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Citizen journalism to the extreme

An Iraqi guard, dressed in sandals, army pants and a button-up Hawaiian shirt, slung a machine gun over his shoulder and examined Bob Keith’s passport. When the guard cocked his head and held the book upside down, Keith realized no one was in charge.

Keith, a 52-year-old Whitewater native, is a self-proclaimed cultural writer with an obsession to seek truth. His desire most recently led him to Iraq, for the second time, where he spent over two weeks meandering from one-room hotels to ancient temple ruins, nerve-racking taxi rides to after-dark Ramadan festivities.

“The whole point of me going is to find out what no one knew and piece it together for myself,” Keith said. “If you want to see the stories about the people, you have to dig into PBS, and even then it’s not completely accurate. We get this construct in our minds that someone was just pummeled by a tank or machine gun — that’s why I was so surprised when I realized how friendly the people actually were.”

To relay his information, Keith uploaded short reflections, photographs and video clips to his travel blog, cooldadiomedia.com, hoping to tell his story to anyone who would listen, he said.

With $2,000 in cash, his wife’s digital camera and a United States passport, Keith flew into Ankara, Turkey Feb. 21 and crossed the Iraqi border by cab four days later, traveling across the Kurdish northern region as he did in 2006. He spoke no Arabic and had no itinerary or political agenda.

According to Heide Keith, Bob’s wife and a professional photographer, he carried himself as an observer. He couldn’t say he was a journalist because of the increasing number killed in the area, she said.

“Despite the amount of research he did, I was always very concerned about the idea,” Heide said. “I always had in the back of my mind that he would be pawned and used for some sort of statement.”

Brawny, full-bearded and pony-tailed, Keith prides himself on starting college at 40 at UW-Whitewater, growing up on a Wisconsin dairy farm and working more than two dozen blue-collar jobs, a background which helped him connect with people overseas.

“The language is different, but a hammer’s a hammer,” he said.

Keith crossed more than 100 checkpoints on his trip, none of which detained him for more than a half hour. Most guards just wondered why he was there, Keith said.

While he mostly traveled in the country’s northern region, Keith said he could see clear contradictions with the American media’s depiction of Iraq. Despite his constant fear — he even crafted two bungee cords into locks for hotel rooms — he realized that most people wanted to protect him.

According to Keith, the “taxi mafia” found good publicity in getting “the American” from point A to point B, as he used a travel mode most big media companies ignore for “$300 a night hotels, $250,000 armored SUVs and body guards.”

“Also, the media will say that democracy seems to be working in northern Iraq, but it’s so much more complicated than that,” Keith said. “In every little internet cafe over there, there’s a picture of their leader with a machine gun. They say he’s dually elected, but if you don’t vote for him, it’s like, ‘bye.’”

Keith’s experience also allowed him to see differences between the American and Iraqi people. According to Keith, everyone he met knew someone who was shot or gassed under Saddam Hussein’s regime, a war-torn lifestyle most Americans don’t experience. While on a visit to Halabja, a Kurdish city gassed in 1988 by Saddam, he met people still scarred from the attacks, though he chose not to take photographs in the city as a sign of respect.

“I take pictures pretty arbitrarily, but there was this picture of a 5-year-old Kurdish girl on the street sitting in a box of soap,” Keith said. “She was just so cute, her hair was flowing, and she wore a distinct ethnic leather dress. My guide at the time said, ‘She’s beautiful, isn’t she?’ while she gave me this look like, ‘I have to be here and you’re leaving.’”

Keith said it’s important to realize the dangers of his trip. One night during Ramadan, shopkeepers brought out juice carts and fruit stands, blasted Kurdish rock music and danced in the streets under dangling wires and boarded-up buildings.

“Nothing is what it seems; nothing seems what it is,” he said.

Another night, Keith contemplated diving out of his taxi, scared the driver was kidnapping him.

“It’s not something I’d recommend anyone to do,” Heide said. “But I have to say from what he’s shared, he did meet some kind people that appreciate what he’s done to try to make things better while they’re just trying to cope with living in a war zone.”

According to Heide, Keith still keeps in touch with a few people overseas. She remembers answering the phone from a dead sleep, to a foreign voice with loud music in the background. While her first reaction was panic, a man from Sulaymaniyah was calling to check on Keith’s safe arrival home.

“It’s hard to tell how people will react to you unless you’ve been to their country,” she said.

While Keith still considers himself patriotic, he said the feeling now comes with a new perspective. He laughs when he hears the phrase “Middle East solution” thrown about, recalling the crumbling streets, illiterate border patrols and overall sense of fear.

Yet regardless of the danger, Keith said he has never denied his American roots.

“If anyone’s going to kill me because I’m American, bring it on,” Keith said. “I’m going to die some day of something. Every once in a while you have to make a stand and ask yourself, ‘Is this something I want to die for today?’”