Gonna be a quick one tonight. Due to the cloud o’ brown, we have had no mail flights in for the past 4 days, so if you sent me a package and I haven’t sent you a thank you, it is probably because I haven’t yet received it.

I wanted to point out that the term “TCN” (which I used in my prior post to refer to the native working here on post) is not a derogatory term, nor is it a nickname. In the military, acronyms and just plain spelled-out first letters are often used to denote people, places and things. For example I am the medical OIC of our clinic (officer in charge). CPT Allen is my CO (commanding officer). President Bush is our CINC (commander-in-chief). When I re-read yesterday’s message, I thought I might have sound dismissive of the locals and third-country-nationals, if you did not know that in the military, acronyms are just part of the milieu.

A further word on the “local” people. One of my friends from many years ago is a man who has spent much time with Arabs in the middle-east, and at the beginning of my deployment, he wrote me, saying that “Arabs are the most hospitable people in the world, and the most implacable enemies.” I am grateful that I have, as yet, only seen the former aspect. When we take care of foreign nationals, they are incredibly grateful, including those who are clearly making much more money than any of us. It is amazing how much of a difference a little prilosec makes in the life of a man who has had 30 years of stomach pain. Almost all of the TCNs, and especially the Turkish, Lebanese, Iraqi, Kuwaitis—these folks just about always bring back something after we have treated them. A couple of days ago, it was Turkish bread, cooked right on post here in a stone oven, with some spices on top. Delicious.

Today, one of the crews we’ve taken care of brought us a bunch of office chairs with wheels. The chairs are slightly used, but beautiful nonetheless, as we have been sitting on folding chairs since I got here. (Most of us had a pillow on our chairs to make the ride a bit softer, but after a few weeks, no one wants to touch one of those sacrificed pillows.) One of the chairs had a message to one of our medics written across the back in permanent marker, to make sure everyone knew who had earned that gift. Just a little thing which makes our lives a bit better, and I suspect that the chairs were a substantial sacrifice for the men who gave them up.