Thursday, January 13, 2005

Soccerballs over Iraq

I got to visit some other FOBs the other day, via Blackhawk helicopter. Same kind of flight as before; pretty low, some juking back and forth, kind of fun.

I am kind of amazed by some of the housing. It looks like the housing, and certainly the architecture, hasn't changed for hundreds, or thousands, of years. Mut huts, or so they appear at first. Now that I've had a chance to take some pictures and look at them, I do notice a few things. I saw a house with the roof off. The inside walls had been whitewashed, so it's probably lighter than I was thinking. Also, I see lots of rungs hanging outside during the day. I guess they have dirt floors, covered by rugs, which is probably pretty nice. I saw different styles of mud hut in different places. I saw the flat-topped mud hut, and the rounded top mud hut. Some have livestock pens right by the house, some have them a ways away. Saw a fair number of satellite TV dishes.

As we flew over kids, herding sheep or whatever, the crew of the helicopter threw out white soccerballs to the children.

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