Not your typical disaster...

All of our staff from Baghdad had come up for a week long training. To celebrate the first time we had gotten all of the organisation's staff together for the first time, we went on a day-long excursion through the mountains north of Shaklawa (Erbil, KRG). It's beautiful up there – very mountainous, with lots of areas to picnic and hike. Erbil governorate being relatively safe allows you to travel pretty freely without any fears of roadside bombs or sketchy check-points, which gave our Baghdad staff freedom they would not normally have.

Here are two anecdotes from the trip.

The KRG approach to nature conservation: "Cover it in concrete and nothing will touch it"

Bekhan is one of my favourite places in the whole country because it is… well… absolutely fascinating. Bekhan has a large natural spring that spills into a giant waterfall. It's where most of the bottled water in the KRG comes from. They have built a treatment plant conveniently and directly beside the waterfall…

Surrounding the waterfall there is a picnic area where people can camp and eat. It's not your typical picnic area that you would find in many places. Instead, to preserve the waterfalls natural beauty, the government has covered the entire area with concrete. To boot, stalls up on stalls of shops selling Chinese junk and Turkish junk food have been opened up surrounding the entire picnic area, which is 3 floors and works it way up through the waterfall itself, connected by a series of very uneven and dangerous concrete steps. The area is completely covered with corrugated tin roofing, and plastic lawn chairs and tables scatter the area. What is more, the whole are has connecting "steams" of water from the spring that run through concrete channels. Due to a lack of garbage cans… and most patrons inability to throw anything in one most of these streams are filled wit refuse from picnics and snacks. It's truly an amazing site/sight.

Theme parks… Yes I said Theme park.

As I was speeding down a hillside on a rollercoaster I thought to myself… maybe this isn't the best idea I've had in while. I have been on some scary midway rides before at less than well maintained community fun fairs before, but a rollercoaster at a theme park in the developing world? In a war zone no less? Then it hit me, the irony of it all. In one of the most dangerous countries in the world, I may fall to my death or be seriously injured not by a suicide bomber or an ambush, but in fact, a carnival ride. The news papers back home would write: "Canadian female, 26, seriously injured in Iraq on midway ride". Instead of sympathy, that maybe my family deserves more than me, we would get: "It serves her right… what the heck was she doing on a rollercoaster in Iraq?" This turned my minute-long joy-ride into a thrill-ride of sorts.

All in All – I clearly made it out alive. To report, the Bumper Cars were more fun, the rollercoaster wasn't really a rollercoaster per say, it was cars on tracks that went down a spiral on the side of mountain – and I must say looked fairly well maintained. I didn't touch the Ferris Wheel though. I had to draw the line somewhere.