Issued by the Sunni administration of the town of Eridil:
The ancient city of Eridil has had running water for the past 12 days.
We are requesting journalists to visit our city during our Ramadan festival to see our new fountain.
Please bring flashlights and/or generators.
This is good one from the Kurdish area:
The province of Katum is pleased to announce that the city center is now mostly free of mines.
This one is the best.
The provisional administration of the coalition base located on the outskirts of Tatorga is happy to announce that the McDonalds has expanded its hours of operation. The drive-thru window will be open from 10am-7pm. Please note that due to increased security customers will need to exit their vehicles and subject themselves to a search to pick up their orders. No Burqa's please.
So much has happened in the last weeks and i would love to tell you.
However, so much more is happening right now.
I am in Iraq.
I am happy and relieved to finally arrive here and have a bed to sleep in. That should tell you alot about what I have been through lately, as even Iraq is better. I don't have Ebola. Of course, you say, but i could have gotten it as I took a 12 hour taxi ride from Kananga, to Kinshasa with a man who did not look well. He was pale. His skin was the color of coal but he was still pale, and coughing. He seemed to be coughing blood but what to do. I needed to get to the capital and to the airport. Enough of Africa. I got out of there with my health and still some money left.
Anyway here I am in Baghdad. My friends Janet and Hans are stationed here as representatives of a organization called CIVIC that helps civilian victims of war. They needed some help and I needed the flight out on their aid plane out of Kinshasa. Its very safe where I am in the green zone and there is even a starbucks. My room is in a construction trailer with the best A/C ever and full cable. My job is as a liaison to the Iraqi government press office. This means I go see Abdul Osrani and give him our press releases and have a coffee with him every day. He basically gets press releases from the U.S. and hands them out to journalists so everyone is handing eachother press releases and no one is reading any of it and i think it is all a waste of paper. At least some Iraqi printers are making a living.
So how did I end up in the Congo? Well the good people who smuggled me to safety out of Burkina Faso soon became my captors as I didn't read the fine print of our contract which stipulated that they were free to raise the price at anytime. And they did, in the middle of the night , in the middle of nowhere my saviors got very angry and demanded more money. I tried to negotiate but they were keen to my lack of leverage. I paid. I then paid some more. I then paid the money I had hidden.
And yes, it is possible to fall asleep on a camel in the middle of a hostage situation.
