A Day Out of the Office

On the road again and stuck behind a convoy. Clicking on these
pictures makes them bigger by the way, (just figured that out).

It's always nice to get on the road away from the computers, telephones and email. We set out to inspect a road project in a town southeast of here today and saw some of the prettiest scenery I've seen yet in Iraq. Date palms lining sleepy canals with footbridges and small houses dotting the banks. Looked like a picturesque place to live compared to the city slums I've become accustomed to seeing here. Drove past and over many canals here today and lots of marshes full of egrets, herons, plovers, black winged stilts, and saw dozens of Pied Kingfishers. They were on every power line and the silty banks of the canals would make a perfect place for these bank nesters to burrow. Most of the places I saw today are living remnants of a way of life that goes back centuries. This was a Wayback Machine trip. I saw a donkey walking in circles powering an ancient irrigation pump, long-houses of reed mats that must have been in style for a thousand years, and mud-brick houses that look like doubles for pueblos in our southwest. I saw kids walking to school farther than my Dad used to tell me he did. Backpacks from some aid agency or other, all matching. Hundreds of kids just appear, seemingly out of nowhere, near these schools.