bertlord

I have had many bikes and ride them all the time.

I will have to say that in most countries that I find myself the best produce and food is in the farmers markets for cheeper prices. I do not want to spend more for supposed cleanliness.

Trust me if you really are into surfing then you are a long boarding. If you want to skate on the water then get a short board and carve the wave. I yearn to be one with the ocean and lean its call and careen.

I drank it and even have pictures of it on my website www.bertlord.com if you want to see them. It was not hard for me but each person doing it with me could not do it. Maybe it is my cast iron gullet.

That may be misleading, I drew it – but I did not actually do the tattoo myself. If you are in the mood to get a tattoo please draw it or have it drawn and make changed to it as often as you want. Look at it everyday and if you find that you have not changed it in three months then get it.

This is not something that you want to have the first part happen of. Now to have both happen is a bonus.

I was shot 7 times though so I am lucky. I was shot three times the first time and four times the second time. I am either the luckiest or unluckiest person I know.

OK, I am not sure if most of you will think this counts, but I went there on a ship with the US Navy. The ship was in fact a submarine as well. It was true north though as well as magnetic north. We did both. I cannot say when or on what ship but it was cool – I mean that literally as well.

I am sorry for the pun; it was funny in my head.

I grew up seeing the northern lights (Aurora Borealis) almost every night. I have also been on at the North Pole and on the way there we say the northern lights one night that just lit up the whole sky. Sorry to say that we did not see them at the North Pole. We were only there during the day. When it is dark there we do not punch through the ice.

I grew up with a vital necessity involved with learning how to drive stick, if I could drive the tractor I no longer had to walk along beside it to work in the field. – - – - – Awesome!!!!!!

It is worth doing it anyway.

I am currently in the US Navy, but I have had jobs since I was 12 years old. I am now getting out of the Navy and have decided that I want to be my own jerk of a boss.

Well I have made my own website. It is easy and simple. Check it out at www.bertlord.com

I may be a little premature saying that I can speak Arabic as I only speak Egyptian Arabic and would have a hard time speaking with a Saudi or Iraqi Arab.

I have spent a lot of time with some Koreans and they say that my Korean is strong enough that they can understand me. When I am with the I only speak Korean so I guess I could say that I may know a thing or two.

Well I have passed tests saying that I speak and write Spanish properly. I am not sure if I would want to be dropped in the middle of Mexico and have to live with the locals yet (water issues aside).

Well I started out at 326 lbs. I made 300 lbs in May and now I am around 287 lbs. My next goal is to weigh 275 lbs. Once I am there we will see if I still want to loose more weight.

I have five tattoos on my body and if you want to get one I have a simple recommendation. What you should do it take a drawing of the tattoo you want and make any changes and alterations you want to it whenever you want to. If you find that you are satisfied with the tattoo and have not made any changed to it in three months, then feel free to get the tattoo.

I will have to say that most people either love working out or they hate it. You never really hear people say, “Well I really do not love working out, there is just something about full body pains and sweat that interests me.”

I know that there are those who work out because they have to for health reasons. I am not really talking about them. Instead I am talking about those sweat junkies who you see running for miles and miles on end. The ones with all the cool workout equipment who seem to always be in a perpetual grimace. Those are the diehards who live for sweat.

I am not one of those. I love to make my muscles scream and tell me to stop torturing them, but I like to do it in fun ways. I will run, but there better be a mountainous trail around me, or at least a beach. I do not lift weights, but I do like to do push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups, balancing exercises, and take my surfboard out into the water and paddle just to paddle. If the waves are large then I will find myself ridding a little more then paddling, but who can blame me for that.

If you find yourself in Honolulu and you want to have a workout partner please let me know. I am not a gym rat but I can come up with a good workout that will make anyone sweat.

Road Trip’s and I are really good friends. I have taken them in a school bus but instead of stealing one from a blind school we took it from a junk yard and renovated it. I have taken road trips on motorcycles by myself and with others. Road trips that I have been on have taken anywhere from a few hours to three months. I have been to 49 of the states in the US and every province in Canada. I have been deep into South and Central America. My next goal is to take a road trip all over the Middle East. Trust me, when it comes to the road trip I am accustomed to the road.

In Hawaii we have many waterfalls and many opportunities to take romantic tourists to these waterfalls.

Being the nice guy I am I happen to be bound by being raised by sisters who raised my consciences of treating women like queens. So if a girl tells me that she has always dreamed of kissing under a waterfall then I will have to assist her in that goal. That is was quite romantic.

There is a nice place in Muanawili Falls that you can climb above the waiting pond below and have the many light waterfalls crashing down around you cleansing the world of all the stress it hold in its many crevices. The lush flora surrounds you in a cocoon of topiary that seems to welcome you and caress you with its innocence. I took her into my arms and stroked my hand through her wet hair as we stared into each others eyes lost in the moment that seemed to last a lifetime and to quickly was past. Our lips met and our tongues danced lightly with each other. The waterfall no longer existed as my arm encircled her waist and pulled her closer to me as my hand caressed the back of her head. We broke apart our senses reeling and our breath short and gasping.

I will rate that kiss amongst my top five lifetime.

Some say there are no rich men in Kurdistan. Maybe it is because there are not many men. Or maybe it is just the definition of rich that should change.

The mountains on the horizon are on fire. Children gathering on the hillside barely pay it any heed on this Thursday morning. A long line of children trod on by with baskets on their heads and a burden’s curve in their back. Brisk morning breezes from the mountains above bring crisp whiteness to their breath. This is the portrayel that is painted of the Kurdish youth in the mountains of Kurdistan by the budding film industry.

There are few people willing, but many reasons to work in Kurdistan. Since the Kurdish peoples first note in 3,000 BC in writings from the Sumerians to the present day, these people have seen the backlash of many civilizations.

In Iraq today there are 4 – 6 million Kurds and in the Middle East there is an estimated 25 to 35 million Kurds, none of which have a country to call their own. In Iraq Kurds have been persecuted by the Ba`athist regime coming to power in 1968. Even though this heralds a time of great sadness for the Kurdish people, the wholesale slaughter of an entire generation only began after the 1980’s Iran – Iraq war.

In the city of Halabja on 15 March-19 March in 1988 the Halabja poison gas attack was one of the greatest direct attacks on the Kurdish people. Of course no one knows if it was the Iranian or Iraqi forces that were to blame for the gassing or if it was an unintentional byproduct of war.

No confusion exists on who is to blame for the Iraq regimes Al-Anfal campaign between 1986 and 1989. The Al-Anfal campaign takes its name from Surat Al-Anfal1 in the Qur’an. This holy name was then used as a code for the Iraqi Ba`athist regime to place a holy calling on a series of military campaigns aimed at extermination of the peshmerga rebels2 and the mostly Kurdish civilian population of southern Kurdistan.

The campaign was headed by Ali Hasan al-Majid, Saddam Hussein’s cousin who used ground offensives, aerial bombing, systematic destruction of settlements, mass deportation, concentration camps, firing squads, and most devastatingly – chemical warfare thereby earning al-Majid the nickname of “Chemical Ali” to exterminate the Kurdish people from the land.

The results of the Al-Anfal campaign led to the elimination of 3,827 villages (approximately 75%), 1754 schools being destroyed, 2450 mosques demolished, 48 churches leveled, 270 hospitals wiped out and according to The Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International 182,000 civilians were systematically eliminated.

Loosing ones schools, places of worship, homes, as well as brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, and children would seem to be the worst that could happen to a people. Yet the Kurdish has always seemed to know that this was their lot in the world. There is a saying amongst the Kurdish people, “No friends but the mountain.” In all of their history the Kurdish people have had to flee to the mountains to escape one group after another who had either ethnocentric ideal or religious ideology that called for the blood of unbelievers. As the largest ethnicity in the world without their own country the Kurdish people are at the mercy of governments in over nine different countries.

If physical destruction and murder was not enough, Kurdish Iraq also had to deal with the “Arabization” of Kurdistan. Arabization was an idea used by Hussein’s regime to drive Kurdish families from their homes in cities like Kirkuk by moving in poor Arabs from Iraq’s southern regions to flood the northern territories with Arabs and thusly limit the Kurdish majority.

After the first Gulf War, in 1991, the United States forced a “No-Fly-Zone” over northern Iraq establishing relative peace in the Kurdish region of Iraq for the first time in generations. The resultant action was the creation of a democratic government by the Kurdish people that was the first in the Middle East to embrace the tenants of freedom and understanding. Of course, no new society is perfect, and many setbacks occurred. But the Iraqi-Kurds are building a society when everyone else seems to just want to destroy. Universities have sprung up all over Kurdish Iraq, as well as open forums inviting in foreign investors. The Kurdish people do not tolerate terrorists or criminals in their land no matter their ethnicity. Arabs, Christians, Jews, and Kurds all live together in relative peace. The young kids in Kurdish Iraq are now starting to have dreams of becoming builders in their society, even young girls are encouraged to go to school and become engineers. This however is the story in the cities that have received aid from foreign countries and donations from private groups.

Out in the countryside, where the devastation from Saddam’s attacks was the worst, there is a different story. Children whose parents have either been killed or fled to the cities to find work are raising each other. Those who are too old or feeble to walk depend on the children to sustain their lives.

Even with the rugged cut of the Iraqi-Kurdish youth like all kids they yearn for the gentle touch of compassions sweet caress or just anyone to show they care even in the smallest regard. Soldiers become children’s heroes just by giving them chocolate when they pass by or waving a friendly hello. Soldiers who stay with these delightful children long enough to open the breach of communication find the language barrier to not enter the scope of issues as the universal language of love is evident in the simple actions shared between an 18 year old soldier far away from home and the 8 year old life hardened child who just yearns to be loved.

Halfway around the world in a small island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean live three people who are not Kurdish. All three men are in completely different corners of society yet a common thread binds them together. Dr. Paul Kingery is the Associate Dean of Research at the University of Hawaii’s College of Education, James Filibeck is a Business Student at the University of Hawaii, and my name is Bertwin Lord and I am a nuclear mechanical engineering operator on submarines for the United States Navy. The three of us are as different in personality as we are in careers yet we are working together towards a common goal of helping the Kurdish people where we can. We do not feel that we can fix the problems in Iraq. Instead we desire to help one Iraqi at a time and in turn help ourselves.

You may wonder what three white men on the island of Hawaii have to do with Kurdistan or why with all of the world’s problems we choose one so far away and unrelated to our local concerns. I have asked myself this same question time and time again. Even I am not sure what the answer is; it could be the touching scenes left in my heart from the stories of Gulf War soldiers talking about the brave citizens that helped them in the first Gulf War only to have to turn their back on them when they needed the US the most, or maybe it is an engrained desire to help the little man, even more possible I see the untapped potential of spreading peace through the only tangible finger hold in the middle east at this time. I do not know what the answer is I just know that my heart has been moved.

Currently Dr. Kingery (Paul), Mr. Filibeck (James), and I (Bert) are working with the US State Department and several agencies along with the University of Hawaii and several universities in Iraqi-Kurdistan to better the available education and increase the houses of education. As easy as it may seem to travel halfway around the world and help people that barely have continuous power let alone email or cell phones there are more then a few bumps on this gravel road. The first is a lack of concern in many people’s eyes towards the plight of the Kurdish people, or any of the forgotten people in the Middle East. Second would be a lack of funding which we try to supplement with government grants and University stipends.

On May 10th Dr. Kingery and James Filibeck will set out on their journey to Kurdistanto meet with many of the professors that we have been in contact with and who have received our books and computers. They will be bringing more computers as well as software to the people in Kurdistan. This will be our first contact with many of the people we are trying to help. I will not be able to travel with them as my status as an American Military Member precludes me from traveling to Iraq without military escort for military reasons. Where my military background has helped so many times before, it now is a liability. When Dr. Kingery and James return at the beginning of June we will know a lot more about what we need to get done to assist the people in Iraq more then ever before. At a young age I learned what it means to be rich. My father said that if every day you can say that you made the life of even one person better – then you are rich. My father was the richest man I ever knew. When he died over 1,700 people came to see him at the showing and his funeral was held in a high school gymnasium to accommodate all of the people who wanted to say good by to a man that had touched their soul. I am not looking for the same funeral, but I know that if I touch just one life that may have never been touched in any other way – then I to will be a rich man in Kurdistan.

Notes

1 – Surat al-Anfal (Arabic: سورة الأنفال ) (“the Spoils of War”)[1] is the 8th sura of the Qur’an, with 75 ayat. It is a Madinan sura, recorded after the Battle of Badr. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Anfal)

2 – Peshmerga, pesh merga, peshmarga or peshmerge (Kurdish: pêşmerge) is the term used by Kurds to refer to armed Kurdish fighters. Literally meaning “those who face death” (pêş front + merg death e is)

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish

Randal, Jonathen C., 1993 ,After Such Knowledge, What Forgivness? My encounters with Kurdistan, Westview Press, Boulder, CO, ISBN 0-8133-3580-9 (pb)