Well it is that time again, off on deployment! This time I am in Erbil in Iraq. I am deployed via Red R Australia to UNHCR (the Refugee Agency) to work on the response to refugees from Syria crossing into Iraq.
So where the hell am I? Well it is a city called Erbil which is in Northern Iraq (aka Kurdistan).
I didn't really know what to expect, of course there was some initial worry about going to Iraq given the violence that sadly seems to be increasing. However, from my first days here I have been really impressed with how nice the people are, how safe the city is that I am living in and how much the Iraqi's remember the Australian football team from 2007!!!! We also have a reasonable amount of freedom of movement - which is nice for a deployment.
I have been deployed initially for 6 months, which means that I have arrived in the peak of Summer (it has been averaging 47/48 degrees) and will likely leave in the middle of winter.
I arrived here really not knowing what to expect. I had of course heard about the Syrian civil war but had not really taken the time to actually understand what it was all about - and after a month here I am not sure if any of it is actually any clearer!
But it has been an interesting time, on my first day in the office this happened....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23745201
So things got busy pretty quickly.....It was pretty chaotic in the first couple of days to get the camps set up, so from my side that meant dispatching as many tents as possible till all hours of the night. But the result was pretty impressive - behind me in the photo below was just all empty land and within 5 days it had become a mini city with 10,000 residents!
But it hasn't been all work. This week some friends and I went and played bingo. Interesting challenge as the numbers were in Arabic yet our bingo card was in English....I got sooooo close to winning :-)
Here is a couple of photos of the countryside around the city where I live - I really wasn't expecting mountains and lots of trees.... I really should do more research into where I am going on deployments!
So that is it for the moment. Due to some rather pointed requests this time I am hoping to blog more often and with a bit more detail in regards to what I actually do (this is for you Amy!). Just like last time there will continue to be a Q and A section so feel free to send questions in.....
See you all soon!
So where the hell am I? Well it is a city called Erbil which is in Northern Iraq (aka Kurdistan).
I didn't really know what to expect, of course there was some initial worry about going to Iraq given the violence that sadly seems to be increasing. However, from my first days here I have been really impressed with how nice the people are, how safe the city is that I am living in and how much the Iraqi's remember the Australian football team from 2007!!!! We also have a reasonable amount of freedom of movement - which is nice for a deployment.
I have been deployed initially for 6 months, which means that I have arrived in the peak of Summer (it has been averaging 47/48 degrees) and will likely leave in the middle of winter.
I arrived here really not knowing what to expect. I had of course heard about the Syrian civil war but had not really taken the time to actually understand what it was all about - and after a month here I am not sure if any of it is actually any clearer!
But it has been an interesting time, on my first day in the office this happened....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23745201
So things got busy pretty quickly.....It was pretty chaotic in the first couple of days to get the camps set up, so from my side that meant dispatching as many tents as possible till all hours of the night. But the result was pretty impressive - behind me in the photo below was just all empty land and within 5 days it had become a mini city with 10,000 residents!
But it hasn't been all work. This week some friends and I went and played bingo. Interesting challenge as the numbers were in Arabic yet our bingo card was in English....I got sooooo close to winning :-)
Here is a couple of photos of the countryside around the city where I live - I really wasn't expecting mountains and lots of trees.... I really should do more research into where I am going on deployments!
So that is it for the moment. Due to some rather pointed requests this time I am hoping to blog more often and with a bit more detail in regards to what I actually do (this is for you Amy!). Just like last time there will continue to be a Q and A section so feel free to send questions in.....
See you all soon!
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