And it begins...

So, I am currently sitting in a hotel here in Jordan waiting for a driver to pick me up and take me to the airport where I will board a plane to NY, spend the night there visiting with friends and then board another airplane tomorrow morning to Costa Rica! My first R&R (rest and relaxation) trip and am I ready for it!

Last time I wrote, things hadn't really gotten underway. I kept saying that I couldn't wait to get up and running and everyone kept telling me to be careful what I wished for. They were right! I still love it, I'm just a little exhausted. : ) I have been working with a local organization that will partner with us on several projects in an area of northeast Baghdad. There are 2.5-3 million people living a very small neighborhood. It's supposed to be in the top 3 most densely populated areas in the Middle East. We will be working with extremely vulnerable populations there, including IDPs, returnees and host community families living in extreme poverty.

Also, my regional director and I made a foray into another town hoping to learn more. We ran into a very nice man who invited to his home to speak with his wife and children. He also introduced us to the local leadership. I am now working with the local community leader on several projects, including building a park, so kids have a clean, safe place to play. We will also do a distribution of some non-food items to the most vulnerable in the area and a clean-up campaign to help them remove some trash from the streets (the government ran out of funding to do trash pick-up in their area). Think about if the garbage truck stopped coming to your neighborhood twice a week to take away all the trash...what would you do? Where would you put it? What if you didn't have a car to haul it to the garbage dump and couldn't afford to hire a taxi? Then what?

This town is on the outskirts of Baghdad and doesn't enjoy a great infrastructure. Most of the roads are unpaved. It is desert, so there is no green place for kids to play. No garbage pick-up, no sewage system, 3-7 hours of electricity a day, limited water supply, etc. But on the outskirts of the capital city of the country. Can you picture it in your mind? Many of the people living in this town are living in houses that the government provided for government employees. When the violence broke out in 05-07, the employees fled the area, leaving the houses abandoned. People fleeing more dangerous areas in other parts of the country arrived and moved into the abandoned houses. People from the area living, 11 to a house, moved into the abandoned houses for more space. However, even though they've been living there for 4-5 years, the houses are owned by the government and the government has the legal right to evict them at any time. There is a national law in Iraq, that the government enacted to try to get the homes of returnees back from squatters. The government will provide the squatters with 6 months rent while they look for a new place to live when they return the homes to their original owners. Another problem is that the government's revenues are based almost entirely on oil revenues and with the huge drop in the prices of oil, the government's budget for 09 has been cut nearly in half, so that means less resources for schools, infrastructure (electricity, water, sewage, trash pick-up, etc.), IDP programs, etc. It's a very unique situation over here and my past experiences, while they help me a little bit here are so vastly different that it has been a big adjustment.

I have pictures of my bedroom, which I will attach. I like it. We have a nice area on the roof too, where we sometimes sit in the evenings. We were up there a couple weeks ago and could hear the military helicopters flying by. We always wondered if they used lights at night....they don't. But all of the sudden one of the helicopters had lights....no wait....what is that....it's red and yellow and there are like 6 shooting out of the helicopter, less than a block from our house. Yikes! We hauled a** into the house and took cover. Then we felt a little ridiculous, turns out the helicopters shoot out flares at night. The different colors of the flares signifies a certain signal to other troops. Our hearts nearly beat out of our chests, but it was the first time we'd ever seen that. The next night when the helicopter shot out green flares and it was a few blocks a way, we barely blinked. Live and learn! : )

What else? Hmmm.....oh, another organization that lives near us has poker night once or twice a week. I have started going and really enjoy myself. Plus, I usually come back either even or up. Shocker, Dad. I know!

Well...I guess that is it for now. I have to either update this blog more often or write notes on things I want to mention. I can't remember everything, but I know there were several times that I thought, this should go in my blog. Anyway, I am having a great time and learning a lot. I sort of feel like it's my first job out of college and I have no experience. That's how much I am learning. Well, please keep in touch and don't forget to tell me what's up with you.