Joking around in ErBil

So early on the morning of the 24th of Jan. I left Camp Freedom in northern Mosul for ErBil which is in Iraqi Kurdistan. PSD team was armed to the teeth. I saw at least 3 AK-74, the gun truck had a 50 cal, and every one of the team had atleast 2 personal rifles. Oh yeah, It was pissing down rain and really cold.


After all that build up, nothing happened on the trip.

Kurdistan is completely different from the rest of Iraq, they are actually glad to see us here. We can go out on the streets. There needed to be supplies bought for the little local Corp of Engineers office we have here in ErBil, so we took a trip into town. The resident engineer, the Major I am traveling with, our young female Iraqi intrepreter, and myself.

One of the things we had to get was a propane cook stove, which we found. The stores in town are laid out like a bazaar. Appliance stores one one street, computer stores on another, and cell phone stores on another, you get the idea.

Anyway, the propane stove needed an adapter to run off the small propane tanks they deliver here. We called it a head and we had to pay $5 extra for it. You can see where I am going with this. Major made a wise crack that for as much we paid for the stove we should have got head for free. The engineer said only in Iraq could you get head for $5.

Granted in the U.S.A. this joke would have been dead after that point. Enter our young female translator, hope was taking the term head literally. She would chime in that she thought in was a good price for a head, or if we shopped around we could of gotten a better price for a head. I was in stitches. She must of wondered what we were laughing about.

Also ate at a kurdish resteraunt, dont know what it was exactly. Was a lot of it and it tasted great.

God Bless,

Later,

Frank