Iraq: An After School Special

Today, after visiting an Iraqi police station, and traveling for miles and miles back to Camp Echo, I gathered a familiar collection of pictures. Men with AK-47s and men with prayer beads. People and animals, cars and camels. I got more pictures of, dare I say it, the same old thing. Then the "special," the show and tell for today began as nothing out of the norm really, a couple of kids on the side of the road.

In America it's rare to see kids this age smiling just for the hell of it. In Iraq, sometimes it seems to me, like the only people smiling at all are the kids.



Kids, kids, and more kids as we went along. Soon a mass of people formed on the horizon and as we slowed and approached it became a school of rural district children letting out into the street with one lone crossing guard. In spite of the bloodletting viewer getting headlines, it seems there will be plenty of Iraqis for years to come. I don't mean that to sound the wrong way. No one life is ever worth sacrifice, murder or martyrdom, but if there are this many kids in walking distance of one school in one rural district, the population numbers must be rising exponentially even against the death rate.



An Iraqi crossing guard of another sort.

Boys browsing snacks.

Without a second glance teenage girls walk past a halved and abandoned garbage truck amidst neighborhoods in need of a whole one.