My office

Ta da! I have finally figured out how to take pictures on my crackberry and then email them to myself. Except, since my crackberry only works intermittently, I have to wait for the pictures to be sent. That requires patience, which I really do not have much of. 

Without further ado here are the pictures of my office:

This is actually a bedroom. It's the smallest of the three bedrooms and so there are closets in my office. 

 This is what I look at over my computer every day. It is a little disconcerting to see myself! Once again, there are the closet doors.  I did not pick out any of the furniture in my office, and I had to kind of laugh because the extra chairs in my office are red. Oh look, there's me.

I did take another picture of my desk looking neat and clean, but the crackberry didn't send it. You can kind of see my desk in the reflection of the mirror. I once overheard an old boss say that so and so's desk was a mess and they felt it was an accurate depiction of so and so's work. Ever since then, I've been obsessive compulsive about keeping my desk clear. I do not believe that having a clean desk means that you are a better worker, but I think that the perception is true. So, I try to have my piles stacked nicely and if you walk in and my desk is a complete mess, then you know it is a bad day.

One final bonus picture. This is a picture of the new language lab at Salahaddin University, which is located in Erbil, with the Dean, my coworkers and I.  The Dean was so proud of this lab. As we were walking back to his office I saw a poster of the International Declaration of Human Rights. I stopped in my tracks and I, of course, couldn't explain why I had stopped in my tracks. Thankfully, someone translated for me and the Dean said they had it translated and hanging elsewhere in Arabic. It just made my little heart go pitter pat.

The Bajis strike again

You know how I'm an only child and I don't like to share (I'm talking to you Kris- don't you dare eat my last bite of desert), well I am having to share. A lot. Our kitchen is used by all of our staff, since we live in our office. I had to bite my tongue yesterday as I watched somebody stir soup in a teflon pot with a silverware spoon, not a stirring spoon. On top of the staff using stuff and moving things around, the Bajis move things. Every day they move things. I'll open the cabinet to reach for a pot and there is the tupperware. I then have to go banging through all of the cupboards until I find the pots and pans. The other day I couldn't find the salt. I'm not sure why the salt had been moved, but it had. My favorite was the day that we think they cleaned the cabinets. It took us a week to recover from that episode.

Yesterday, one of the bajis brought up a pile of mouse traps. These aren't typical mouse traps, in fact they look more like something you would keep a mouse as a pet in. I stupidly asked why are we setting mouse traps and I am told there are no mice, but we have to. 'We have to' is a common answer, along with, 'that is how it is done here'. Let me tell you what we have caught in the mouse trap-ants. A whole swarm of ants. In fact, our ants are so spoiled that today the bread is stale and they don't want any. Seriously.

In other news the washing machine ate a load of my clothes. Tuesday night I put a load in and when I went downstairs there was an error. I turned it off, turned it back on, pressed the child proof buttons, pressed the add a garment button, kicked it and finally unplugged it. Wednesday, I try to explain the washing machine is broken. Bob and I go down and I show him that it has an error and that it won't open. Then I am told that the washing machine would have to be taken to the shop, because of course there is no Maytag man. I think the washing machine, along with my clothes, went to the repair shop. I hope they come back. I really do not have a large wardrobe here and losing a whole load of clothes would be a bit rough. I'm also a little disconcerted about the fact that my unmentionables are traveling around Sulaimaniya without me.

I managed to have a conversation with Bob today that was at least at the kindergarten level. I asked if there would be a car available and if we could go to the store after work. Then I went to the grocery store and the fruit market all on my own. It was my first time heading out by myself. Ok, fine, Bob helped translate the Kurdish numbers for me at the fruit stand. But still.

Gifts

I remember in my high school choir we sang a Shaker song in a round, "Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free, 'tis the gift to come down where we ought to be, and when we find ourselves in the place just right, 'twill be in the valley of love and delight. When true simplicity is gained, to bow and to bend, we shant be ashamed, to turn, turn, will be our delight, till by turning, turning we come round right."

It comes to mind because there are some people here that are so giving and they are typically the ones who have little to give. One of our security guards is so nice. He loves the television show 24 and I think he likes to imagine that he is our Jack Bauer. He showed us a Kurdish/Arabic/English book and Kari asked through gestures and broken Kurdish and English if we could photo copy it. He tried to give it to us then, but we said we would take it later. Then today he gives me a copy and I say thank you in Kurdish and try to explain I will bring it back. He says no, I say yes and then finally I say thank you. A little while later the doorbell rings and he brought another copy for Kari.

I cannot quite explain how much that gesture touched my heart. Kari kept telling me not to cry, because I had tears in my eyes. Sometimes it is the very simple things that matter the most.

Can I go outside and play?

At the end of every day I gather up my laptop, including the cord, pile my homework or any reading I need to do on top of it, and I head to the top floor to our 'living room'. At that point in time Kari and I should work out, but lately we have been hunkering down for a couple of more hours of work, breaking for dinner and going back to work. Today I sat down at the kitchen table to do some homework, because, um hello, statistics is hard. Then I hear Kari and Mo say we get to play futbol. I was so happy that tears of joy came to my eyes. I couldn't sit still, so I ran downstairs and changed. Then I came upstairs and I was ready. No, really, I was ready. I had to sit and wait for awhile, but then finally after half an hour we went outside. Did I mention I was so ecstatically happy. We have not been able to go outside and play ever. We were supposed to play with one of the other staff, but he could not make it. That meant we had no soccer ball.

We tried to explain to the guard and our driver that we were just walking over to the field. Our driver was really trying to drive us somewhere. We just gave up and walked away. There was no way I was going back inside. So, Mo and I start jogging towards the soccer/basketball field. Kari refused to do something so indecorous. Keep in mind we still did not have a ball. So, we started jogging around the field, which was the size of a basket ball court, not a soccer field. After a couple of laps we switched directions. For every step that Mo took, I took two and for every step I took, Kari took two. He could have lapped us about ten times. At this point our security guards wander over and they truly do not know what to do with us. At one point I was so giddy and laughing so hard that I couldn't run anymore. Crazy Americans! One of our guards went and talked to the guard at the gate to our compound and thankfully he had a soccer ball.

Keep in mind, I am a swimmer. I played kickball with the boys in grade school and I had one semester of gym class in high school. Kari was on the soccer team, probably the basketball team and I'm sure if they would have let her she would have been on the football team. Of course Mo was a soccer star. Basically, I just ran around and laughed a lot. Then, as dusk fell, Mo was kicking the ball across the court and we couldn't see the ball until it hit us, so we switched to basketball. I did pretty good and in fact Kari and I won. Our guards were laughing and cheering us on. We played until the bats were swooping over the court (let me rephrase that, they were actually swooping in the court), the sun had gone down and it was so dark we couldn't see the ball. It was kind of like when you were a kid and your mom was calling, but you really didn't want to go home. Just one more game.

Baji tales

We have two very delightful women who are responsible for cleaning the offices. We have four floors and each floor has two bathrooms, so it is a bit of a task. They only speak Kurdish and I only speak English. Generally we are able to communicate through hand gestures. Anyways, I have been remiss in telling you the baji (it is actually an honorific in Kurdish that means oldest sister/aunt) tales. My first day here I had no hot water. I found out later that it was because a) the baji unplugged the hot water heater and b) the baji broke the heating component. Thankfully our head of security Bob took pity on me and fixed the heating component. So, this morning I step into the bathroom after only 5 hours of sleep and all I get is cold water. That would wake you up, except for the part where the water was too cold, so I didn't actually get under the shower head. I had a sponge bath instead.

I walk out and tell Bob in broken Arabic that I had no hot water before I forgot to check that the hot water heater was plugged in. Of course Bob walks over to the hot water heater and plugs it in. We have a laugh-ha ha ha. I then went in search of tea. The baji strikes again. I think that maybe they feel they are saving electricity. Occasionally the air conditioning units are also turned off at the power source, and power strips are unplugged. I wish that they would choose to save water instead, because their notion of washing the floors is to take a bucket of water and throw it on the floor. Then they use a squeegee and chase it down the drainpipe. If they are cleaning the bathroom floor they take, for lack of a better word, the bum sprayer, and spray down the bathroom and walk away.

I think that may be enough baji tales for the day. Do not fear, there will be more.

What language do you speak

Some of you may remember a story I told a couple of years ago about traveling from Madrid to London and in the Madrid airport I was trying to change money. In one single sentence I spoke French, English and Spanish. The gentleman in perfect crisp English asked me, "what language *do* you speak?". At that point I had no idea. That is kind of where I am right now.

There are so many layers of conflict within this country that trying to sort it out makes my head spin. One current divide, that I'm kind of living in, is between Kurdistan and Iraq. There is a lot of history behind this divide, which I am still trying to sort out and I am just too tired to explain, but let me show you how it impacts my day.

My morning starts with 'choni bashi' (which is Kurdish and translates to, 'hello, how are you, I am well' and yes all of that in two words) and ends with tisba alal khair (Arabic for goodnight). Our office is primarily Kurdish and almost everyone speaks English. The cleaning ladies do not speak any English and we speak through my limited Kurdish and hand gestures. There are a couple of administrative staff who have limited English (in fact their English is probably better than my Arabic) and speak primarily Arabic. Quite a few of the staff speak English, Arabic and Kurdish. And then there is me. I knew moving here that the cultural divide and language barrier would be challenging, but trying to sort through two languages at once is a bit much.

One day this week I was told to come to a meeting and the person who called the meeting was only speaking in Kurdish (even though they speak fluent English). After a couple of sentences one of my staff members said, "I am going to switch to English" and then we had our meeting. Language is a useful tool. It is also used to demonstrate power. Most everyone is appreciative of my attempts to learn and speak, whether it is Arabic or Kurdish. Well, almost everyone.

I am trying to focus on learning Arabic, but then the question becomes which version? Formal written Arabic (which is very different from spoken), Egyptian Arabic, or Iraqi Arabic? Then even as I try to focus on Arabic a little Kurdish creeps in to my lesson. My Arabic teacher is a gentleman who drove a cab in Baghdad for 15 years and then in 2003 (the invasion) he got a job working with some Americans as a translator. Except, then his life was threatened because of his involvement with the Americans and he went back to driving a cab. Finally he ended up with his wife and son in Sulaimaniya and he expressed such sadness on not being able to protect them in Baghdad that it made me hurt and angry. Every day I hear stories like this. Every, pardon my french, damn day. I am very grateful that he agreed to help me because from him I learn more then just Arabic- I learn about life.

Now I have completely random Kurdish words in my head. Today, for example, we went to the mewa (fruit stand) to get some shooto (watermelon). My driver for today's expedition speaks a bit of English. I think in many cases people understand more English then they are able to speak. The same is starting to happen to me with Arabic. Our head of security also got into the car (keep in mind I was just going to the grocery store and did not need a full security detail). So I asked him, "yallah Zara kak Bob (names have been changed! and Zara is the name of the store). What I said was "go (Arabic) Zara Mr. (Kurdish) Bob". I sound like a two year old. He always appreciates my attempts to speak though and laughed and explained in bits of Arabic and English that he was going home.

I think too that I am being a little bit hard on myself and I have only been here for a month and I have learned more Arabic then some previous staff members who lived here for a year. I am looking forward to the day that when I try to speak Arabic I do not first search through my brain for the word in French and then try to find the right word in Arabic and come up blank.

On being a woman

Most days I do not even notice that I am a girl. It is just a part of my general make-up, like being five foot seven with hazel eyes. Here, it is something I notice every single day. Take today for example, we were having a conference at a local hotel and I walked in the door and every single man in the lobby (sitting there smoking cigarettes and drinking tea) turned and looked me up and down. I am not talking about a subtle glance- I mean they raked their eyes over every part of my body. I've become quite accomplished at ignoring them. What makes it worse is that I was accompanied by not one, but two Iraqi men. That alone should have made me invisible to any stranger. Another example, as Kari and I walked up to the counter to check out of the hotel in Erbil I saw two men sitting in the lobby (smoking cigarettes and drinking tea). One guy saw us and then poked his friend so they could stare at us. It was like we were exotic animals in the zoo. I could understand if we were in the middle of nowhere and they had never seen a foreigner, but this was a very Western hotel. Last week we walked to a restaurant near work and it was brilliant to be able to leave the office and go to lunch. Partly because of the heat and partly because of Ramadan we had not been leaving the office during the day. We walk into the restaurant and there are a ton of tables open in one section and yet my co-worker is trying to find a table in a crowded section. When I point out the uncrowded area he told me that was the men's section. A whole freaking section of the restaurant was dedicated to men (smoking cigarettes and drinking tea). It also dictates how you can do work here. There is a part of my project that deals with conflict resolution in communities that are actively in conflict. No, I am not going to those communities, but somehow I have to get the work done. Someone contacted us about doing a play about reconciliation and I was seriously considering the idea. Then I found out that men and women cannot go to see the play together. Do I have a separate performance for each gender?

I identify myself as a feminist. Even though feminism is now a dirty word. I firmly believe in equality between men and women. I knew that women's rights were not the same in the middle east, but there is a vast difference between knowing and experiencing. I am lucky too because my situation is very different then a lot of women here. I work for an international organization and I'm the boss. My entire staff, except one woman, are men. Quite a few of them tested the boundaries, because I think they expected me to be a pushover. They got a little surprise instead.

On the flip side, I get annoyed when people expect middle eastern women to be feminists. It took women in the United States quite some time before they got the vote and we still only make, what, seventy cents to the dollar. Here we are at the beginning stages of feminism. I know that through example, training and time, things will gradually change. Regardless, I wish men would at least act respectfully, especially since I am not walking around on my own wearing high heels and a short skirt. In the meantime I will continue to be a muted version of myself but sometimes that gets tiresome.