Last one

Hopefully, this'll be my last post from Iraq. I walked around today with a camera, to try and document some of the daily sights I've been living with for the past year. I haven't taken many pictures, but there just doesn't seem to be much that I want to preserve for the future. Still, these give a decent idea of what it's like.

The alley where I live. Everything here is surrounded by concrete T-walls, so pictures of buildings are pretty boring. I live on the left there, just past the garbage can.

Once you turn past the T-wall, here's my row of Containerized Housing Units. One trailer, three rooms, six people. (Well, actually 5 people, since I don't have a roommate. One of the few perks to being the only female in a unit of 400 guys.) Those things surrounding the trailer are HESCO barriers, filled with sand for extra blast protection.
The door to my own CHU.
Inside.

Saturday afternoon, must be time to clean the weapon.

The shower trailer. Not like I'm complaining. I'm happy to have a shower.

The building where I work

Inside the aid station

On my walk up to the dining hall, I pass by Strykers.

And more Strykers

And more Strykers

Yup. More Strykers.

Can you see the writing on the left rear panel of this vehicle?

Yes, it's true. The Coasties are here. There are about 5 guys from Jacksonville, LA. I see them at lunch sometimes. I think it's funny that everyone else is driving around in uparmored Humvees, MRAPs, Strykers and Abram Tanks. The Coasties have this.

Anyway. That's it. My life for the last 11 months. I can't think of much that I'll miss. Except the moon. I see a lot of the moon, walking out the port-a-john every single night at 1am; walking to the gym at 4. I've tried taking pictures, but nothing does it justice. Oh, and the sunrises/sunsets. Those are impressive too. I won't miss them much, though. Not enough to want to stay.

Bagdad

Not much longer now! Might be home in time to pick blueberries.

I heard someone compare Baghdad with Miami. Flat, lots of brown, palm trees. Lots of interstate overpasses and highways. The main difference is that everywhere in Baghdad is surrounded by 12' high concrete blast walls. Some very poor quality photos, taken using an iPhone from the back of a Blackhawk at 500', or through the window of an MRAP while driving at 30mph. Still, I suppose it's better than posting nothing.

Dog tags

You were named after a fish.
Flashing silver in the ocean,
Slipping up rivers to
Sun dappled mountain streams.

Your birthday, just shy of twenty.
A teenager.
A boy.

Your blood type, which we
Pumped into your broken body for an hour.
Praying for a helicopter
That never came.

Your religion.
One tag said "Buddhist",
The other, "Surfer".

I imagine you as you were- white teeth
In a young, tan face. A seashell necklace.
Two good legs.
A dog. A girlfriend. A fire on the beach.

I wonder what your parents thought,
The ones who named you for a fish,
When you came to them,

Sun bleached hair shaved off,
And told them what you'd done.
That you were coming here, to this dry land.
A land without fish or surfboards.

R and R

Just got back from 2 weeks of R&R. Had an amazing, relaxing time. The birds were at the feeders all day long; the frogs and coyotes sang all night. I spent time with family and friends, but did not do too much socializing. I ran and walked the dog on our trail, worked in the garden, drank coffee on the couch and enjoyed the wonder of indoor plumbing. It felt good to just rest, eat good food, and walk around without a weapon.

We repainted and took out our "new" canoe- a '63 Chestnut Deer. It's beautiful. I'm in love.


Please take a moment to notice the dearth of bicycles in the above picture.







My sister Emily came up, and we spent St Patty's day at an Irish pub. It was great to see her.



It took 4 days travelling to get back to Taji. I'm moving to my new unit in less than a week so will try to spend the next few days catching up on sleep and packing.

Taji

I was going to take a bunch of pictures of the post here in Taji, thinking that I would be here through September. Turns out, I'm being transferred out of my medical support unit within the next week or two. I'm being sent to an artillery unit to replace their PA, who is being punitively removed. It should be an interesting experience, especially since I'll be the only woman in the entire 300 person battalion. The Army just recently started experimenting with assigning female PAs to artillery units. The theory is that, historically, artillery units have stayed well behind the lines, making it "safer" than infantry units. The reality is, though, that this war does not set itself up with battle lines and there is not much use for weapons that can fire 10 miles. The FA (field artillery) guys are mostly being used as infantry- clearing roads and kicking down doors- something they hate since they tend to look down at the grunts in infantry.

I've been with my current medical unit for a little over a year, and have gotten pretty comfortable with my co-workers and will miss the mentorship that I receive here. I'll also miss the medics, who are well trained and talented. I have made some friends and enjoy the camaraderie of working with a variety of medical providers (we've got a dentist, physical therapist, psychologist, nurse, 2 doctors and 2 PAs in this unit). I'll be the sole medical provider over there, which will be a challenge, but I think it will also be exciting in that way.

Anyway, before the new marching orders came through, I did take a couple pictures of the outside of our clinic. This is where we park our "ambulances". These vehicles are called M-RAPs (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) and they're about as comfortable as they look:





Anyway, for those of you who keep in touch with me via snail-mail, please hold your letters and packages until I get settled in to my new digs. If you want my new address, please email and I'll send it to you as soon as I know it.

Gratitude

I am so lucky. In the last 2 weeks I have received so many care packages, I don't have enough space in my room to store everything. I've gotten boxes from family, from friends, and from old co-workers. I have bags full of homemade cookies and my desk drawers at work are filled with chocolates. How can it be that I know so many good and generous people? Certainly nothing that I have done can deserve this.

To all my friends: From care packages to post cards to simple e-mails; all your outreaching makes a huge difference in my life. I treasure each and everything I get from you. You make all this bearable. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

We've been busy lately. Lots of sick people including a guy who went off to Africa for R&R and came back with malaria. Didn't see a lot of malaria during my rotations in Alaska. Other than that, I'm enjoying having my room to myself for a couple weeks while my bipolar roomate is away. I'm too old to share a small living space with someone totally lacking in social skills. I suppose there is some lesson in this experience- some life skill I should be gaining from this personal trial. I'm trying to learn it. I'm trying to become a better, more patient and understanding person. I guess I've got 7 more months to work at it. Thanks, universe. Not everyone gets such a unique chance to improve themself.

3 more weeks until I go home for R&R.

1/27

We've moved to a smaller camp, about 25 miles outside of Baghdad. We're busier here because we're farther away from the main hospital. There aren't as many mortar attacks, but the surrounding roads are more dangerous so we see more victims of IEDs (Improvised Explosive Device- roadside bombs that target vehicles). I work 12 hrs a day, 7 days a week. In my spare time I read paperback mystery novels and work out at the dingy little gym. People have been sending me letters and packages, which have been awesome. Mainly I sleep. If I could sleep through the next seven months, I would.

The weather is chilly- it was 30 degrees this morning when I walked to breakfast- but I'm not complaining. It'll be hot enough soon enough. People are starting to take their mid-tour leave and it's pretty much the topic of most conversations. I go in 4 1/2 weeks and I cannot wait. I can't wait to eat something besides wilted salad and soggy vegetables. I can't wait to wear something besides a uniform and to walk around without a rifle.

The connectivity here isn't as good as it was in Baghdad, so pictures take forever to load up. Not that there's much to take pictures of. Sand and 15' high concrete T-walls. Sand and metal reinforced buildings. Sand. But, because of the smoke (something here is always burning and it usually stinks) we do have some nice sunrises/sunsets. I'll try to take pictures and post them when I'm home in March.

Love to everyone and thanks for the letters, packages and just good thoughts. It means a lot.

11/11

My two month anniversary of leaving home. I did some yoga, straightened my room, and now I'm enjoying a cup of tea and listening to a Corelli concerto while doing a crossword puzzle.

Mortar attacks have slowed down to once a week or so. Work is busier than ever with routine urgent care stuff (migraines, stomach flu, sprained ankles, fingers slammed in doors...). It makes the days go by quickly, but the months are dragging along- I feel like I've been here for two years and not just two months.

I'm missing Thanksgiving, a holiday I've always loved. I love it that there are no expectations or cartoon characters bringing presents. You just spend an afternoon with people who you love while eating good food. Two of my favorite things. I have lovely Thanksgiving memories, I am very lucky. I will take the opportunity to remind myself of all the things I am thankful for- my incredibly supportive family and friends, my health, my home. All the things we should be thankful for every day but that we so often forget about. This year I will be thinking of everyone I've ever spent a Thanksgiving with and wishing you all the very best.

Boo

Happy Halloween

Books

I started reading The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by T.E. Lawrence on my flight to Kuwait. This autobiography by the infamous Lawrence of Arabia was an excellent introduction to the world I was entering. He perfectly captures the dusty dry scenery, the vastness of the land. I was impressed with his insights to the politics of the region (rebellion against Turkey and independence for Arab peoples) and his support for their cause. While he was a British soldier, and his support of independence had ulterior motives (Turkey was a German ally during WWI) ,he also clearly cared about the locals on a personal level. He was not too proud to write about his weakness during initial camel rides, which were often days long with little food or water. On his first major trip, he described explicitly his suffering of dysentery. His appreciation for the culture as a whole and his deep love of his Arab bretheren are clear on every page.

That said. This book is very long. There is a lot of military and political minutia that caused my eyes to glaze over and my brain to turn off as I gave up keeping track of who or what or where the story was taking us. I finished, but only because I had so much free time in Kuwait that I could buckle down and put in the long hours required for this book. I'll have to rent the movie.

Next up was the New York Times war corespondent Dexter Filkin's The Forever War. Filkins book begins with an prologue that takes place during the battle of Falluja, when he was embedded with a marine company. Running across the street amid flying bullets, watching marines die in front of him, you are immediately caugt up. The first chapter of the book takes place on a soccer field in Afghanistan in the 90's. The author and a crowd of locals are watching an exhibition of Sharia law. The Taliban chop the hands off thieves and finally they execute a convicted murderer. The story never really slows down, it takes you through 15 years of middle east correspondance from Afghanistan to Iraq. His writing is excellent- exciting and thought provoking and at times heart-wrenchingly beautiful. Depressing though. When a member of the Taliban laments that they just want to be taken seriously and treated as equals by the world leaders, you realize that we are truly living in different worlds.

Finally, The Great War For Civilisation, by Robert Fisk. While Filkins has been a war reporter in Iraq and Afghanistan for over a decade, Fisk has been living in and reporting from the Middle East for over 30 years, and this book shows it. He covers the first and second Afghan wars, the two Iraq wars, the Algerian civil war, the Iran-Iraq conflict, the Armenian genocide, and of course, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He carefully details the history of each conflict not shying away from politically unpopular views or his own errors of judgement. This author met Osama bin Laden no less than three times.

While Lawrence's book was interesting from an historical perspective, the writing is rather dated, and the picayune details of political squabbling were at times sleep inducing. Fisk's writing is detailed enough to be educational but exciting enough to be a quick read. Not an easy read- unless you think reading about the horror of war first hand is easy- but a quick one. Fisk is the book I should have read first. It has everything I wanted when I came here, looking for a historical yet contemperary perspective on the conflicts of the middle east. Unfortunately, because I left it for last, I burnt out before I was halfway through. I've set it aside for now and am knee deep in The Wilderness Warrior- a wonderful book about my favorite president (T.R) and his campaign to save America's wilderness.

A couple more photos from Al Faw Palace

Pictures taken by a co-worker and forwarded on to me.






Practicing some sort of shoulder adjustment with the physical therapists.






My daily routine of gym-breakfast-work-dinner-read-bed-repeat changes a little on weekends. Saturday afternoon we have training and Sundays we don't have to be in to work until 1 pm. So, I had a leisurely morning, slept in until 6:30 before hitting the gym, walked through the local bazaar (passed up a beautiful, hand made silk rug for $3500), enjoyed a morning to myself before going to the aid station. It was almost pleasant.

Bagdad

I have been in Iraq for 2 weeks and I definitely prefer it to Kuwait. There's trees here and a variety of birds. The temperature is cooler than Kuwait by a good 10 degrees.

We went to Al Faw palace for a medical conference. Al Faw was one of Saddam's 99 palaces, and it was not exactly what I imagined a palace would look like, but it was nicer than the trailer that I live in. It's got a man made lake around it, stocked with specially bred bass.




myself and a fellow PA, CPT Reba Schmidt in a throne that was a gift from Yassar Arafat to Saddam




The conference was good. It was nice to get away for a little while and associate with other medical providers; to talk about tennis elbows and frozen shoulders; to eat typical conference fare (fruit plates and donuts and coffee) and make connections. It almost felt like any conference I've ever been to. Except everyone was dressed the same and carried a weapon.

Kuwait

It took about 20 hours to get from Washington to Kuwait, and I totally lost a day in the process. After arriving at Camp Buehring, KWT at 10:30 at night, we woke up at 3am for an early morning range, the idea being that we’d be done before it got too hot. In actuality, we didn’t finish zeroing our weapons until noon.





I ended up spending over 2 weeks in Kuwait, which is about 2 weeks too long. We had some trainings scheduled and I did sick call every morning, but mainly the days were pretty dull. We got acclimatized to the heat, caught up on some sleep, went to the gym and drove eachother crazy in our 30 person tents.


So, all units pass through Kuwait on their way in or out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Many units take the time and effort to decorate the concrete barriers that are up everywhere. Some of the art is pretty bad, but some is rather interesting:
Pictures















It took another 12 hours to travel from Kuwait to Iraq, but I arrived this morning at 4am. I get to skip morning sickcall, but will start work at 1pm this afternoon.



The internet in Kuwait was expensive and unreliable, I would go every morning after sickcall to the USO tent, where you could wait in line for 2 hours in order to use internet for 20minutes. I checked my email and that was about it. Here in Iraq, the wireless is much better and I hope to be able to update this on a semi-regular basis as well as stay in touch with folks via email. Please email me if you want my snail mail address as well.
More later
Peace