I think I got called a prostitute today…

…we checked on the children in the ICU this morning and got things planned out for the day for the local team.  We are trying to be pretty hands-off at this point and let the locals do the bulk of the work because we will be leaving in a few days and they need to be able to take care of the children without us. 

So, after we got everyone tucked in and had a little lunch, we went on a little outing. 

We went to this major shrine here in Najaf…the kind of place that pilgrims come from all over the world to see.   I can’t remember what it was called. 

It was beautiful.  Like the most beautiful piece of architecture that I have ever seen.  We had to remove our shoes to go inside…and Christine and I also had to don abaya, the local customary covering for woman in public.  It covers one’s head and entire body, apart from the face, and is pervasive here in Najaf as well as throughout Iraq.  Lucky for us they had a few spares at the entrance of the shrine so we could be dressed appropriately to enter. 

And like I said, the shrine was amazing.  Solid gold walls, colorful tile mosaics, beautiful carpets, and mirrored ceilings.  Spectacular. 

When it came time to return our rental abaya, Christine and I each removed the black cloth from our bodies in the middle of the street and handed them back to the local officials.  As we were doing so, an old woman passed by us and started yelling at us and waving her hands.  Our guides and body guards all started laughing hysterically!  We asked our interpreter what she had said and he sheepishly replied that she thought we were “very pretty ladies.” 

Yeah.  Right. 

Our interpreter ran up ahead of us and told her who we were and what we were doing here in Iraq.  She seemed mildly placated…

…but I am left to wonder, what it was she actually said about us. 

Not found….not present…

When I arrived last week I heard these words a few times from my team and it sounded like an inside joke….someone would say “Not present,” in some random context and everyone would laugh.  I didn’t get it, but whatever.

I was at the hospital yesterday and I was going through the medications for a patient with one of the local nurses and what was ordered was oral Lasix and we didn’t have any.  The local nurse said to me “Not present…not found,” and suddenly I understood.  And I laughed. 

And then today, when the internet wasn’t working again (or still...?) the page that popped up said “Server not found” and I had to laugh again. 

It turns out that the random power outages are not quite so random….

…they are quite predictable actually. 

This is how it worked when we first got here: the power went out around 10:00AM in most of the house and stayed off all day.  In the whole house.  Then it came on partially in the evening, not sure what time.  I had light in my bathroom but not the bedroom.  There were no lights in the bathroom down the hallway or downstairs.  Then at around 9:00 or 10:00PM all the lights would go out for a minute and then the generator kicked on and we had light in the entire house again, all night long.  Then the generator went off again around 10:00 AM and the whole thing started again. 

At least, that is how it worked when the rest of the team was here.  Now, with only the tree of us, they turn the generator off all the time.  I just had to ask for the second morning in a row if they would turn it on so we could see in our bathroom, charge our electronics and use the internet.  The other issue is that they turn the generator off on us at night.  The three of us are all total night owls and it seems like when our security detail gets tired of listening to us talk at night, the generator goes off.  We grumble about it for about an hour and then, resigned to our fates, go off to bed. 

And then there were three….

….or maybe, the title should be, “Left behind in Iraq, Part II.”

When I first went to Nasiriyah last year, my friend Pasha and I stayed behind for a few extra days to get the remaining children out of the ICU before continuing on to Sulaymania (P.S., I really don’t have any idea how to correctly spell the name of either of these locations, so sorry for the inconsistency). 

This trip however, I arrived under the pretense that there would be children left in the ICU after the rest of the team left and that they would need to be attended to.  Therefore, I arrived halfway through the trip with the intention of staying for an extra week.  Now it is Saturday, most of the team flew out this morning but myself, Pasha and Christine from Washington D.C. are here until Thursday morning. 

We have a full ICU.  Luckily, Najaf’s cardiac ICU can only accommodate four patients…and we are operating at full capacity.  One child is very sick…like I don’t want to talk about it sick…like Pasha and I had a f%@ked up night last night sick.  But the other three have the potential to recover fully and do quite well. 

So that is reassuring. 

After our crummy night, Pasha and I went back to our guesthouse for breakfast.  It was a beautiful sunny day and we opted to sit out in the “garden” for our dining pleasure.  We ate hard-boiled eggs with bread and cheese (a menu that is identical to breakfast every morning), drank bootlegged vodka and smoked cigars….actually, Pasha smoked a cigar and I smoked a “neonatal cigar,” otherwise known as a Montecristo. 

We laughed a lot. 

And tried to forget how stressful our night at work together had been.   

I had forgotten about the random power outages here….

…you will be typing away on your computer or sitting at the table at dinner and the lights will just go out. Usually it only lasts for a minute or two, and in the evening there is a conversion from electricity to generator power that creates a moment of darkness while that transition occurs.

Sometimes it lasts a little longer…like right now. I was about to post a few entries to the blog but no power means no internet, which means no blog posting and instead more writing until my battery dies.

But as I mentioned previously, I had totally forgotten about this detail of living and working in Iraq. I don’t know if I had the subconscious idea that since the war is over, normalcy would have been magically restored to the region and things like electricity would be available in a manner that we in the states are accustomed to.
Before I left, my partner Nate asked me if I had packed my headlamp. I sort of scoffed at the idea that I would need it, thinking that it wasn’t like I was going camping or anything. I brought it only because he insisted I take it and it was a point that hardly seemed arguing.

The minute the lights went out the first night I was here I was thankful that he had been so insistent.

Apparently it only rains three times a year in Iraq…

…and yesterday was one of those three.  Or at least it was raining that morning and when we asked our driver how frequently this occurred he said simply: “three times.”  We interpreted this answer to represent annual number of days with precipitation but I suppose we could actually be witnessing the third recorded occurrence of rainfall in this desert region (further confirming my speculation that snow is nonexistent here outside of snow globes) 

…but I think it is a lot more likely that he just didn’t quite understand what we were asking. 

This happens frequently in these environments where two languages have to intersect for understanding to occur.  You ask a question, it gets translated, you get an answer, it gets translated back to you and it doesn’t quite make sense, or doesn’t quite answer your question…there are so many links in the chain where communication has the potential to break down that it is difficult to pinpoint where that break down may be occurring. 

Add to that a few extra languages and accents and it is amazing that anyone ever understands anything on these trips. 

Especially this trip; this is the most diverse group I have worked with to date.  We have several Americans and a British guy who live in the U.S., a Mexican from Monterey, a Korean woman from Australia, an Australian woman from Australia, a Dutch woman from Holland, two Belarusians, and one American who lives in Kenya.  We are dealing with native languages of English, Russian, Arabic, Korean, and Spanish and still somehow managing to communicate.  And for the most part we are doing a great job at teaching and understanding each other. 

But I’m still left to wonder exactly how often in rains here in Iraq.

Christine, Christine, & Kristen

Yes.  There are three of us.  We have Christine the American ICU nurse that once worked at my current facility, Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital, but now lives and works in Washington D.C.  We also have Christine the German intensivist who has worked in Chicago and I got to have an extensive conversation about rock climbing with over breakfast this morning.  And we have me, Kristen, the latest exotic specimen to join the team here in Najaf. 

The slight variation that my name puts on the theme seems to be quite novel to the locals.  Or maybe it is that I am just a new face that showed up near the end of the trip.  Hard to say.  But they really seem to like me.  Today I was pulled out of the ICU by one of the local guys who gave me, with great sincerity, a small box as a gift in thanks for my coming to Iraq to work with this team.  I accepted my gift graciously and later opened it to find…. a snow globe. 

Yes.

An Iraqi snow globe!  With little globs of white stuff that fly through space when the globe is shaken and settle gradually to the bottom.  It has a temple as the interior image.  A snow globe, like you would buy at an airport in Chicago or New York.  But I don’t think you can actually find these at airports in Iraq….and I’m fairly certain that you can’t find snow anywhere in Iraq.