Pictures

One day we were out on a "mission"....sounds so important, huh? Well, it was a visit to an Iraqi farmer's association headquarters.  We were there to visit their office and see some of the equipment which we had purchased on their behalf.  Soldiers take us on these missions, and guard us all the way.  

On this day, we had gotten out of the army vehicles and were walking into the building.  You can see the soldier in the upper left, one of the many who were guarding us.  As we approached the entry to the building, I saw this burro, and had to stop and get a picture.  As I stopped, one of the soldiers came over to me quickly and said, "Sir, you need to get into the office...those are propane tanks on that trailer, and, well, sir, you just never know what might happen."  Boy, did I feel pretty dumb!!  I was excited to see the burro, and completely overlooked the potential danger!  Those propane tanks could make one heck of an explosion!  "Thanks", I said to the soldier, as I turned quickly and got out of there!  

Here's a "garden of eden" shot!!  This irrigation water is coming off the Euphrates River and entering a palm grove.  Many of the palm groves are farmed in an intensive manner.  The date palm trees make up the top canopy.  The next canopy consists of citrus trees.  Beneath the citrus trees will typically be patches of vegetables or perhaps some type of forage.  Water is so precious, they use it as efficiently as possible.

Here's $50,000 in cold, hard, fresh-off-the-printing-press cash!!!  The Provincial Reconstruction Teams spend a lot of money on various projects, i.e. refurbishing a hospital, building chicken coops, buying generators for a chicken hatchery, installing air conditioning in the local government center, etc.  The Iraqi banking system doesn't work so well, so cash transactions are the norm.  This is a picture of an ag advisor counting the $50K to make sure it's all there.  I counted it, too, and it was all there....$50,000 smackers in a zip lock bag!!  The guy shown here carried that money around in a backpack for several days while out on a mission.  He said that he sure felt funny!!