The Wandering Farmer (an feirmeoir fánach)

Hi folks! This is a note to say things are going well in Turkey, and to say that I went with a different SIM card provider on my phone and it’s proven really bad at allowing me to post much on Instagram or otherwise do much uploading, so I just haven’t been able to do very much. I’m at wifi in my hotel for a one night break in Gaziantep.

Our work projects currently involve building some communal shade structures and/or playgrounds for the IDP (internally displaced person) camps within the city limits of Kahramanmarash. I’ll stab out a longer update sometime but wanted to start with that!

The heat is insane here, 100-105 fahrenheit by day, 70 or-72 consistently at night. Our bodies start to adjust to it but it’s certainly not easy. We drink a lot of water, and Turkish custom here is to stop frequently between tea breaks, water, etc. We’ve moved our work schedule earlier and earlier to wrap up right as the heat gets at its worst- it’s accumulated the most by 3 or 4pm as all the thermal mass around you has been accumulating sunlight the whole day. Hardly a whisp of cloud in the sky here. At the same time, it’s a form of stark beauty that evoked similar emotions to when I’ve been faced with 10 degree winter weather, howling winds, etc. The story of humankind was to leave our comfort zones and use culture and technology to get ourselves a lot further than our first climate allowed. So with that, I enjoy the defiance of working and (somewhat) thriving within this brutal climate.

Even the Turks native to here freely describe the heat as pretty horrible, and it’s just a fact of life that two months of the year are nearly inhospitable to life without serious modification. I’ll write more on that another time.

Gaziantep is a lovely city, I explored a tiny bit last night and will do a bit more today before taking our shared shuttle back to camp.