Thank you for taking the time to visit Operation Human Freedom. I would like to personally welcome you to this website which I started in December of 2015. This website contains parts of my life, my story, and my soul. Within the words and pictures of Operation Human Freedom lie memories, experiences, and moments in time that have shaped my being and changed the path of my life. Please have a look around and enjoy your time here.
Currently, I am living and working in Erbil, Iraq. I am the General Manager for an events company called Ventifact. I am also the co-host of a morning radio show called the Breakfast Club on Babylon FM, a branch of the Babylon Media Company. These are some of the many jobs I have had here in Erbil since I graduated college in December 2016. I arrived in Kurdistan in early January 2017 for the second time.
I will be in Kurdistan for a good amount of time and every minute will be spent learning, assimilating, and not being afraid of the unknown. I hope to leave a lasting impact on everyone I meet and work with. I aim to use my experiences here as a base for a long and successful career in an international setting, and to help change the world in a positive way.
Here in Erbil I will live out my dream of working in the unknown and unfamiliar and helping those who truly need help. I never had this dream, this dream always had me…
As a student of politics and someone who is intrigued by the world outside the borders of the United States, I have ventured to many foreign countries and exotic destinations. In the summer of 2015 I learned Arabic in Israel and Palestine. In the early months of 2016 I studied the politics of oil in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
In the summer of 2016 my life changed when I spent two months in the Kurdish Region of Iraq. I helped teach English at Soran University. After classes, I spent my hours working and spending time with displaced Yazidis who were forced from their homes by the war with ISIS. I also visited Istanbul for 5 days, leaving Turkey the same day as the July 29th ISIS airport attack. Returning to the Kurdistan, Iraq I spent a week traveling the northern Iraqi countryside by motorcycle. I even had the opportunity to drive along the front lines near the ISIS-controlled city of Mosul. I drove just under or a little over 1,000 kilometers on my motorcycle in Iraq.
I then spent a month in Jordan flying from Erbil to Amman. I spent my time in Jordan studying the Modern Standard and Levantine dialects of Arabic and using it every day outside of the classroom. In Jordan I visited the Dead Sea, Petra, Jerash, Wadi Rum, and spent some amazing nights in a Bedouin village. Finally I stayed in Egypt for 10 days, staying with family friends in Cairo, before returning home to the United States.
Upon my return to the United States, I spent the remainder of the year at George Mason University. Most of my time was spent studying, but the rest of it was spent feeling homesick for places that aren’t my home, reminiscing about my previous adventures. I would end up graduating with honors in mid-December 2016. Shortly before my graduation, I accepted employment in Kurdistan, Iraq, setting my path and my future back to the very same region I was in less than six months earlier.
The purpose of this website is to document parts of my life and show you some of the amazing people and places that I have seen. It is not easy traveling, speaking foreign languages, and adapting to cultures and customs that are far from anything experienced in the United States. Yet through these experiences and sometimes struggles, I have grown more that I could have ever imagined. I am so fortunate and so lucky to have been able to grow in this way and I am forever indebted to the people who were kind to me in my times with them.
I will never forget a chance encounter last July when I was in Jordan. I was waiting for a cup of Turkish coffee at a small cafe near the language center that I was studying at. It was about 8:45 am and a man walked up to buy a cup of coffee as well. We started talking together. He spoke to me in English and I answered him in Arabic. We smiled and laughed for a few minutes as we stood together sipping coffee and speaking in Arabic. After telling him I was an American, I told him I forgot how to speak English, in Arabic.
He replied to me, “انت في بلدك” // “inta fi baladak.”
In English, this means ‘you are in your country.’
I will never forget the way this man spoke these words to me. It was unexpected, but his kindness really warmed me within. It is the smallest of gestures like this that show you no matter where you go in the world, no matter what religion someone is, no matter what their culture says, what their values are, or what their beliefs tell them, that we are all human.
We all want to love, we all want to live, and we all want to be happy. I truly believe it is only through travel and experience of the world that we can truly understand what it is to be alive, and what it means to be a human sharing the world with billions of others. It is through interactions with people who are different than us that we begin to learn about ourselves.
I hope you enjoy your time here and please reach out to me.
‘I am an American; free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit.’ – Theodore Roosevelt
None of the views, opinions, or pictures on this website are affiliated or representative of Ventifact, Babylon FM, or any other organization I may be affiliated with. All views, opinions, and pictures belong to me.
Operation Human Freedom 