CNN - As millions of refugees flee the bloody chaos in Iraq and Syria, English builder Andrew Drury is preparing to make the opposite journey -- for a vacation. Drury, 50, has a route traced out across the Kurdish-held territories, which runs close to the frontline with ISIS. "It's a difficult question -- how much risk to take?" he ponders. "You can go right up with the Kurdish troops fighting beyond Mosul. I want to see the Yazidis again... to see if the tribe I met are still alive."
The Englishman has fond memories of Yazidi hospitality from a previous stay, during a previous war. It was one of his favorite trips.
For more than 20 years, Drury has led a double life. He's a husband, father and the owner of a successful construction company in rural Surrey, a short drive from London. But his passion lies in visiting the world's most dangerous destinations, and his appetite is insatiable. The flame was lit on a safari trip to Uganda, which took a strange turn when Drury accidentally crossed a border into war-ravaged Democratic Republic of Congo, and was forced to flee a machete-wielding farmer. Since then, the builder's travels have taken in downtown Mogadishu and the insurgent heartlands of Afghanistan. He says he's dodged Russian soldiers in the bombed out ruins of Chechnya, infiltrated a Ku Klux Klan militia, played golf in Pyongyang and stayed with a former headhunting tribe in Myanmar.
"It's risk and reward," Drury explains. "The reward is that you see more, and you learn more. We're not born to do nine to five jobs. You have to explore a little bit and try to understand the world you're living in." There's an element of thrill seeking, Drury admits, but his attitude has changed over time. At first he would travel with a cousin and the two would dare each other to take risks. But in recent years he has traveled alone, and become closer to local communities.
He's now the sponsor of a basketball team in his favorite city, Mogadishu, and returns to watch it play. Drury enjoys getting behind the headlines and takes every opportunity to set the record straight, as he sees it. "People in England think Somalians are all gang members and drug dealers... not the people I know," he says. "They are loving people who do their best and put their life on the line for you."
It's moments like this that I think about how sick I am. Because I know this guy is going to get murdered. It's a matter of when, not if. And when it happens I won't bat an eye. He'll get captured somewhere on the Syrian border trying to start up a roller hockey team of displaced refugees and he'll get killed on live tv. And I'll just sit there like "of course that happened." I won't feel bad. I'll have no empathy because I can't identify with a guy who takes vacations in the war-ravaged areas of the Congo. Find me a guy who gets killed sitting on his couch watching MLB network because a truck drove into his living room. I'll go to that guys funeral and eulogize him. But I can't care about everyone who get's murdered by a machete-wielding legume farmer because they chose to leave America. You made your bed.
PS - I found this picture fascinating
These three guys are from the last headhunting tribe on Earth (had to google Headhunting and it's exactly what it sounds like). Just consider that there are actually people in the world that live this way. There's someone holding a camera phone in front of these three and they haven't the slightest idea what's going on because everyday of their lives is like fucking Apocalypto. And I'm a little disappointed by these outfits. You'd figure a headhunter would always be in some kind of cool bearskin garment that rides up their ass and barely covers up their dicks but it looks like they just run around cutting people's heads off in old Champion athletic shorts.
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