I was sitting in a C-130 waiting for take off from Baghdad International Airport. My wife and I were going on some rest and relaxation—R&R as they call it—and this was our first military cargo flight.

The loadmaster for the airplane nonchalantly mentioned that they had been fired upon by a surface-to-air missile the night before and then redundantly reminded us that we were still in a combat zone.

His job that day was to help explain to a cargo load of civilians how to properly behave in his very un-civilian aircraft. The loadmaster went through some security precautions (how not to walk into the propellers, for instance), gave us some earplugs, and then pulled out his guitar for some entertainment. He was very good and in a surreal Hee-Haw-like moment, he breezed through a few country tunes. My favorite song was “Give Whiskey to My Men, Beer to My Horses” by Toby Keith.

Less than two hours later in Kuwait City, my wife and I walked out of the loading door at the back of the plane and caught a flight to the U.S.

So how did I end up in Iraq? To give the very, very short version: I married about a month after graduating from Centre in 1997, moved to Yemen for two years, moved to Kosovo for more than three years, and until January I lived in a hotel in Baghdad.

I guess I have always loved traveling. I still remember one day after I had been at Centre for only a couple of months. I was talking to Dr. Hamm and told him that I wanted to take a year or two off from my education and move to Kazakhstan. He wisely advised me to stay in school (advice I followed) and then promised to contact someone in Kazakhstan to help me out.

But traveling doesn’t explain a prolonged life abroad—at least for me. I think the best way to explain why I continue to live and work abroad is the story of it. The anecdote above about the guitar-playing loadmaster on a C-130 is a normal occurrence in my week. Events like that happen to me all the time. And my life? Well, it seems more and more like a chain of interesting and sometimes freaky stories.

I’ve done anti-fraud work for the American Embassy in Yemen, worked three elections in Kosovo, and then helped organize training for government workers in Iraq.

My wife and I lived in (and partially fixed up) a 350-year-old Yemeni tower house in a UNESCO historical site. In Iraq we lived in a hotel guarded by military vehicles with names like Bloodlust, Blitzkrieg, and Peacemaker.

Sure, my mother didn’t exactly like the Baghdad story of my life, and I surely don’t mean to make light of a serious and sometimes dangerous work by calling it a story. For me, though, the story is energizing; it keeps me looking for better, more interesting jobs. Best of all—it keeps me traveling.

I guess if I can’t tell a story from what I do, then I really don’t want to do it. And if I can’t find the story . . . well, I’ll just have to create it, whether in America or somewhere else in the world. Maybe at some point I will change, and I will want to sit back and relax with nothing said.

Until that time however, I will continue to love the adventure of living and working abroad. I still love nothing more than telling someone about an interesting place or some event that has happened to me and then have that person become excited. It’s even better if that person wants to go there and experience that same thing.

Most people ultimately want others to like and accept what they do and maybe—if lucky—have others follow that choice, too. Iraq may be a hard sell, but my simple advice in life is: Don’t give up on the story. There is enough of it to go around, but sometimes you have to go find it.

Centrepiece
Centre College
600 West Walnut St.
Danville, KY 40422

Phone: (859) 238-5717
Fax: (859) 238-5723
E-mail: alumnews@centre.edu
or johnsond@centre.edu