Parks and Rec Iraq Department

Between Iraq and a Hard Place

Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Episode 59

Hannah and Colleen embark on the many uses of the Iraqi Kurdish Park and the many varieties of Recreation available in Kurdish parks. There's workout equipment, food carts, fairs, amusement parks, roller skating, strange statues and more! Come take a walk with us through our favorite and least favorite parks in Northern Iraq.

Learn more over at www.ServantGroup.org and email Hannah with questions at [e-mail].

Here's a rough transcript of our episode! Hannah: Welcome to "Between Iraq and a Hard Place." I'm Hannah.

Colleen: And I'm Colleen. And we're here to tell you a little bit about life in Iraq.

Hannah: Woo hoo! Today we're going to talk about something that would make Leslie Knope very happy if she was a real person and, B, she cared about international parks at all.

Colleen: Okay.

Hannah: You don't know who Leslie Knope is, and that's okay. It's from a show called Parks and Recreation.

Colleen: Right. That's what you said you wanted to name this episode was "Parks and Rec."

Hannah: YES! And so we're going to talk about parks, less about recreation, although there is inevitably recreation at parks.

Colleen: I mean, the parks were definitely made for recreation.

Hannah: Yes. I was thinking more like community programs.

Colleen: Oh, yeah. Not that kind of rec. There's no rec center with, like, community soccer teams or anything.

Hannah: Art programs.

Colleen: No, not now.

Hannah: Yeah, but parks are a big part of Kurdish city life. Because as we've talked about before, Kurds really like to be outside in the green when it's green or at least outside.

Colleen: Yep. And picnics and having space outside which most of their homes if you remember back to episode one, don't have because everyone has a garage and like a courtyard, most people don't have lawns. Right?

Hannah: Or even like garden gardeny tree areas.

Colleen: If they do, they're real small. So parks are essential.

Hannah: Yeah. And I feel like most neighborhoods have a park of some kind. They're usually pretty small. I think the smallest one I've ones I have seen are about the size of a house, a house in that neighborhood, like the lot that a house would be on would be about the size of the park.

Colleen: Right. My neighborhood was mostly pretty new and still kind of being built. So we didn't actually have a park at first. And then, yeah, one was put in and it was probably about the size of three homes. It was really just a strip of green.

Hannah: Yeah. Like, here's some grass.

Colleen: Yeah, some lights, a bench.

Hannah: I feel like the park that I went to the most in Dohuk was within walking distance of our house. And it was, it was actually a fairly not big, big. But it was a fairly large neighborhood park. It was probably probably the size of maybe a city block there. And it had a big sidewalk, essentially, that was kind of everybody came and walked around and there were some small trees and bushes and stuff. But it was it was it was mostly just grass.

Colleen: Yeah. Occasionally some will have a piece of, like play equipment.

Hannah: Or exercise equipment.

Colleen: That's my personal favorite is that the exercise equipment generally becomes play equipment.

Hannah: Yeah. Like, I had an apartment complex that I lived in for a very short while that had a little patch of grass and a playground and exercise equipment. But the exercise equipment I only ever saw get used by the kids.

Colleen: Right. One of the bigger and more well known parks in the city that I lived in is called Azadi Park. It means Freedom Park, and it's the site of some horrific things. But it was next to one of Saddam's old prisons and like it is both a Memorial and Park. And it's huge. Yeah, at least for four there it was really big and we would go there and walk because it has a big, wide path around the whole outer edge. And along one portion of the path had exercise equipment set up and kind of like I don't think I've ever seen exercise equipment like this in the US anywhere. It's all like bodyweight resistance, maybe hydraulic pressure stuff all sunk into the concrete, a lot of spinny things.

Hannah: Do they have like the they're kind of like an elliptical, like, you stand on it, your arms go back and forth. That was one that I saw pretty typically. But yeah, then they have the ones where you're like, supposed to like, twist your body.

Colleen: Right. And it's like a little platform that you stand on.

Hannah: A standing ab workout kind of thing.

Colleen: And then like ones that you sit in and push with your feet like a leg press kind of thing.

Hannah: Yeah, I don't know that I ever saw that. Or maybe I saw it and didn't know what it was for, because that's the other thing. They don't have any instructions on them.

Colleen: Right? You're just kind of guessing. Yeah.

Hannah: Yeah. The kids would get on the elliptical ones, one on each, like one kid on each foot, foot place and swing back and forth on them, which was really amusing to me. I was like, Yeah, I mean, that seems fun.

Colleen: I did occasionally see men actually working out on them, but that was only really early in the morning when we would go to the park. It was the one place in the city where again, really early in the morning women could run or bike or exercise. And so we would go like 5:00 in the morning. I mean, it was also cooler then. It was only like 90 or 95 degrees. So we would go and some of us would walk and some of us would run. We met up with a bunch of other women there for a while.

Hannah: Yeah, there was a big park like that in Erbil that we always just called Sami Park. It has a big long Arabic name after some person, and it was pretty big. I'd say the there's a walking track sidewalk that goes all the way around the perimeter of it. That's probably a half a mile all the way around. We went there for Newroz sometimes because there are picnics, you know, raised doing picnics in the park. They have a little like, tram that you can ride around. That's just like some guy driving like, like the trams that they use in Disney parking lots to get you to and from your car. Driving one of those around and it's like 1000 dinar to ride it and he'll take you all the way around the park. And we did that one night, one evening that we went, I don't remember why we were there in the evening, I think we were celebrating somebody's birthday and they did a nighttime picnic and there were lots of fireworks and super crowded at night. And every time I've been back there, when I go back now, like you can barely get down the street that it's on. I mean, it borders-- It's got four streets all the way around it two main arteries of the city and then two side streets. And they're always full of cars because there's no parking lot for it. Right. Because until recently, almost everyone got there via taxi because they didn't have their own cars.

Colleen: Right.

Hannah: But yeah, that was a big. A big deal. And like the park that everybody knew about.

Colleen: Yeah, that's definitely the same way people saw Azadi Park. Keep wanting to call it Parki Azadi because that's what they called it there. But they had a roller skating area and a pond and a kind of an amphitheater little section, depending on the day and the time of day. And especially if there was something going on in the evenings, there would be the little carts out with food. And that's also where they've more recently hosted like international food festivals and the international markets and some different stuff where people from a bunch of different places come together and do stuff. And yeah, it's the place where you go for an inexpensive party or wedding. I went there for a picnic once. For a wedding. I was where everybody went after the the photos and the all the pieces of the party.

Hannah: Yeah, there's another park in Erbil that's closer to the Citadel. I don't remember the Kurdish name for the park, but it, like, was translated to us as like Peace Park.

Colleen: Oh. Ashti?

Hannah: Maybe.

Colleen: There are multiple words for peace.

Hannah: Yeah, I don't remember exactly. It had like a historical museum in the middle of it. That was like they had taken concrete to try to make it look like a mountain with trees on it. And then there was like, art and history inside of it. But you could also walk all the way up to the top of it, but it also had a like a skyline… what are those called that like you ride in the little bucket and it takes you up and you go around and you come back down. But it's like suspended in the air,

Colleen: Like a funicular?

Hannah: Yeah, like kind of like a funicular, but a funicular is like on railroad tracks. Right. And this is like suspended in their gondola, gondola or something like that. Yeah. And I was never brave enough to go on that because I didn't trust it to not, like, get stuck with me, you know, 200 feet up in the air. And then you'd be …

Colleen: Just bring your water!

Hannah: Hot and sweaty and thirsty and yeah, I wasn't on board for that. So we never did that. But we did go in the museum and I think, yeah, I think they hosted like an international festival, a French festival there actually. I went with a roommate who spoke French and it was weird. It's one of those things that I remember now and I'm like, What a weird thing for us to have gone to.

Colleen: A French festival in Iraq.

Hannah: In Iraq, yeah. But they also outside of Erbil have started establishing parks specifically for Newroz picnics. Oh, where it's like this is a designated, like picnic area. There's a trash bin. If you put your trash in the trash bin, the city will send someone out. And there are like big pine trees. So it's shady. But I mean, it's like here are 20 picnic places and it's like…

Colleen: …here are 20,000 people.

Hannah: Yeah. It's not going to work out the way you think it is. I mean.

Colleen: It's a start.

Hannah: It is a start, but there's like a little place to park your car.

Colleen: Like a campsite.

Hannah: Yeah, but for picnicking.

Colleen: Which is far more important.

Hannah: It is. It is far more important.

Colleen: There's also a newer, really large park that, again, is in honor of someone famous that I don't remember that was being built out just on the edge of Slemani. And it also had a big path, but it was more hilly and it felt in some ways like the beginnings of a more Western style. Park, like a hiking, like a hiking path or but like not hiking but still walking path, but like more of what we would expect out of an arboretum, say, or something like that.

Hannah: Right. Less central park and more state park.

Colleen: Right. Larger ponds, just larger space all together. Lots and lots of parking lots. And you know, it's definitely made just for more people. But it was in its early stages and very obviously so like all the trees were tiny baby trees and all the grass was brown.

Hannah: Just they're putting forth the effort.

Colleen: Yeah. They're working on it and that was that was exciting, I think.

Hannah: And there is there is a national park in or near Suly, isn't there? There's like a or like a preserve and nature preserve. I don't know if you ever went to it. I've only ever read about it.

Colleen: Is it the one where they like work to preserve the wildlife? Like leopards… that's it.

Hannah: Like leopards and mountain goats, I think.

Colleen: And maybe wild boar.

Hannah: Yes.

Colleen: Yeah. And I don't even know where that is. I've only ever read about it. And it was not something that I feel like was ever talked about while I lived there.

Hannah: Right. And I don't think it's it's open to the public in the way that we think of national parks or forests being open. It's more of a like nature preserve.

Colleen: Like don't go here.

Hannah: Right? There are leopards. Hopefully.

Colleen: Hopefully they have some leopards. Yeah, they have video of them.

Hannah: The other park that I spent time in was in Dohuk was the Gelli Park that is built. Below the dam for Dohuk lake.

Colleen: Oh Yeah.

Hannah: And so that one's kind of interesting because it's a mix of, like, Nature Park and small amusement park. Like they have bumper cars, and there's a little arcade that you can go in and play games and like, a little restaurant.

Colleen: And, like, everything's painted in slightly garish colors.

Hannah: So but there's also, like, a hiking trail, But you hike on the hiking trail to see these weird sculptures. Which, like, is a thing that people do even in the US. But for me, I'd never been on anything like that. And so when one of my friends was like, Oh yeah, we'll go and hike and look at the beautiful nature. And I was like, Okay, cool. And it was like, Oh, and these weird sculptures of like, Pegasus, which doesn't make any sense to me. And like, I don't know, it was just a very odd like, I do not associate these subject matters of art with Kurdish culture. And so it felt like we're trying to make it Greco-Roman art, but in Kurdistan.

Colleen: In Kurdistan, it's very strange.

Hannah: Hi, this is Steve. My wife and I have been with Servant Group International for quite a while now, which means that we're sort of old. And what that means for Servant Group is that we need more young, fresh faces in both in Iraq and here in Nashville. Love to have you join us!

Colleen: But I feel like several of the parks do border into amusement park. I mean, even Azadi Park. One corner of it is an amusement park and Dream City in Dohuk is also an amusement park that I went to.

Hannah: I actually never went to that one. By the time that I lived there, it was like, Oh, it wasn't cool anymore. And so nobody really went to it at that point.

Colleen: My favorite thing was the receipt we got from there. When for paying our tickets to get in said "Makes all your dreams came true."

Hannah: Did all your dreams came true?

Colleen: Wow. Such promise! No, I had a lovely, a lovely Ferris wheel ride.

Hannah: Yes.

Colleen: If I had heard some of the other stories. Or maybe that was before, I think. I think that's before anyone else. Some of the other… The terror stories of the Ferris wheel rides happened.

Hannah: But yeah, one of which is our our friend Mary, who she and John did an episode with us about raising kids in Kurdistan. But before they had kids, they went on this Ferris wheel. And Mary already is not like a big fan of heights and Ferris wheels and like… It's not her thing, but she was convinced to go on it for the experience. And I guess the way that it operated then was that if you wanted to get off, you had to like tell them, Hey, I want to get off. Whereas in the US it's like, oh, you get like three turns and then you got to get off. But they didn't know that. And so they just kept going around, and around and around. And she was like, How do I get off of this thing? And I think at one point they got stuck and she got stuck, like up in the Ferris wheel, stopped and like, wasn't sure if she was going to be able to get down again. Yeah.

Colleen: Yeah.

Hannah: We got to get her to tell that story sometime.

Colleen: It's a better story when she tells it.

Hannah: But yeah, that, that also contributed to me never going there.

Colleen: I mean, I had a similar experience, but on a different ride in a different city.

Hannah: Yeah.

Colleen: So me and some of the other teachers and some of our students went on a ride that was like a… it's a swinging boat ride.

Hannah: Yeah. Like the pirate ship.

Colleen: Yeah. Yeah. Which I mean, again, I don't love things like that. I do get motion sick and I got convinced and I went and we were on there for what felt like forever. And finally, not even at my instigation, someone else was like, Hey, can you let us off? You know, as we swing back and forth.

Hannah: Well, you get your money's worth, I guess.

Colleen: I guess! That was the last ride I ever went on in Kurdistan.

Hannah: That's probably for the best.

Colleen: No more, no more of this.

Hannah: We went to an amusement park in Kurdistan called Panc, which from my understanding, it was my first year in Kurdistan, so I didn't really have a good grasp of like directionally where we were. But I was told that it was near the Iranian border, but they had the pirate ship ride and I was like, No, thank you, I'm going to get seasick. I've already been driving on this party bus all day and I already feel like not great, but I think I did go on the bumper cars and this was all teachers from the school.

Colleen: Oh, nice.

Hannah: Picnic. So it was adults. They have that like anti gravity spinny thing that like, pushes you against the walls that a bunch of them went on. But they it was like branded as like the dance wheel because they played like really loud dance music as you spun around and there was like all these flashing lights and I was like, No thanks. I don't I don't want to be part of that either. Like, my ability to listen to music has been filled.

Colleen: Again, party bus, loud music, dancing in the aisle the whole way.

Hannah: Who needs a roller coaster like that when you go on a Kurdish party bus. But what I did end up doing was an alpine roller coaster, which a little bit on reflection, I was like, Hmm, that probably wasn't super safe either. But it was, it was a lot of fun. It's probably the best roller coaster ride I've ever been on. And I like roller coasters and it was really cool. So the park was along built kind of on a mountain-ish. So the the roller coaster went down into this gorge, essentially. So you kind of wind back and forth down into the floor of this canyon. You're just sitting on like a little cart that's on rails and you're in control of like your speed. So you have a hand brake that you use to, like, slow down and not slow down. Oh, and they just send you in twos. So it was it was me and my teammate at the time went down together, me and Anna. And so there are signs along the way that are like, Hey, there's a big curve. You should slow down.

Colleen: That's a lot of faith to put in a person who's never done this or like…

Hannah: And like, you also have to watch out for the people who are in front of you and behind you. Because if someone behind you decides to go faster than you want to go, you might get run into. Or if they stop suddenly in front of you, you might run into them and like you won't like crash and fall off. I mean, I guess if you were going fast enough, you could knock yourself off, but. We I think we ran into a couple of people, but it wasn't like it wasn't that big of a deal.

Colleen: Like you encountered them. You didn't actually run into them.

Hannah: I think we did run into one person or they ran into us. But it was really it was a really great way to like see the scenery of of that area.

Colleen: And like Kurdistan does mountains and canyons really well.

Hannah: Yeah, it was beautiful. And I remember thinking, I wish I had brought my camera with me to like, be able to take pictures of all of that because I was like, I'm never going to be up here again and see this again. So I just have to remember it in my mind and I do. But it's also been twelve years since then so it's fading a little bit, but so you get all the way down to the bottom and then your cart goes on to one of the conveyor belt, clickity things like on a roller coaster and it tows you back up to the top of the mountain.

Colleen: So you don't even have to hike up the mountain.

Hannah: Nope, You get a ride the whole way. It was really fun. There's one apparently in Gatlinburg, not far from here, but I don't know. I don't know if I could talk myself into doing it ever again, because it was really neat. It was a really cool experience and that was definitely a like, we're going to go out here and go to an amusement park, not just say like, Hey, there's a park that has this in it. Yeah, there's also a long standing-- I'm never sure it actually got built. And if it got built, I'm not sure it ever got used-- water park in Erbil.

Colleen: Really.

Hannah: With like water slides. Like the big ones.

Colleen: So as you drive into Suly from like the airport or Erbil or somewhere, you passed, I don't think it's there anymore. I kind of hope it's not the remains of a water park. Oh, only the upper part of like three or four different slides that are like those brightly primary colored tubes that end maybe one or two stories high. I don't even know. Probably one. One story high. Yeah. And then underneath is just a field of upright rebar.

Hannah: Huh? Terrifying.

Colleen: Looks like some sort of torture. But it's just a long defunct water park, that is no longer.

Hannah: I don't know. I don't know if Kurds would really enjoy a water park in the way that they enjoy their other parks.

Colleen: It would just be men.

Hannah: Right. I was going to say, there are a lot of other cultural weirdness around it.

Colleen: So, like.

Hannah: They would probably do like Women's Day.

Colleen: But they still are kind of out of doors.

Hannah: That's true.

Colleen: Someone could see from somewhere else. So unless you had an entirely indoors water park.

Hannah: Which do exist.

Colleen: Which do exist, it's just that's a lot of work to go to.

Hannah: Right.

Colleen: For women,

Hannah: That's true.

Colleen: In their mindset.

Hannah: Sure.

Colleen: Kurds really do like their outings with their whole family and everybody being together. And that's part of what the parks serve is it's a public gathering place that you can bring your whole family, even at night like they are hopping.

Hannah: Yeah, they definitely utilize parks in a way that I don't feel like most Americans do. Like we may go to the park to exercise or for like an afternoon picnic.

Colleen: Kids to play at. You know.

Hannah: And it's not like we're going to be here for the next 7 hours or we're going to spend the whole day.

Colleen: Right? We don't bring multiple meals worth and set up on the grass.

Hannah: And like, I feel like people in America would get mad at you if you did that to some extent. Like somebody would be upset that you were taking up park space for that amount of time. Like here, if you want to do that, you have to like reserve the pavilion. And pay to be there for that long. This is a totally different, totally different way of interacting.

Colleen: And like, people don't use that big green space to play Frisbee or baseball or soccer, really. I mean, some kids will do on the side, but.

Hannah: They dance, though.

Colleen: They dance. But it's not it's not like this green space is here for large sports, which is kind of the way I feel like American parks are set up. Like, I mean, there's weird stuff in the Kurdish parks, right? Like benches that look like enormous pieces of fruit.

Hannah: Or butterflies, we saw some of those, too.

Colleen: Like giant concrete structures and random bushes and trees.

Hannah: If I think about Centennial Park, which is the big downtown park here in Nashville, there's that big open field. And like, sometimes people are out there picnicking. But a lot of times as people like running their dogs out there or playing Frisbee or kicking a soccer ball around.

Colleen: Throwing a football.

Hannah: Throwing a football, it's definitely used as like, this is where we like are active, not this is where we.

Colleen: Lounge.

Hannah: Lounge and listen to music and dance and like it's utilized differently.

Colleen: Right? All the people who are there for picnics and things are tucked in behind the trees and, you know, in the picnic tables and benches and, you know.

Hannah: Yeah. And the pavilions that are set up specifically for that.

Colleen: Yeah.

Hannah: Yeah, but, Parks, we should go to more parks.

Hannah: We should.

Hannah: That's our. That's our resolution from this podcast. Go to more parks.

Colleen: Go to more parks!

Hannah: Hang out in the park.

Colleen: Tell us about your park. Yeah.

Hannah: Let us know how long you can hang out in a park before someone's like, Hey, why are you just, like, hanging out in the park? Don't you have somewhere to be? I wonder. Now I want to do a social experiment.

Colleen: Social experiment? I think Americans would be, too. Uh, I don't know. Unlikely to tell you what to do or comment on it.

Hannah: I don't think that's true.

Colleen: I don't know.

Hannah: I think they would. Somebody, somebody would get their feathers ruffled. Especially if you went with, like 15 people.

Colleen: Well, maybe.

Hannah: All right, check out your parks. Let us know. And if you live in the Nashville area, let us know of a good park we should go to. Besides Centennial Park. We've been there. We've done that. Give us somewhere new.

Colleen: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Servant Group International on Facebook or Instagram, and you should check out our blog and complete transcripts over at servantgroup.org.

Hannah: And it's really helpful for us if you share our podcast or leave a review on whatever platform you listen to this podcast on. It helps us know that people are listening and you can let us know what you want to hear next. Thanks for listening.