Building Freedom

Hello Bret: 

Glad to hear from you and sorry for my late response. It’s getting cooler here too, we can walk outside in the evenings, and today it rained after a sandstorm in Baghdad and north Hillah. Usually it doesn’t rain until November.

I am glad the FFA team had their project displayed in the Iowa State Fair.  No doubt they should be proud of their Iraq project, here we have two great rivers and loam good for farming, I am hoping we – in Iraq – invest more in the agribusiness, we are neither a manufacturing country nor active in tourism, and we just got the oil (which is consumable) and agriculture.  

I have been trying to get in touch with my manager in RTI and ask him for a permission to use the RTI mail address for the next FFA shipment, he’s been away on a mission or vacation, and just came back, I will write to him because I will not see him for three weeks, we have 1 week holiday (Eid Holiday for all Muslims – after Ramadan, the fasting Islamic month) and then I requested two weeks r&r, I will go to Syria with 3 friends.  It will be fun.

So I will write to him and ask him about this, he will not mind, I hope, he’s been helpful before.  As soon as he responds, I will update you.

Baraa has been telling me about storms in his state Alabama, “it’s not fun” so he speaks, other things are okay.

Our schools will open at September 27th (next Sunday), I miss the crowd noise of kids, we live very close to a primary school.

There is an Iraqi friend of mine, university teacher, lives in Oregon, he wants to send about 20 boxes of scientific and research books collected there to Babylon University.  I got him the Iraqi mail address of the university but he refused to use it, he said it will be very expensive for them to ship the boxes, only the APO address would be good for them to send, I wish that we can have better mailing system in Iraq so we can send and receive mail easily and efficiently.  By the way, there is a new mailing company under development now and will work someday in the future for fast and effective shipments.  These books are with great benefits to our students here...   I will ask my boss about these also and see if we can receive this size of shipment.

I have to go to bed now, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for all you’re doing from there; I wish you and your family all safety and prosperity.

Your friend,

Haider