The honeymoon is over

1:39 in the morning shines with a faint glow on my clock. Three hours until time to rise and face another day in Iraq. Somehow I lack the motivation to simply shut off my computer and sleep. I thought that I would be one of the lucky few that would escape the war injury of insomnia, but it appears that after the past few weeks of the same pattern of lying in my bed and staring at the walls for a few hours each night that I have been blessed with the diagnosis. It isn’t just sleeping that is proving difficult. It seems that as of late the only thing that I have the energy for is breathing. I can say with absolute certainty that the honeymoon phase of the deployment is over. I have traveled all the square meters that I am allowed to roam here, and the once exciting and new is now the mundane. I need to pick up a new hobby or two, but for this week I am content to just mope a bit. I think I am entitled for at least a few days to be bummed, especially given the holiday season.

My current activity in the evenings is watching bootleg copies of movies and TV shows. After finishing watching every single episode of Sex and the City, I have moved on to MASH. I figured that I could entertain myself for weeks watching 11 DVDs worth of episodes for only $25. The end result isn’t the same as watching Sarah Jessica Parker though. With Sex and the City I could mentally check out for a bit and laugh a little. With MASH, I seem to be finding similarity after similarity. At times the show can bring me to tears when I should be laughing. The food, the boredom, the constant surrounds of injury and illness is all too familiar to me. Perhaps it just hits to close to home, no pun intended. With each mortar round explosion on my DVD I cringe in the same way I do when I hear an explosion near us here at the hospital. Why do I continue this self torture? I keep pressing onward, watching another episode each night. Perhaps it is the ending that I crave- I know that eventually the characters get their return trip home, and I too will one day get on a plane bound back to the US. In the meantime their war and mine keep on sending us wounded.

My newest music craving is Ingrid Michaelson. Her sweet voice and deep meaning songs are my current favorite with the IPOD. Her song Keep Breathing could be labeled my theme song- or perhaps our theme song. All of us here are in this together, even though we don’t talk about it much. Last night at Christmas dinner we each spoke of what foods we missed, but didn’t dare mention who we missed or what activities we missed. Food is a benign topic, but people and actions are dangerous topics that lead to sadness. So we pretend that we are remotely happy, that this place doesn’t suck, and that everything is fine. Then again, I guess it is fine- because as I type this we are all still alive. Somehow that has to be enough.

I really thought that I would write more than I am. Perhaps it is the restrictions on posting that prevent me. I believe that the real reasons is that it is easier to sit in silence than process the words in my head that make me relive the days events and thoughts. I can’t talk about any of the violence- should my blog get attention from the wrong people, and I wouldn’t want to scare my family. I can’t talk about fear. Admittance would be difficult, and once again falls into the category of things the enemy doesn’t need to read. Faking the daily perky report wasn’t something that I could swallow, so the writing is much less than originally anticipated. I still have to post though- and much of the fear, stress, and frustration is finding it’s way through to the words. I think the sooner I accept that war isn’t pretty on any level whatsoever, the better. I can entertain myself with the notion of cultural learning for only so long before the reality seeps through. I think that the process has begun, especially with this evening’s post.

My eyelids have finally grown heavy, and the light from my small lamp is no longer sufficient to keep the words from blurring on my screen. Goodnight world, may God keep us and bless us all, and may we all wake in the morning. A day in Iraq is better than no day at all.

Merry Christmas!

Children

The thought provoking question of the day: if you were to play with a 6 year old little girl, what would you do? Draw a picture? Play with dolls? Toss a ball? Now imagine that the little girl has no arms, because she was in a vehicle that was hit by explosives. Now what would you do with her? How do you play?
While the above is incredibly sad on it’s own, an even sadder situation is how so many Iraqi children no longer attend school because of the violence. When insurgents bombed several of the schools, families halted the children’s attendance. With the war progressing onward for several years, the effect of the lack of education on part of Iraq’s youth is starting to be apparent. Young teen boys might be the male head of the family, and not be able to read or write. Only time will tell how the current generation of children will be as adults when their entire childhood is full of violence, hatred, and blood.

Date at the dining hall

I was blessed with a visit today from my wonderful boyfriend, Jim. While it was only for a very short time, and I was working most of the day, it was still absolutely great to see him. We snuck in a photo while he was here.

This nagging cough

I am so tired. Yes, tired from work. Tired of the bad food. Tired of Baghdad. Mainly though, I am tired of coughing, and coughing, and coughing. My sinus infection from over two weeks ago turned into a complete upper respiratory infection, and then into some nasty bronchitis like I have never had before. The annoying little viral problem has now been going on for over 15 days, and I am soooo tired of it. My chest hurts, my throat hurts, and I am sure that my roommates ears hurt from the persistent every minute cough that has been plaguing me. Two antibiotics, an inhaler, decongestant, cough suppressant and mucus expectorant and I am still having this issue with no improvement. Ugh. I know that there is a lot of nasty, nasty things in the air, water, and covering everything here- but this is insane. I can’t handle this for 13.5 more months. Please Lord, would you just heal me already?

Gardening in a bowl

After a relaxing day off work and spent doing absolutely nothing more than watching DVDs and sleeping, I decided to take on the challenge of playing with one of my Christmas gifts. My wonderful boyfriend sent me a tulip growing kit- complete with pot, soil, gravel, and 5 tulip bulbs. When I think back to this past summer and how I thought that things would be here, I can say with 100% certainty that the idea of gardening never crossed my mind. However, this evening, gardening was exactly what I was doing. Of course I had to improvise with a few things. The warm water needed for the soil/compost disk came from a bottle and was heated in my hot pot. After soaking the soil disk in the hot water, I had the fun joy of “fluffing” the mixture with a plastic fork borrowed from the dining hall. After spreading out the dirt on some old bubble wrap, I carefully placed the tulip bulbs in the pot. I used the fork to get the dirt back in the pot and around the bulbs. According to the directions from ‘Tulip World’, the supplier of the gift, the bulbs need 10 weeks somewhere cool and dark. The five very-far-from-home bulbs are now happy and planted in their pot, placed in a box, and sitting on the patio of my apartment room. Since random boxes tend to make people nervous around here, I used a sharpie marker to write on the top: “ I am flower bulbs that need to be kept cool and dark as I grow. If you have any questions, please contact LT H. in room 204C”. I now have to wait until March 1st and then I can bring them inside to continue to grow. I can’t wait to see if I can actually grow tulips in Iraq. Updates to come!

The many meanings of five

The time is now 5 pm- which in Baghdad means time for another call to prayer. There are two Mosques near our vicinity, and the eerie yet beautiful echoes of prayer song can heard throughout our living quarters. The flowing words can practically be felt as the sounds reverberate throughout the concrete infrastructure surrounding our world. I wonder what is being sung, but my Arabic, though improving, is not nearly at the level in which I can understand the echoes of words that reach our courtyard.

Five o’clock also brings another meaning to my day- it means that I have just finished a cup of the delicious Chai tea. As a lover of strong drinks and food with an abundance of flavor, I am growing quite fond of the Iraqi diet. Chai tea is an experience in itself with the intensely strong taste combined with a generous helping of sugar and milk. One of our Iraqi interpreters makes a carafe of Chai daily and then makes the rounds to fill our eager cups.

5 pm signals the end of the day, the setting of the sun, and the transformation of the bleak Arab sky into shades of color that can only be appreciated in person. Many of us try and step out onto the roof of the hospital in anticipation for the setting of the sun and to take in the beautiful shades of color as day turns into night. The first color is the change of the sun from golden yellow to a tangerine orange that sizzles on the horizon. As the ball of fire dips down and touches the earth, shades of pink emerge and stretch across the sky. Next follow the streaks of purples that embrace each cloud. The grand finale is the blue that has a brightness and depth that can only be compared to the deep Caribbean ocean. Blue fades into black and the stars emerge, and the Arab world waits for the next dawning of the sun.

One heart at a time

Take a mental journey with me for a moment. Imagine for a minute that you are an Iraqi boy, age 17 or so. You live in rural Iraq with your family, and each and every day you tend your small flock of sheep. You have never left your family, your rural area, or your sheep. You have never spoke with an American, seen the big city of Baghdad, or received medical care. Now imagine that one day, while you were out with your sheep, you and your flock were hit with gunfire, and the next thing you know you find yourself in a hospital bed surrounded by people who are speaking a language you don’t understand. Tubes and IV lines surround you, yet you don’t know what these things are. This was the situation for one of my patients after being brought to our hospital by a convoy.

He hated me. I needed to turn him to change his blood soaked dressings, and didn’t want to give him any more Morphine because of his respiratory status. The bandage covering his gunshot wound would suck in every time he would take a breath, and he tried to push away my hands every time I touched him. In his drug induced confusion he would click his tongue at me in his Arab show of disapproval. I made him roll on his side so I could clean up his blood tinged vomit, and he shot me a look of complete disgust. I drove on with my work as quickly as I could.

Later on I came back to check my patient. He was finally resting comfortably and medically stable. My next task I decided was to get him cleaned up a bit as he was still covered in dried blood and dirt. As I stood at his bedside with a tub of warm, soapy water and washed his hands, the look on his face changed from one of disgust to one of acceptance. As the blood was washes away, so was his distrust. Perhaps I was not as evil as he had originally thought. I also took a few extra minutes to peel an orange for him, and finally- there is was- eye contact that didn’t contain hatred.

The next morning the young Sheppard was to be transferred to another medical facility. As I assisted to load him up on the stretcher, he took my hand in his, and placed his other hand over his heart in the Arab sign of ‘thank you’. Time stood still for a second. There it was- a moment where we were not the evil Americans trying to destroy Iraq. The bad decisions of our leadership were light years away from us. Perhaps it means nothing to those of you back home in the US, but to us, this was a victory in our mission. This is why we are here, why we serve, and why I can get out of bed every day and don’t mind caring for the Iraqis. That one moment of thanks keeps me moving forward on to the next patient. He is only one heart out of many yet to go, yet not any less important.