June 19, 2003
We love Ali!
The last few days have been hard, busy and more than a little depressing - so I forgot my promise about the rest of the team - but just in case you're interested, here's a bit about us:
There are eight of us here, a pathetically small number - but so it is. Rianne (Doctor Rianne as I now call her) and William are our radiation experts, Phillip and Christian (mini Mo) are responsible for all the pictures and video we produce and hopefully you can check them out here or on the web, Voss and Stephan are our logistics and safety experts, I work on media issues and Mike is the lead campaigner. We are all campaigning in our different ways - but Mike talks more, and more loudly than the rest of us! Two Scots, one German, one Austrian, a Swede, Belgian, one Dutch and one Irish...
We are all still adjusting to the place, the heat, and mental and emotional nature of what we are doing. It's hard work. Usually we are up around 6 am, ready to be on the road by 7 am. Any later and the heat of the day just becomes too much (and that's by about 10.30!) but there is much work to be done - so basically we just have to suffer it for now! We make quite a sight leaving the hotel each morning. Every day one big steel box full radiation monitors, safety clothing and sampling gear, one big steel box with the decontamination kit in it, Geiger counters, dosimeters, little trowels for collecting samples, video and photo kits, a giant cool box, 60 litres of water, back packs, endless amounts of other stuff, two translators and three drivers trail through the little hotel lobby, are packed into cars and off we go.
Each evening after a hot and dusty day, the same crocodile of stuff gets trailed back inside.
We are sharing our hotel with an Iraqi boy band who have been in the news, hoping to make it big now they are free to make the kind of music they want ?? it's a bit of a head spin - I didn't figure that the whole boy band thing would follow me here! Still at least these guys can sing...which is more than can be said for some of the others!
At the centre of our team is Ali - not from Greenpeace, from here in Baghdad. A big bear of a man, the kindest, sweetest person, who takes care of us, keeps us safe and seems to know what we want before we do. Cold water - Ali is there already with a bottle in a huge paw, stuff from the decontamination kit - he knows where it is better than the rest of us now, best route home, where we should and shouldn't go, where you get a tape measure or a lump hammer in the middle of nowhere on a Sunday - you name it, he can do it. We love Ali!
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