The global tour | I was in Iraq
Hello everyone, I am Shen Dianqi, a field traveler who travels the world and pays attention to Chinese people around the world.
I found that the sandstorms were all one after another, and the dust in Baghdad was repeated day after day, and the sun was clear.
I changed to another hotel, this hotel is better than the original one, my location there is about 400 meters from the main road, I don't feel safe enough, so I just changed my location today.
1, Iraqi South Asian labor
Looking at the guy at the front desk like a South Asian, I asked him in English where he came from, and he couldn't understand it at all.
So I thought he was a native (because I thought South Asians could speak a few words of English, at least where are you from this sentence can understand it!). Then I asked, "Pakistan?" "He reacted immediately, and I was asking him where the guy was. He shook his hand and said, Bangladesh, Bangladesh!
I had talked to Hussein in Iraq before, and I said that when I came out of the Baghdad airport, I saw a lot of South Asians, and the toilets in the big shopping malls were also cleaned by Bengalis. Why? Are these people locals?
Hussein said the men were Iraqi foreign workers, mostly from Bangladesh.
I said, huh? Iraq also has foreign workers, and the natives are not very poor?
But Bangladesh's wages are lower, Hussein said, so some Bangladeshis prefer to work in Iraq.
I said, why don't a lot of locals have jobs?
Hussein said that because Iraq used to have a good standard of living, there was a history of hiring foreign workers, and it is true that South Asian laborers are more diligent, and what Iraqis are not willing to do (dirty work such as cleaners) is given to Bangladeshi laborers.
2, the introduction of black people after the Iraq-Iran War
I asked Hussein, why are there so many black people in Iraq?
Hussein said the blacks, mainly from Sudan, lost a lot of labor in Iraq after the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War (both sides lost a total of 1 million people) and needed to rebuild.
At that time, Iraq introduced a large number of Sudanese black young and middle-aged laborers in Sudan in Africa to help rebuild Iraq, and since then these black people have not left Iraq, and now 30 years have passed, and some have reached the second generation or even the third generation...
I asked what is the proportion of black Iraqis?
Hussein said, less than 1 percent.
I said that my community is the lower middle community of Baghdad, and there are many black Sudanese people living there. One day I met a black man on the road, and I accidentally took a picture of him, very far away, about ten meters, and he came over and scolded me. I have no such experience with Iraqis, and I have encountered cases in Brazil and the United States where I accidentally photograph black people being scolded.
"I feel that one of the things that black people are generally oversensitive is that they are too sensitive, they are offended if they are not careful, they can't eat watermelon together, they can't eat fried chicken, they can't take pictures... Feel a bunch of G-dots. ”
3, visit the lower iraqi community, ordinary people are friendly to Chinese faces
Today I went to another precinct in Baghdad, and the community I came to today is classified as 3 (10 levels of urban affluence in Baghdad 1 to 10). This neighborhood is a little bit better and a little bit more prosperous than the one I went to before.
But iraqis are quite enthusiastic, and Iraqis are one of the people of the country that I currently feel, after learning that I am Chinese, completely devoid of malice and negativity. (One point shows that the proportion of negative reports about China at least at the official level in Iraq is small) Today I walked in this community like a star, and was asked to take a group photo by the crowd.
I asked the local Iraqis and learned that Iraq will only open travel visas in 2021 (again because of the epidemic), so there are not many Chinese to go, so the masses rarely have the opportunity to see east Asian faces.
I keep staring at the little one when I see it