Victoria, who went on our teacher training trip back in August of 2021. Hear her reactions, culture shock, what she learned, and whether or not she'd ever go back! Also find out about what to do when you break your ankle on a mountain hike!</p> Lear more at <a href="http://www.ServantGroup.org/Iraq">www.ServantGroup.org/Iraq</a> and email Hannah at <a href="mailto:hannah@servantgroup.org">hannah@servantgroup.org</a> with questions, comments, or suggestions!</p> Hannah: Welcome to Between Iraq and a Hard Place! I'm Hannah!</p> Colleen: And I'm Colleen, and we're here to tell you a little bit about life in Iraq.</p> Hannah: We have a special guest today. Victoria is here with us to tell us about the trials and tribulations of going to Iraq with me.</p> Colleen: Trial and tribulation, I'm sure, although I've never actually experienced that.</p> Hannah: It's true, it's one of those weird things about us.</p> Victoria: That is not how this was pitched to me, it is not what I'm planning on talking about.</p> Hannah: So Victoria and I and four other people, four and a half other people, I don't know how you count a child. I guess they're a whole person,</p> Colleen: They are a whole person!</p> Hannah: We went to Iraq in August to help do some teacher training for the national teachers at the three different schools in Dohuk, Erbil, and Sulaimaniyah. I was in Erbil and Victoria got the joy of being in Dohuk. So yeah, we're just going to talk to you a little bit about what your experience was like because you were new and maybe you have some different perspective than me. Who was not new.</p> Victoria: Sounds great.</p> Colleen: So how did you become interested in this trip?</p> Victoria: Well, I had been volunteering at SGI, and Colleen asked me if I wanted to go to Iraq and I said, Yes. I am an ESL teacher by training and trade. So I have a natural interest in teacher training in non English settings or non native English settings. So Colleen knew this and asked me if I wanted to go, and it really was that quick. I knew immediately that I wanted to go and had the flexibility to go. So I went home. I think that night I asked my husband, like, What do you think? And he was like, Sure. And so I'm pretty sure it was like a day or two later I was like, Yup I'm in, like, I'm all in, let's go.</p> Hannah: Yeah, I think you were one of the first ones because I think we talked to you about it like two or three days after we found out that it might be a possibility. So thanks for signing up so fast because I was like, I don't know this going to work. And I was like, I got one, and if I can get one. I could get more.</p> Colleen: But even before I asked you, I had told Hannah that I was going to ask you and that I thought you would go like I was. I was already like, I've got to find an opportunity to ask Victoria because I think she's going to go on this trip.</p> Victoria: Well, it ended up being perfect. Like, right after I got there, I'd been there, maybe three or four days. And I remember just reflecting on so many things that God has already taught me and experiences He's already given me and realizing that this trip was sort of like perfect for who God has made me to be. I think I wrote something along the lines of like, I was made for this. And so I really do see God's hand in the fact that he put in your mind to ask me and that I was able to go and learn a lot about myself and get to put a lot of the gifts and experiences I've already have to use. So it was great.</p> Colleen: Yeah, because Iraq's not the first place you've gone and traveled, right?</p> Victoria: I lived in Central Asia for two years and taught English there, in a bit of a different setting. But yeah, I lived in Central Asia for two years and I've traveled. I always say, like all over the Muslim world, like if you can imagine a sort of continent or area of the world where Muslims live in different cultural pockets. I've probably been there.</p> Hannah: So did you go into this trip with certain expectations of what it would be like because of those experiences?</p> Victoria: Some of my expectations were around myself, like, I thought that I would be cool and fine, and I thought I kind of knew what I was walking into, and to some extent I was. And in other ways, the uniqueness of Kurdistan sort of… I had culture shock that I did not expect. I've lived in the Middle East briefly, and so I was sort of expecting Middle East vibes, but also it's Central Asia. So I was expecting Central Asia vibes, and that was true. It felt more Middle Eastern than Central Asian to me in a lot of ways. I had sort of forgotten how hard that can be when you're going as essentially a single woman, because I was there without my husband. And just in general, how hard it can be to live in a culture that's different from yours and more restrictive than yours, for both men and women. So, yeah, I had more culture shock than I expected to have, for sure.</p> Hannah: Yeah. Was there anything specifically that you like in the moment were like, Oh, this is really different than what I expected? Or was it more of a general?</p> Victoria: This is going to sound so funny because I know better because I was warned that it was hot and I've lived places without AC and I know how heat can affect you. But just how hot it was and how much that took out of me and how angry that made me and the whole world for existing was a little unexpected. I was like, I didn't anticipate not handling this as well as I'm not handling this. Or however you say that.</p> Colleen: That's a great example of something that you can tell someone ahead of time that it will do this to you or that this is the experience. But it's different from actually feeling it and having it change what you can and cannot do.</p> Victoria: Well, it's strange too, because it's not the first time I've experienced that. And so I like anticipated like, I know that jet lag is hard, and I know that cross-cultural living when you don't have language is hard and I know that heat is hard. And I got there and it all hit again, and I was like, I hate this place. I don't want to be here. I don't want to ever come here again, which did not stay that way. By the time I left, I very much want to go back. But at the time, I was just like, What am I doing? This is so hard.</p> Hannah: What did I sign up for it? Yeah, yeah. I honestly. The heat for me was a struggle, too, because I've never been there in August, really? So, yeah, even for me, I was like, OK, it's going to be hot. We're going to be fine. We're going to be fine, but it's going to be hot. And then the first night we got there, I was like, Oh, yeah, it's hot. I forgot. I forgot how much I hate this. And how much. I don't want to do anything because it's so stinking hot, right? But everyone else feels that way, too. And so it's kind of like nobody's doing anything.</p> Victoria: It's true. I think the other thing that what made it even more interesting was the fact that I was in a classroom teaching 10 hours after arriving at the place that I would stay. And I don't know that I ever had that fast of a turnaround on any trip or like cross-cultural, longer experience that I've been on, like we were expecting you to perform, this quickly. And that was fine once I got used to it. But I think that that definitely slowed my acclimation by quite a bit because I didn't have time to like orient before. It was like and now,</p> Hannah: Right, because you got there and pretty much got up the next morning and there was a taxi at your door to take you to the school.</p> Victoria: It was one a.m. when we were like, People are out of our house. We can go to bed now. And someone picked us up at 7:30 a.m. We had a meeting with school administrator and we were… I had a few hours or an hour. My coworker compatriot, roommate was teaching at nine. Like, that's how much time we had.</p> Hannah: Which is less than ideal, but pretty much the way that it works in Iraq.</p> Victoria: And I think truthfully, I think that knowing that that's the way it works in Iraq made it worse, not better, because it wasn't like, Well, this just happened this time or like, this just happened to me. It's like, this is representative of the way this is expected to go. Oh crap, what am I doing?</p> Colleen: Was there any of your expectations that you were thinking that were good things that did happen or that were met in a way that you found really valuable?</p> Victoria: I mean, I expected people to be warm and they were. I was hopeful to get to connect with people like one on one to get to go to cafes or go on walks or be in people's homes. And that didn't happen as quickly as I was hoping for because I kind of thought having this sort of established relationship might have made that happen more quickly. But it was more like what you might expect with a culture like that where it's like, really, it takes time for people to trust you. And by the time we left, we had gotten to do quite a bit of that sort of one on one relationship building. And so that was really sweet. And I guess met expectations eventually. Oh, this is an interesting one. It's not your question, but I expected good food and that wasn't actually the case.</p> Colleen: I'm sorry we failed to prepare you.</p> Victoria: You didn't. You told me. I just made it up in my head that if you were probably not right about it and I don't know why I thought that. The fruit was great. The rest of the food was fine. But it's like imported Middle Eastern food versus like fresh Middle Eastern food, and it's just not as good and it's still Middle Eastern food, even though you're starting to get up into Central Asia, but you're still in the desert. So you don't get like all that really yummy Kafka's food or whatever, that's a little further north.</p> Hannah: Yeah, it's one of those things that also makes it hard sometimes because you're like, not only is it hot, but also all the food tastes the same. And this is very boring,</p> Colleen: Which I mean, I can understand why you maybe didn't believe us on that one, because food is somewhat a matter of taste and …</p> Hannah: Good pun, Colleen.</p> Colleen: … but that there are people and team members, even though I've had in the past that love the food. So it's a little bit of a toss up.</p> Victoria: Well, truthfully, I was like, you lived there for a long time. I also lived in Central Asia in a different place for a long time. And while the food there was delicious after a couple of years, it is kind of samey. And so I was like, Maybe it'll be fine for a month. Like, maybe I'll love it for a month. It was not. I did not love it.</p> Hannah: I mean, that's a that's a fair bit of advice that like, food: lower your expectations. I think that's fair. Any particular adventures or weird happenings that you're like, Oh, people need to know this story? People need to know about this thing that happened to me.</p> Victoria: I was really blessed with a roommate slash partner in crime in Dohuk, who had the same approach to that month that I did like. We ended up getting to do a lot of things together that we both wanted to do, which was great. Since we were both single women, we kind of needed each other to, like, navigate. So we did a lot of the things I've already talked about together, but we also both really wanted to experience nature, which exceeded my expectations. Going back to your previous question, I sort of expected it to be boring and drab and brown, and instead, it's beautiful and drab and brown. But we were like, we both really wanted to like do some hiking and exploring. It's also like phenomenal history that struck me really differently than… I've been in Israel, and the history in Israel is beautiful and amazing. But being there and realizing you're really in the cradle of civilization is hard to put your mind around until you're there. So one thing that happened, we went on several hikes and historical explorations. But when you're driving around Dohuk, there's some Assyrian carvings that you can see on the mountainside, and the top of the mountain is a--it's not really a tourist attraction, but it's an attraction for the people who live there. You can drive up and there's a park and it's really beautiful. You can also hike up. It's a small mountain, it's a rocky hill.</p> Colleen: But it's called a mountain.</p> Victoria: It is called a mountain. And so anyway, you can see these carvings on the side of the mountain if you know where to look and you can hike up to them or down to them if you've driven to the top. So we got up really early, like really early one Saturday morning, I think to go before I got hot.</p> Hannah: Yeah, you don't want to be hiking in the middle of the day.</p> Victoria: We wanted to be down. We wanted to be down before eight a.m. so that the heat was not desert intense. And so we go we meet up with a bunch of people. One of them, we had met briefly before the rest of them. They're all expats. The rest of them were new to us and we'd go exploring. Nobody had done this hike before. We'd all just heard about it and talked to people who had done it. Some of us had talked to people who'd done it. So we like scramble around for a while trying to find the trailhead. Finally find a goat path to go up. There's not really a trails. Yes, which is fine where I lived in Central Asia, I did a lot of mountain climbing, hiking, whatever, and I'm quite used to like, go path equals trail. So it was fine. So we're scrambling up and it was moderate to extreme. Like, it wasn't super difficult. I was wearing chacos like and it was doable. So we go up. One of the gals who is with us rolled her ankle, or so we thought, so she was not feeling great. She sat down and tied it up. We went on to go and try and find the carvings she rested for a while, eventually caught up with us. We found the carvings. They were amazing. They are faces carved into the mountain. So there's this moment where it's like I'm face to face with history. And it looked like a Bible play of Daniel or something like, it's just amazing. So anyway, so then we go to go down and she's not doing well. This girl that had rolled her ankle is just really not doing well. And so we kind to stop and have a powwow. And several of the group had church that they needed to get to because Saturdays are one of the weekend days where they're able to do church. And so they really needed to go. So they went on down. I didn't need to go and was like, You can't get down the mountain and it's actually not safe for you to go down. It's better to go up if you're injured, because what we just climbed up is very unsafe. I'm afraid to go down it on two good legs. Why don't we go up since it's drivable? So the gal that we had met before went down, got her car and drove around to meet us at the top. Meanwhile, my roommate, co-teacher and I stayed with this girl who had rolled her ankle and started to try to make our way up. It took us, I don't even remember, like an hour and a half. It took us a long time to go like a fourth of the mountain was all that was left to go up and we had to like, pick our way across and like, go up these big boulders. And she was a trooper. It was really tough and it got hot. And then we got up got in the car, drove back down. She drove us back to like where her apartment complex was because that's where we had plans later in the day and then texted us that night and said, "My teammates said, I need to go get it X-rayed. So I did, and my leg is broken." Yeah, so like the bottom, like close to her ankle, she had, like, fractured her leg. And finish climbing a mountain on it.</p> Colleen: I feel bad for her.</p> Victoria: And I'm really sad that that happened, but I'm also grateful because I think if it hadn't, we would have met her that day and all gone our separate ways. But because that sort of traumatic experience happened and all of us were involved, Abby and I ended up going back to see her the next day to still, like, help her process. And then we had just the sweet time, like she was just this really beautiful, amazing, strong human that we had a great time with. So then we ended up hanging out with her two or three more times, which doesn't sound like that much until you realize we were only there for four weeks, right?</p> Hannah: Yeah.</p> Victoria: And she came to our place. We went to her place a couple more times and she was just a joy to get to know. And I think we never would have like connected that deeply that quickly. And she's busy. If that hadn't happened, so there's a very long adventure story for you.</p> Colleen: Good trauma bonding. Also, I think one of the positive features of both. I mean, my time and I can't speak for Hannah's time in Iraq, but we did often make friends with other expats or team members and build relationships with people that are never going away. Yeah, and that's one of the neat things.</p> Hannah: And people that you may not otherwise have built those relationships with. Like, if you had been their neighbor in America like, you might not have built that relationship. But because you're in kind of that like it's us or no one situation? Yeah, you build some really beautiful connections.</p> Victoria: I think one thing that I've been thinking about around that recently since since getting back from Iraq specifically is like, Abby, my roommate and co-worker and I, we did everything together. We had a great time. Like, we really enjoyed each other's company. We got to know each other really well, and we haven't really talked since we got back. But like that month, we were each other's person and it was beautiful and wonderful, and we were both really grateful for each other. And since we got back, we've texted and checked in a little. But not like we're not, I think, going to be a regular part of each other's lives. And I think the more I've traveled around the world and seen like those intense experiences that you can have together are really beautiful and show you some of what like being a part of God's Kingdom together can be like. But it doesn't mean they have to be your best friend for the rest of your life. And it makes me look forward to eternity when I really will have enough time and capacity to actually stay friends with all of these wonderful people that I've gotten to meet.</p> Colleen: Yeah, absolutely.</p> Hannah: It was really encouraging to me to see the two of you get along so well. I I was a little bit like, Well, I'm tossing these two people who don't know each other into the pot of soup that is Iraq. Hope this works out, OK, bye.</p> Colleen: It's not quite that flippantly!</p> Hannah: Not quite.</p> Colleen: We do carefully consider everybody that applies and pray over the situation.</p> Hannah: I do my due diligence for sure, but there is also an element of just like these people are strangers, they will either get along or they will not, and I can't control that. And so it is really encouraging to me to see just how God brought the two of you, and then the other family that was in Suly kind of all together. When we all got to get together for that that long weekend and how everyone just like, enjoyed each other. I was like, Yes, this is what like, this is what the Bible means when it says they will know we are Christians by our love. Like we don't know each other, but we all love each other and we want to be together. And for me, that was the highlight of the whole, the whole three and a half weeks that I was there. How about you? Did you have like one thing that was like, yes, this was perfect and beautiful, and if I could recreate that in my own life, that's putting a high expectation on it. Did you have a moment where you felt like this is this was the best part of this trip for me?</p> Victoria: I loved being in the classroom with teachers. Like I said at the beginning, my background is in teaching English to non-native English speakers. I've done that in public school settings in the U.S. and I've done it some overseas with like wee children all the way to adults. And getting to teach teachers was really fun and like, build those professional but also sort of friend relationships like, I just loved teaching them and the relationships we got to build. But I really loved the content and getting to like do professional development with teachers. I actually loved it so much that I came home and got a job doing it in America,</p> Colleen: Which you hadn't planned on doing before you took this trip, right?</p> Victoria: Completely unplanned. Like, I went on this trip thinking I would come home and I wasn't sure what I was going to do and actually God used to just being away from my husband and having sort of a limited set of things that I could do while in Iraq like help clarify a lot of things about my own personal goals and what I needed and wanted next. And sort of, wow, you're really good at this. And like, he's made these things that are part of how he designed you to be. Like, how are you going to leverage them for his kingdom? And so all of those things sort of came into focus for me while I was there, which was really sweet because I had been living overseas and came home and got married. And there was a lot of like, my life is in all of this transition and somehow like being in Iraq for that month gave me a lot of like, brought it all together and was like: this is a good example of how everything works together. And that allowed me, I think, to come out of that trip with like, I want to replicate some of that in my life. Like exactly how you just said it, like this part of this I can do, even in Nashville, I am going to try and find a way to do it. And I didn't know that the job I have now is how I was going to do it. I was still kind of exploring and then when I came back, there was a conversation I had and it was just like, Ah, this is exactly what I want to do.</p> Colleen: Teach teachers.</p> Victoria: Yeah, so that's what I'm doing now.</p> Hannah: Also, the thing that I love, like, you know, as much as I would love for you to go back to Iraq and live there forever, knowing that you have found the thing here in the U.S. that is that fulfilling moment for you, that fulfilling, I mean, ministry and a lot of ways it's more than a job… vocation, I think, is the Christiany way to say it. I think for, for for SGI and for me, like, that's the outcome that I want for anyone that I take to Iraq is like, find the thing that God has for you and then do it. Maybe it's here. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's, you know, maybe it's not with us, but it's been neat for me to see you find that, and I feel like Abby has found that on some level. So look in a little bit, but has found found the next thing and even the family that was in Suly, you know, they went back to where they were before, but I think they took a lot of things with them. And it's been it's been cool to see that happen out of that very short trip. It was a fast trip.</p> Victoria: It was! The whole from like, "Do you want to go?" to like "We're back!" was like maximally two and a half months or three months? Like, it was not a very long trip, even in your own mind. I didn't want to add to what you said that I think this trip was a great example of how God sometimes just asks you to do the next right thing (to borrow from Frozen). It's not that this job that I have now is the thing that I'm going to do for the rest of my life or even the rest of the next five years. It's just the next right thing of how he wants to use the like time, place, gifts, availability that I have and Iraq was exactly that, too. It was like it was the next thing that I could do, to follow who he made me to be and who he is asking me to become. And so, I was grateful for that opportunity and how it sort of dominoed right into this next one and my own personal journey.</p> Hannah: Yeah. Is there anything else that you can see that, like, "My time in Iraq really influenced this aspect in my life now that you're back here?" Colleen and I talk about this quite a bit, but something that was like cultural, a cultural difference that you saw that you're like, I want to do this in my own life. Beyond just teaching teachers or even a like, I have to remember that I'm not in Iraq anymore, so we can do this instead.</p> Victoria: I don't know if I was there long enough to, like, get those things that happen in your brain. They're like, Oh yeah, I can do this. It reminded me how much I love cross-cultural work and just how much I am made to need that in my life and how God wants to use that. And so that's probably not like the huge moment you're thinking about, but it's definitely…</p> Colleen: Not everything has to be a huge moment. It's OK.</p> Victoria: It also has been I mean… This is really small, but it's like it's really fun that like now when I think about Kurds or Iraq, I like have a visual and I'm way more interested in like the history and development of that place than I could have been before. I think I had a fun. This is not really related to your question, but it's a story I want to tell. I bought a keffiyeh. Is that how you say it?</p> Hannah: Mm hmm.</p> Victoria: The scarf that you see in like pictures like red checkered thing. I bought one for me and for my husband, but I wore it the first day it was like chilly to work to Metro Nashville public schools, and I was like going to get my name badge. So it was outside of my normal context. And there was a gentleman in the waiting room and he was like, "That's a blah blah blah." He said the tribe like, keffiyeh. Like, "Where did you get that? Like, that's from my country?" And I was like, Oh, I was in Kurdistan teaching, and that's where I bought it. And he was like, "No way I'm from Dohuk." And I'm like, "Well, that's where I was. I was in Dohuk." And I was like, This is just so sweet. Like, I never would have had that connection. And I have this like tangible souvenir that allowed me to, like, make a small connection with another human. And it was great.</p> Hannah: It's really fun that he was like, This is the tribe that that is because I could never figure that out in Iraq.</p> Colleen: No.</p> Victoria: He told me like three times and I was like, tried. So hard to remember, but I can't remember.</p> Colleen: So would you go again? Was the trip so scarring, the heat so awful that you would never set foot in the country ever again? Or if? It worked out…</p> Victoria: I would love to go back. When I left, I was like, I want to come back, maybe in the spring. But it's a little less hot. But like I went to my husband and I both love biking and mountaineering. So purely for my personal enjoyment standpoint, I was like, I would love to come back and like, Do all this hiking? That's awesome that I didn't really get to do because it was so hot. We also got to go to sort of a cradle of Christianity location in Al Qosh, and that was a really phenomenal trip for a lot of reasons. But being there made me really want to bring my parents. My parents travel a lot and I think that they would just be really moved by seeing through that faithfulness of the Christian witness and Christian history that's so old. Yeah, there. And so it's weird. Like, I just got this feeling like I really should bring my parents here. So I would love to go back and like with my husband and my parents, and if I can't go with any of them, I would still love to go back so I can picture a lot of different ways in which I could go back. This trip again would be an easy, obvious one. A year in the school, a tourist trip like, but regardless, it's like it's super easy to get there as an American. I would love to. Yes, is the short answer.</p> Hannah: And I really hope we get to do another teacher training trip. I feel like it went way better than I expected it to go. To be frank.</p> Colleen: Not that it didn't have its challenges!</p> Hannah: It had its challenges.</p> Colleen: Your classroom was missing its roof one day, right?</p> Victoria: Not my classroom, the classroom across from my classroom. One day it was the teacher lounge, and the next day there was no roof.</p> Victoria: Oh fun!</p> Victoria: And they were doing renovations the whole rest of the month. They were like, "This will be your teacher lounge. We will give you a locker." Two days later, it had no roof.</p> Hannah: Did you get a new locker in a different room?</p> Victoria: No, I never got it, and I never got a locker.</p> Hannah: Never, ever.</p> Victoria: No.</p> Hannah: That doesn't surprise me.</p> Victoria: That's fine. If I ask for one, I might have. They might have found me a hole somewhere.</p> Hannah: I mean, again, I feel like you got a genuine Kurdistan experience.</p> Victoria: Here's a fun story I should tell.</p> Hannah: All right. Share.</p> Victoria: That related to lockers. So one day I took chocolate that I brought from America with me to work. But because it was so hot, I left it in the fridge and I was taking it to a friend that I was visiting after work, so I left it in the fridge. But then I was gathering my things at the end of the day. I went to get my chocolate and the room was locked because literally everyone had left already because in the ten minutes it took me to get my stuff together. Everyone else was like, We're done. It's time to go. I'm pretty sure they left before the workday actually ended. But the teachers and me, were still finishing our class. So I went and hunted someone down and was like, I need my chocolate. I actually just told them it was my lunch. My food is in there. I need my food. And so they went and found somebody who, like, climbed up the stairs and unlocked it. And I had to call like four people to confirm that it was OK to unlock the door. And then I got my food, and I just thought that was the like most hilarious little like, This is exactly what you would expect to have happen.</p> Hannah: Who knew there would be so much bureaucracy around a door. Chocolate, I totally get the bureaucracy around that.</p> Victoria: That's why I didn't tell them it was chocolate.</p> Hannah: I know if they knew it was chocolate, it probably would have been a longer experience.</p> Colleen: But you were very smart to put it in the fridge. Because outside of the fridge, it would have turned into a puddle.</p> Victoria: Exactly. So I just thought that was a really good example of like a couple of things. It's a good example of like, this is funny when you live in a different culture and you don't speak the language, like things like this just happen that you would know unspokenly to not do. It's also a good example of like how culture stress doesn't have to be something that anybody else would think is traumatic because it can be really stressful when, like, you think things are going to work this way and then they just don't and you're like, But I need this or I had a plan.</p> Hannah: Right. And now my plan is gone!</p> Victoria: So it's like a hilarious story that represents a couple of the like lighthearted and more serious sides of being cross-cultural.</p> Hannah: Yeah. Well, thanks for sitting down to talk with us. Thanks for coming.</p> Victoria: Thanks for having me. Yes, it's great.</p> Colleen: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Servant Group International on Facebook or Instagram, and you should check out our blog and complete transcripts over at ServantGroup.org.</p> Hannah: And it's really helpful for us if you share our podcast or leave a review on whatever platform you listen to this podcast on, it helps us know that people are listening and you can let us know what you want to hear next. Thanks for listening.</p>

00:31:08

What is the Chaldean Church? - Part 3

Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Episode 53 <strong>Here's a rough transcript!</strong></p> Hannah: Welcome to "Between Iraq and a Hard Place". I'm Hannah!</p> Colleen: And I'm Colleen.</p> Hannah: And we're going to tell you about our life in Iraq.</p> Colleen: It's going to be fun.</p> Hannah: I hope so.</p> Hannah: All right, part three. Modern Chaldean Church history,</p> Colleen: Which you said was like let's go talk about persecution?</p> Hannah: I mean. What a lot of the modern Chaldean Church history is because they stopped all fighting with each other. You know they got conglomerated into one pretty solid group.</p> Colleen: And now they're a threat.</p> Hannah: Now they were a threat. Apparently. So we're going to skip. We. We ended in like the 18 well… the early 1900's. We're going to skip ahead to the two thousands.</p> Colleen: That's like actual modern history.</p> Hannah: Actual modern in the last 20-ish years.</p> Colleen: Wow!</p> Hannah: Again, which is not to say that there wasn't persecution in the between times of that.</p> Colleen: Right.</p> Hannah: There was a lot of upheaval in the Middle East in general. Not great times to be living in the Middle East.</p> Colleen: But that's when both of us lived there.</p> Hannah: Well, post 2000…</p> Colleen: Yes…</p> Hannah: Yes, the before 2000 times also not a great time to live there.</p> Colleen: Also, not great, okay,</p> Hannah: So we're going talking about the 2000s onward, because there are two big exoduses of Chaldeans during this time.</p> Colleen: All right,</p> Hannah: There were some before, but for the most part, the Chaldeans stayed where they were. They were going to tough it out. But the first one happened in 2003. Can you think of anything that may be happened previous to 2003, that would make them want to skidaddle?</p> Colleen: I mean persecution from Saddam?</p> Hannah: You got Saddam. There was kind of a big thing that happened in Iraq in like 2001 and 2002.</p> Colleen: The Second Gulf War, or whatever title you want to give it?</p> Hannah: Right, the Iraq War.</p> Colleen: The Iraq War.</p> Hannah: Post 9/11 happens in 2001 and 2002.</p> Colleen: Right.</p> Hannah: As that conflict kind of starts to come to, not a close, because it's kind of still going on, but to a settled level of, you know, Americans aren't constantly bombing Iraq, a government is being set up kind of place. About 60,000 Chaldean Christians said we're out of here, we want to leave, we don't want to be here anymore.</p> Colleen: Was that because of the new government, because of the war that had been happening in the past?</p> Hannah: A little bit because of the wars that have been happening in the past, so the government that the US started to set up was supposed to represent each religious people group.</p> Colleen: Right.</p> Hannah: So, really, the Christians were getting a voice in the government in a way that they hadn't before, but I think a lot of them were like, we're tired of being at war all the time. Christians in the West are now aware that we exist and would be more likely to give us refuge.</p> Colleen: Yeah.</p> Hannah: Because the dislike of Muslims is high, and so they're going to give us refugee status, because we are Christians living under persecution in the Middle East. It is a chance for us to get our families out of here and into countries where they can have a future. We see no future in Iraq.</p> Colleen: Even though they'd had hundreds of years of history there?</p> Hannah: Yes. But then hundreds of years of war, as well.</p> Colleen: Right.</p> Hannah: So they kind of go. "This is our chance to get out and start a new life." And they start immigrating, finding refugee status in the US, Australia and Canada. Those are the three big places, so not a lot in Europe, but a little farther out. And it seems like they probably made a right, a good choice, because in 2007 there is the murder of Father Ragheed, Ragheed Aziz Ganni and three other church leaders which happens in Mosul.</p> Colleen: All right.</p> Hannah: So Mosul at this point is Christian, Arab Muslim and Kurdish Muslims kind of forced to be mixed together? Where it has historically been Christian with Muslim minority. So this is kind of a big statement by the Muslim population of we don't have any respect for your church leaders so we're going to kill them.</p> Colleen: I bet that shook things up.</p> Hannah: It shook things up a lot. And the Catholic Church looked at it and were like well, this is real bad. This guy was doing a lot of good. We're going to give him the status of "servant of God." This murdered priest Ganni is his last name, and that's kind of significant. Because servant of God is the first step on the way to Catholic sainthood.</p> Colleen: Oh!</p> Hannah: So he would be, should he become a saint, he would become one of the first Chaldean Catholic saints in the Roman Catholic Church, especially in modern times.</p> Colleen: Right.</p> Hannah: I don't know how that's going, I mean it's been a while since then.</p> Colleen: But it usually takes a significant amount of time.</p> Hannah: It takes a significant amount of time. Mother Teresa hasn't gotten sainthood yet and I feel like she might be a priority a little bit. People recognize her more, so the Catholic Church might want to push that a little faster, so it's not really surprise he hasn't become a saint yet, but it seems like he might be eventually.</p> Colleen: Interesting.</p> Hannah: And then in 2008 there's another murder in Mosul. Also a church leader and three companions like the other one, but this is an archbishop.</p> Colleen: So he's a little higher ranked.</p> Hannah: Little higher ranked, which means that it's definitely dangerous for Christians to be in Mosul at this point.</p> Colleen: Okay.</p> Hannah: Safety is not guaranteed also in 2008, 1000 Assyrian families from the Assyrian Church of the East. Who had been split off for a while. They split-off in 1672. They come to the Chaldean Catholic Church and ask if they can be in communion with the Chaldean Catholic Church.</p> Colleen: More unification.</p> Hannah: More unification.</p> Colleen: Also feeling threatened by the persecution, perhaps?</p> Hannah: Probably. Probably feeling a little threatened, probably also watching their numbers dwindled due to violence and so wanting some solidarity of church leadership.</p> Colleen: Community.</p> Hannah: Yeah, and this is not all the Assyrian church of the, it's about a 1000 families, not everybody, but a significant number. So that's the first big exodus in 2003. Then we get the second one in 2012, which is after Saddam has fallen. After all of that is over. This is the point where they say we need to get out of here, because the Muslims are all fighting with each other and we're going to get caught in the middle.</p> Colleen: This is not necessarily based on like themselves being persecuted. It's that there's enough violence here, and we don't want to pick sides and we don't really want to be part of it.</p> Hannah: Right, we don't want to be part of this any more. The power structure has been destroyed, so there is no stability and all of these Muslims are going to start fighting each other and then they're going to turn and look at us and we're in trouble,</p> Colleen: Which, I mean, considering what happened in the next few years seems a little prescient?</p> Hannah: Yes, little, they learned their history; let's put it that way. So this isn't just 60,000, this is hundreds of thousands, the numbers are hard to quantify. It's hard to know because not everybody left as a refugee, some left as immigrants, some just left.</p> Colleen: Did family reunification, started businesses in places…</p> Hannah: So it's hard, it's harder to track the numbers exactly, but again still going to the US, Canada and Australia. In 2013, it was the first year that the current patriarch was appointed. His name is Louis Raphael I Sako. And I wanted to talk about him because he's still the patriarch there, but he was born in Zakho.</p> Colleen: It's righ on the Turkish border between, like near Dohuk.</p> Hannah: Which is also historically a Christian town, which I didn't know.</p> Colleen: I don't think I knew that either!</p> Hannah: Until I started reading about Sako from Zakho, I also liked that combination. And he tried to reunite the ancient Church of the East, the Assyrian Church of the East and Chaldean Catholicism all back together again.</p> Colleen: Yeah!</p> Hannah: He talked to the leaders of the other churches and was like: Hey, why don't you just come come back, come back together with us, and they were kind of like, no thanks. They didn't really put any effort into it.</p> Colleen: I mean it's also understandable, like there's enough other upheaval in life. Why do we need more?</p> Hannah: Right, they're like, well, just let things be what they are. And then Sako was made a cardinal of the Catholic Church in 2018, so he's both the Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church, and now he is a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, which means he has a lot of power and influence, which I suspect is why things that happened more recently, happened. I will get there.</p> Colleen: That's a little ominous, but also a little intriguing.</p> Hannah: It's not ominous. So then, in 2014, we have the rise of ISIS.</p> Colleen: Right. Lots of problems.</p> Hannah: Lots and lots of problems. So up to this time, Mosul and Alqosh really have been the centers of Chaldean Catholicism in Northern Iraq. ISIS pushes up from the south into Mosul and just destroys everything. They tear down churches, they tear down mosques of Muslims, they don't believe what they believe. They kill a bunch of Yezidis. They push almost the entire Christian population of Mosul who have lived there since 431 or before. They push them out of Mosul.</p> Colleen: Right.</p> Hannah: Almost all of them,</p> Colleen: And out of a lot of the Christian villages surrounding the Mosul area, if you're a Christian, you're allowed to leave with little to nothing. But you have to leave or be killed right.</p> Hannah: You could stay if you pay extraordinarily high taxes, and are all right with living with the idea that you could be killed at any moment and you're not allowed to go to church. So basically get out. That's the first time in church history that the church has been pushed out of Mosul. They destroy the majority of the churches. They tear down all the crosses, they get rid of all the iconography. They burn as many Bibles and christian books as they can get a hold of, along with a lot of other historical records of Mosul.</p> Colleen: Yeah, I remember hearing stories of church leaders early on in those days, like filling up their cars with like manuscripts and documents from over 1500 years ago and trying to get them out and save them.</p> Hannah: Right, and there's the monastery in Alqosh that has been around since the 400s. That holds a lot of those historical records and there was a lot of concern for Alqosh. ISIS never got to Alqosh. Alqosh was protected in part by the Kurds.</p> Colleen: Yeah!</p> Hannah: And a lot of the Christians in Mosul fled to Alqosh because it is now the seat of the patriarchate, in some ways. The Catholic Church previous to this actually made the seat of the patriarchy in Baghdad. To kind of centralized the church a little bit better, but historically Alqosh has kind of been the home, as it were.</p> Colleen: That was where the school was for the monks and the priests, and there's a lot of educational flavor there even still. I remember meeting one of the monks there who did not look in any way the way I thought a monk would look. He had like buzz cut and sunglasses and a leather, black leather jacket, and I remember him talking about how he spent a lot of his time with the youth and also working on translating manuscripts from like 500 into modern languages and putting them on the internet so that the youth would have access to the ancient teachings and the ancient books. He was a fascinating, fascinating person.</p> Hannah: Yeah, yeah, they also run a boys home out of the monastery, which I remember when we went going and being like all these teenage boys, like, running around what is going on? Because I didn't know. And one of the monks, or maybe one of the priests, came out and, like explained to us who they were. And what they were doing. And to let him know if they were bothering us, and yeah, so it's pretty cool pretty vibrant place and I was in the US when all of this was happening and I remember watching some of the videos of the destruction of Mosul and I was like: they're coming..</p> Colleen: What about my friends in Alqosh!</p> Hannah: Right, they're coming for Alqosh next.</p> Colleen: I remember feeling that, too.</p> Hannah: What are we going to do and also being really annoyed that they destroyed the tomb of Jonah? Because, like some day I wanted to go there.</p> Colleen: It had never been safe enough theoretically, you know, for me to go to see it, but I wanted to.</p> Hannah: Yeah, so some of the Christians fled to Alqosh. A lot of them also fled up into Kurdistan, because the Kurdish government said we will keep you safe. If you come up here you are welcome and Dohuk and Erbil both have fairly large. Christian populations. Again Zakho is not far from Dohuk and is a Christian town. A lot of those people also live in the Dohuk area. There are a couple other smaller cities between Alqosh and Dohuk and then there's an entire suburb of Erbil that's just a Christian suburb and we'll talk about them in a minute.</p> Colleen: Just to interrupt, if you really want to help us out, give us a review on Apple podcasts. Even if you don't use Apple podcasts, the reviews there really help us get found by other people. So if you could do that for us, that would be great, thanks!</p> Hannah: It seems highly unlikely that any of those Christians that fled Mosul will go back to Mosul. There has been some expectation that they will go back. Most of them at this point say it was our neighbours who betrayed us. Why would we go back to live amongst them? Like, part of the reason that they lived there for so long was they had what they thought were good relationships with their Muslim neighbors, and now they don't feel like that's true anymore. Before I left for the summer in 2014 I had arranged to rent an apartment from Christian friend in Dohuk. That was above his family home and he emailed me when I was supposed to come back and was like so, you can't live with us in that apartment any more, because we have rented it to, we've given it to Christians from Mosul who didn't have anywhere else to live. We've given them both the upstairs apartments, so you can't live there. Most of the Christian families that I knew had taken in Christians from Mosul. The church in Erbil set up basically a little refugee camp in and around the church grounds for people to live.</p> Colleen: I visited one on one of my visits, I think in 2015 or 2016 in a church in Suly, and basically the entire church building had been strung up with like fabric, canvas, you know dividers and you know they turned a whole section of the outside into bathrooms and washing machines and a communal living kitchens, and that it was essentially now a village on in and on a church.</p> Hannah: Right, and that kept a lot of the Christians out of the UNHCR refugee camps, which were full of Yezidis, and some Muslims as well, which is kind of a testament to the church taking care of itself. Which was very cool to see. A lot those Christians didn't want to establish lives for themselves in Kurdistan. Even though Kurdistan said, Live here, we'll help you as much as we can. A lot of those people were like: we don't we don't want to be in Iraq anymore, we dont want to live here anymore, we want out. We want to live in Christian countries like America, Canada and Australia. A lot of my Christian friends who lived in Kurdistan, not fleeing from Mosul, also took that opportunity to apply for refugee status because they had the same feeling of it's just going to get worse. Like they've kicked us out of Mosul, there's no point in us staying any more. The church is being established in other places. We'll we'll just leave. We'll just go and a lot of western countries opened their doors to fleeing persecuted Christians. The church in the West did a good job of pushing for their countries to take in Christian refugees. So in the US, most Chaldean Christians live in Michigan, California or Arizona, very different places.</p> Colleen: And very spread out across the US.</p> Hannah: Very spread out across the US. In 1982, the Chaldean Catholic Church established the Diocese of Saint Thomas the Apostle of Detroit, and from 1982 to 2002 that was the only Chaldean diocese in the US.</p> Colleen: All right.</p> Hannah: So it covered all of the US. Any Chaldean Christian living in the US was within that diocese. And Detroit has the largest population of Chaldean Christians outside of Iraq. There are about a 150,000 of them living in the Detroit area as of 2016.</p> Colleen: All right.</p> Hannah: So that's five years ago? There's almost definitely more now. At this point that diocese covers all of the eastern US.</p> Colleen: Okay, so there's a new one, then, for the western US?</p> Hannah: There is. In 2002, the Diocese of Saint Peter the Apostle of San Diego was established and it covers all of the West.</p> Colleen: Okay.</p> Hannah: There obviously was a big enough Chaldean community in the San Diego that they were like we need our own administration here. A lot of my friends that have moved to the US have moved either to Detroit or San Diego. I don't know of a lot that have moved to Arizona.</p> Colleen: Yeah, I don't know.</p> Hannah: It seems… I mean it makes sense. It's deserty there, it seems… I personally don't have any experience with that. So that's kind of where people are in the US. There also is a diocese that was established in Canada. I don't know about Australia. I don't know if there are enough there that they have their own diocese or if they're under something else. I don't I didn't really look into that. Australia is a long way away. So that's kind of the status of the diaspora of the Chaldean Church.</p> Colleen: Yeah.</p> Hannah: In Iraq the Chaldean church definitely still exists. Most recently, in March, they were visited by the pope.</p> Colleen: Oh yeah, I read all about that. Everyone was so excited it was going to be the pope's first international trip since the beginning of the pandemic and there was a lot of debate over whether or not he should come or not and what that would do with gatherings of people, and but at the same time I feel like the Christians there were starting to feel more forgotten, and so I know that it was a really big deal for him to come and visit and travel through northern Iraq.</p> Hannah: And he is the first pope to have been there ever?… in recent history, at least.</p> Colleen: A long long time.</p> Hannah: It's been a long time, so it is a very big deal. Very, very celebratory. It is a little bit of what started me down the Chaldean Church rabbit trail, because I was like, but they're Chaldean not Catholic. So why are they excited about the Pope? But now I understand. They are Catholic, they're just Chaldean Catholic under Rome. So the pope is their leader and they would be excited to see him and I get it now.</p> Colleen: It all makes sense.</p> Hannah: It all makes sense, and while the Pope was there, he encouraged forgiveness, peace and unity. Forgiveness presumably towards the Muslim population, peace between Muslims and Christians and unity as a whole outside of the church as well as inside of the church. None of Chaldean Church leadership really pushed people to move back to Mosul. They're not saying this is what you have to do.</p> Colleen: Yeah.</p> Hannah: This is what we're recommending that you do. They're kind of going. We would like for the church to return to Mosul, but we also understand why they don't want to. So choose, choose what is best for your family and again…</p> Colleen: And that's not even taking into account the sheer difficulty of rebuilding homes, businesses, infrastructure. There are a lot of villages that people don't want to go back to or can't figure out how to rebuild, for the very reason of the physical difficulties of doing that, let alone are you going to trust your neighbours? Are you going to be able to invest in your life?</p> Hannah: Physical and financial, like, when a town is destroyed, there also is no commerce in that town any more.</p> Colleen: Right, if the school doesn't exist any more, are you going to take your kids away from where they can get an education, to some place where they are not going to get an education until you've spent long enough there to rebuild your home, rebuild your business, and then rebuild the school?</p> Hannah: So at this point in Iraq there are still a lot of Christians in the Alqosh area because it did not fall and there are one or two smaller towns around there that also hold a lot of Christians. The next biggest enclave is in Ankawa, which is… well it used to be a suburb of Erbil, Erbil has kind of expanded into Ankawa. Now it's definitely like the Christian section of Erbil.</p> Colleen: It has a very different feel and culture.</p> Hannah: It does, and we used to go over there. I used to live like really close to Ankawa, so we go over there quite a bit. Lots of really cool churches, not ones that I would call ancient and historically beautiful. A lot of them have been modernized to some extent.</p> Colleen: Yeah.</p> Hannah: Which is fair. So Ankawa is one. And then there is also a pretty big community in Dohuk and they don't have a separate, like the Christian neighborhood. They're kind of scattered throughout Dohuk, but there are quite a few of them there as well. So that's kind of where they are in Iraq. But there are less than 200,000 remaining in Iraq total. There are not very many of them left and there are a lot of international groups that are offering aid to those who want to stay, who are saying we'll come back and help you rebuild your house and rebuild the church and will support you financially and will help establish schools if you want to stay.</p> Colleen: But still don't address the long term personal connections or lack of personal connection that exist.</p> Hannah: So it seems to me, I don't really want to predict, but it seems to me that the Chaldean Church, if it's going to continue to exist, will move into the US. Probably it seems to be. I mean, when there are a 150,000, just in Detroit and 200,000 in all of Iraq, it seems like that shift has already started, so I think I think that's going to continue. I hope that they can hold on to Alqosh.</p> Colleen: Yea and some of those…I don't know those traditions. The history of who brought your people their faith, like that's not something I have as an American Christian. And it's cool having some of that history. Even the idea that you know your bread over the years has come from a piece of bread that was brought by an apostle. You know, like there's a depth of history in connection to that that's really neat, that it would be sad for them to lose entirely, because I'm sure that's not the only example of that kind of story in history.</p> Hannah: There's hope. In sort of a sad way, the Christians will remain in Alqosh. I hope that they do for the sake of history, but I also understand why why they would want to leave. That's everything that I know.</p> Colleen: All of your brain!</p> Hannah: My brain is now recorded onto a podcast. You can upload it to the internet and I can cease to exist.</p> Colleen: No, not quite!</p> Hannah: Not quite.</p> Colleen: If you have any Chaldean friends or stories about how, maybe in your life, if you are a Chaldean Christian, or other stories of history and how it has been taught to you we would love to hear some of those stories!</p> Hannah: Yeah, and if you've been taking notes and I got something wrong, please let me know. I'm happy to issue a correction. I just covered centuries and centuries of church history, and I'm sure I got something wrong along the way. So let me know and I'll issue a correction.</p> Colleen: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us a Servant Group International on Facebook or Instagram, and you should check out our blog and complete transcripts over at servantgroup.org.</p> Hannah: It's really helpful for us if you share our podcast or leave a review on whatever platform you listen to this podcast on. It helps us know that people are listening and you can let us know what you want to hear next!</p> Both: Thanks for listening!</p>

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