Sour Swinger Predominantly follows my Army & Iraq Deployment. Also has some Geek, School, and other talk.

Nothing like more photos of the kids right? And I still have one more set after this one. I picked out 4 to show below. There’s about 59 photos total. Click here to see them all. They’re a good mix of kids posing for the camera and from us handing out donations.

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Of all the months we spent in country, seeing camels never happened until the very end of our tour. We payed the locals in food and school supplies in exchange for messing around with them. The camels didn’t mind us until we took turns riding. Boy did they vocally object. Here are two videos of our adventure. You can also see pictures from the event here. There’s about 27 in total.

Feeding Joe Camel from Sour Swinger on Vimeo.

Feeding Joe Camel some crackers from our MREs.

Camel Riding from Sour Swinger on Vimeo.

Everyone takes turn getting on top of the camel. Each time the camel gets madder and madder.

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Throughout most of our area of operations, you could see the Ziggurat. What exactly is the ziggurat was a topic of discussion as each interpreter gave me a different semi unsure answer. According to wikipedia: Ziggurats were massive monuments built in the ancient Mesopotamian valley and western Iranian plateau, having the form of a terraced step pyramid of successively receding stories or levels.

When time was available, my platoon decided to make a pit stop to check out the Ziggurat. After setting up a 360 perimeter, we sent groups of soldiers up armed with their cameras. This was the one and only time I actually felt like a tourist. It didn’t take long for kids to show up from the local village wondering what we were doing. It was pretty amazing to see something so old and yet still standing. One thing you won’t get to experience in the United States. Below are a couple more pics from our trip. Click here to see the entire set. There’s about 35 total.

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Here is the second set of pictures from Camp Liberty. All pictures are from within the base. I picked 4 to show below. Click here to see the entire set. There’s about 51 pics total.

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You’ll probably wondering why its been one month since my last posting. Well, my computer took a pretty hard crash while I was on the road. I was in a slight state of panic as the remaining photos to post were not backed up. For my computer to get in the shop, repaired, and return to this blog….took a month. So for a second time, lets see if I can wrap everything up over the next week or two.

This is the third set of pictures from my platoon conducting missions. I picked 3 to show below. Click here to see the entire set. There’s about 60 pics total.

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On to the pictures shall we? Today I have for you another set of pictures from the children in Iraq. Only one more left after this one. I picked out 5 pics to display below. You can view the complete set here. There’s exactly 60 pictures. Enjoy!

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Meet my buddy the assistant camera boy…aka the Ali Baba kid. He’s the boy I was talking to in the vid “Conversing With Kids“. In a previous post, I mentioned how certain kids will attach to certain soldiers in an attempt to gain additional candy. When we rolled into Beverly Hills, this is the little fellow that I looked for and he’d always be looking for me. After a bit Ali took over my picture taking so I could concentrate on more important things, like pulling security.

I first met Ali way back in March. He was hopping around looking for some goodies from the soldiers. Not much of a candy kid, he always wanted some of the neat gear we wore. When he came to me he kept asking over and over for one of my d-clips. For some reason almost every kid I saw wanted a d-clip. Who knows why. As usual, I kept saying “la” which is no in Arabic. Most kids just continue to beg however Ali wised up and began to barter. He eventually offered Chai Tea and boy am I sucker for it. Best tasting tea I’ve ever had and its safe to drink since they boil the water.

I agreed and little Ali took off running. Head tucked, arms pumping, and dust trail in his wake. That little boy really wanted my d-clip. Twenty minutes later I was sipping my tea and Ali had d-clip in hand with the biggest grin on his face. Of course he didn’t stop there. He wanted to continue trading Chai for items. For my second glass, I gave him a plastic bag full of 20 pens. I would have traded for more but by then we were mounting up for RTB (Return to Base). End of mission for us.

Ever since then, Ali always came a looking for me and after a bit I decide to entrust him with my camera. He LOVED it! All the other boys would get jealous. As I walked around doing my soldier thing, Ali would be my shadow snapping away. After a while, I didn’t think anything of it. I’d just hand the camera off and not even worry if he ran off for a bit. He’d always came back smiling with my camera in hand and a horde of envious boys following.

In only a couple hours, Ali would snap close to 200 photos. Sometimes I’d find 30 some 1 second video clips. He probably got confused and accidentally switch to video mode. A lot of the kids had trouble understanding “video”. At the end of mission, it was always a joy to cycle through all the pictures he took. Half of them I had to delete though. They were either way to blurry or were just odd shots. IE, he’d love to put the camera smack up to peoples faces and snap photos of their eyeballs or nose. Haha. Even so, thanks to Ali I have well over 200 photos which I kept. Bet you can’t tell which ones were done him. :)

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