The Wonderful People And Wonderful Food Of Dohuk

...Continued from 4/11/2019:
     Today my daughter Claire arrived back home in Chicago from Duhok, Kurdistan, where she spent two weeks giving daily training seminars to the nurses from the Intensive Care and Coronary Care Units at the Azadi Teaching Hospital,  

           ...on such subjects as CPR,

...tracheostomy

...prevention of bedsores,

...and arterial blood gasses,

...among other subjects.

    Claire could not say enough good about the nurses with whom she worked,

...who were dedicated practitioners and enthusiastic students,

...and who warmly welcomed her to their hospital with open arms.

   Especially gracious and kind was Saadia Alturki, who is in charge of nursing education with the Kurdistan Ministry of Health and who facilitated the seminars.

     Saadia and  Claire handing out certificates on the last day of class.

    In fact Claire found the Kurdish people in general to be very nice, friendly, and  hospitable.   
      And then there was the food. The Kurdish food was, according to Claire,  "wonderful," and always beautifully displayed and presented.

    Claire's favorite Kurdish food - besides the sweets, of which she says she copiously partook - was the flat bread called naan, of which she also claims to have copiously partook.

   "How much of a piece of naan this size would you eat?" I asked Claire.
    "All of it," she replied.
    She really liked the naan.

    It's probably true of all of our cultures that hospitality and food go hand in hand. In any case it was absolutely true in Dohuk.
      Claire and the other MedGlobal volunteers were invited out to dinner most nights by members of the Ministry of Health.

     Claire usually ate her lunch in a restaurant and afterwards the waiter would invariable set a complementary piece of cake or baklava or some other sweet in front of her.  " I never said no to the sweets," said Claire.
        One day in the hotel where she was staying the elevator broke down and the staff knocked on the door of each guest and gave everyone a slice of chocolate cake and a cold chocolate drink as a gift for having to walk up the steps.
                                                         ***

      A few days before she left Kurdistan, when I was Face-chatting with Claire about her classes for the nurses at the Azadi Hospital, she said, "Leaving behind education is the most sustainable thing we can do."
       This is true. But it's perhaps just as true of taking an education with us when we leave.