Turkey and Kurdistan

Sorry for the infrequent updates, I have been moving around a lot - now in Southern Turkey, which is my tenth individual plane trip since leaving Monrovia. I had planned to write a long post on the Kurdish economy, which I will do at some point shortly - it's interesting in itself, much of the major cities have sprung up in the aftermath of the fall of Saddam, and Kurdistan, because it is an automous region, is now providing competition for Iraq's oil controls - leading the larger American firms to try to start dropping fields in Basra in favour of negotiating for other contracts with the Northern regional Government (KRG).
But briefly on that topic, I have been reading a book about the construction of Hamilton road in Iraq:  "Road Through Kurdistan: Travels Northern Iraq"

The book is written by the engineer brought on to construct the road, A. M. Hamilton, he details the interesting land and culture of Northern Iraq, as well as the sheer act of will it took to ensure the road was built.

It made me consider how much the construction of major landmarks or infrastructure projects are acts of huge amounts of will, and often, despite the multiple efforts that go into them, associated with an individual: Cyrus Avery and Route 66; Tsar Nicolas and the Trans-Siberian railroad or Strauss and the Golden Gate bridge - whether designer, funder, builder or leader there seems to be an individual tied to it and crucial for it. In Liberia's case it makes me wonder then if Mount Coffee will end up tied to Sirleaf, or perhaps even Konneh as the person pushing it through.