Babylon by Bus: Or, the true story of two friends who gave up their valuable franchise selling YANKEES SUCK T-shirts at Fenway to find meaning and adventure in Iraq,

Babylon by Bus: Or, the true story of two friends who gave up their valuable franchise selling YANKEES SUCK T-shirts at Fenway t Ray LeMoine Date: 2006-08-03   —   Book product page Rating:

This is one of the best travel books I've read. These two yo-yos get fed up with their lives selling t-shirts at ball games and decide to do something meaningful -- they go to Iraq to help build a democracy. Hindsight tells you this story won't end well, but it's fascinating to hear it in plain English from two regular Joes.

Ray and Jeff aren't newcomers to travel. They bummed around the world on the backpacker circuit, so just taking off to Iraq with little money and no job waiting for them wasn't that big of a deal. They showed up in Baghdad and got a job right away with the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). These guys were completely unqualified for the job, but you know how the saying goes: 90% of success is just showing up. Apparently they did OK -- the CPA regularly pointed to their NGO liaison program as "good news from Iraq." But,

If we were the good news from Iraq, then the CPA had a problem. Here we were, two penniless idiots running a rag-tag program with zero funding and experience, and there was nothing better than us going on under the CPA?

Ray and Jeff start out living outside the Green Zone (GZ), which allows them to really connect with the Iraqi people in a way the GZ denizens never can, and their story is full of all the crazy people -- Iraqi and Westerner -- you'd expect to find hanging out in a war zone. There are drunks, incompetents, drug addicts, suicidal soldiers, homicidal mercenaries, clowns (seriously), pompous French guys, corrupt Iraqi sheiks, angry youths and brave soccer coaches. There are also some real heroes like Heather Coyne (google her) who, as the real story of Iraq becomes known, will probably become a legend.

This is really an amazing book. It's funny, it's smart, it's sad and if it doesn't become a movie, I'll eat it.

tags: babylon by bus  iraq