Today we came to Ranya and were welcomed by a large crowd of people. Everyone was very friendly. We did a round of ceremonial "official business." A park was dedicated to the Duluth-Rania Friendship Exchange, formal greetings between the citizens of Rania and our group were exchanged along with a letter from Mayor Ness of Duluth, a press conference was held. The amount of work put into everything really brought home the importance of this exchange but I noticed both at the press conference and the formal welocoming ceremony from Mayor Ali of Rania that there is a very definite push on this end to bring this to a level beyond cultural exchange. There were several questions about how Duluth might be able to help Rania in tangible ways.
The park is very nice and the entrance is adorned with two large emblems, one for Duluth and one for the city of Rania.
In the midst of all of the ceremonies we were invited to Mayor Ali's home for lunch. The amount of food was overwhelming. We were served traditional Kurdish food and everything was amazing.
One thing I have noticed is the relatively small role women seem to play in any official capacity. Our meetings today were all with groups of men with one or two women present.
We ate dinner at Hiwa's house and again everything was amazing. After dinner he and his sons performed several Kurdish songs for us.
No comments:
Post a Comment