A new week in Sul.

Tuesday 16th of September 2008

On Saturday, after a relaxing and nice weekend, the first day at the office in Sul. started again. I have to admit that I was a bit annoyed by the fact that something was going on in the organization, and that somehow it was not to be shared with the newly arrived ones. Well, the organization has gone through a lot of changes the latest three months because of financial issues from the Norwegian ministry of foreign affairs. Though it is easy to forget the fact that Iraq is not defined as a developing country, after the US military operation in 2003, the whole world society has send a lot of aid here to improve the situation, besides Afghanistan off course. It is very typical that local NGOs in countries which are in a developing process and are very dependent on aid from foreign countries, to get into an organizational crisis when the aid is decreasing drastically. Some few hardworking and strong local Iraqi NGOs are getting financed through project proposals and project budgets. In a country such as Iraq where the civil society is not that strong compared to the private and the public sphere, and the public financing is very low to the strengthening of this sphere, such project funding will make the organizations existence dependent on foreign aid.

Anyway, before arriving Kurdistan, I did not have high expectations about the work here. Somehow I had drawn a mental picture of how the work in PDA would look like. After the first day, H and I decided to make our own plans about our work in the organization, afterwards get approval from the leaders and then start our work to obtain the plans, and at the same time, reach our objectives. Now we are in step 3; we drew a plan and got it approved by the leader, and now we are preparing some workshops. Today H had her first meeting with the people in the Cultural Development Desk; tomorrow I have with the Human Rights Desk (if they do not postponed it further more). To be continued.

The latest days there has been a horrifying sand storm all over the Kurdistan province; it is absolutely terrible. I have allergy against dust, and can reassure you that I have been feeling down a lot lately. This morning I woke up to the beautiful sight of a bloody pillow; the bleeding from my nose would not stop. My uncle who works in the hospital told me that this is a sign of a strong reaction on the dust created by the sand storm. I even left work earlier than usual. On my way home, I saw some people wearing white (dentist look alike) masks covering their mouth for the sake of protection against the sand and dust.

For some days ago some peshmerges got killed in Xaneqin. The conflict in Xaneqin between the KRG and the central Baghdad government is still not solved. They are fighting over the authoritative control over the Kirkuk province. They found some burned Korans in the toilets of a mosque in Suleimany, and this is a major subject now. I find these actions as very disrespectful; it really takes away the understanding and the tolerance among humans in such societies which are not homogenous neither when it comes to ethnicity nor religion. Such actions stimulate the hate engine to blossom up more conflicts and the uprising of new civil wars.

For each day passing by, my grandfather is getting sicker and sicker. Since yesterday his speaking ability has been dramatically reduced. For the two weeks I have been here, he even lost his walking ability. One of the leaders in PDA informed me that Alzheimer has increased a lot in Kurdistan. I wonder why.

C..