Impressions of home

Eight days ago, my daughter and I arrived in the States for an extended Christmas holiday. (Hubby will be following shortly for a less extended vacation.) Immediately we notice a few sublime differences, unabashedly pointed out by my 6 year old in that way that kids have.


1. Thee road is so smooth! There are no potholes, no speed bumps.

2. It's COLD! (Followed quickly by, "SNOW!" and much running around inside and out)

3. You can drink water from the tap??

4. While watching the Grinch on TV, with real actual commercial breaks..."Why do they keep saying, 'buy this' and 'you need that' all the time?"

5. At the store: Can we get cherries? (yes.) Can we get strawberries? (yes.) Can we get toaster waffles? (yes.) Can we get fruit bars? (yes.)..... et cetera.

6. (2 hours after sundown in a parking lot) It is not dark out here! It can't be night time!

I for one, am enjoying the sedate style of driving and am getting over my shock at being able to safely and easily go out at night to run errands and do Christmas shopping.

And the winner is.....!

Ah, December. I love this time of year. It's not the roasted er, eh, goat?, or the spindly pine-like tree delivered by bicycle, or even the shockingly out of place "Feliz Navidad" at the local shopping center. It's the time of year when we finally have an answer to the oft-asked and casually tossed-out question, "So where are you going next?"

How well do you
know your flags?

How is it that every other agency seems to know ages ahead of us? No matter. By this point in our move-everywhere life, it doesn't bother us to say that we don't know. Except, now we DO know. "The List" came out two days early (and in the middle of the night for us). Andrew is sitting in an office with a different email account at the moment and didn't see the announcement. He was surprised when he walked the halls of work Wednesday morning and people started congratulating him.

We had a little fun with it, a wee contest among Facebook friends.

So, 2nd runner-up goes to PK's vote of Philippines and Juli/Mom's Malaysia, on account of the fact that their guesses took the first forays out of the African continent.

1st runner-up goes to AmyJo, who guessed India.

And the winner is...Laura who landed on Nepal!

We are excited!

My, what a nice generator you have

Outages are a fact of life in most of the developing world; power outages, in particular.

Imagine this scene: sitting in a friend's living room with after dinner coffee or standing around with a beer at someone's house party, chat chat chat. A sudden and complete blackness descends as the power is knocked off up and down the street, but conversation doesn't even hitch. Sometimes someone will give a complimentary comment on the speed at which the generator kicks in, as the lights flicker back to life (a clear bonus of being a well-heeled expat).

Streets go dark in a power outage.
Wait, we don't really have these
things anyway...

A more frustrating outage is the internet. Despite the company's bogus claims that it operates at a speed of 5 Mbps (when in reality it struggles to reach 1.2), it's really quite annoying when it is not there at all. I mean, my GOODNESS will we ever survive if we miss an email, fail to catch someone on Skype, or don't have the opportunity to post a timely comment on someone's Facebook post? OK, the Skype thing may be true for us, but the rest we don't get too antsy on. However, it is amazing how cut-off from "the world" we feel when we don't have internet. No news (our limited viewing TV channels usually go out when the Internet does), no researching activities to do, no daydreaming via websurfing about the next place in the world we might end up. The worst outage was 4 days. Which has happened a couple times. I have finally succumbed to buying a USB modem as a backup.

The third outage is water. This happened last weekend, when our water main broke and we were advised to conserve water. There is a tank in the attic which holds an indeterminate number of liters, but the chances of the fix being quick were low, since it ironically kept pouring rain so that no one could get into the ground to fix the pipe.

Upon considering our options, we decided that if we were given a choice for a 24-hour outage, we'd rather have internet than water.

How a Housekeeper Helps a Marriage

Everyone knows it takes work to have a good marriage, although it isn't always enough. If you want to put your marriage through a potentially life-long series of high pressure life changing situations with no end in sight and see how it comes out, the foreign service is a good option. There's nothing that says "uh, do I love you?" like dragging a spouse plus or minus kids (aka EFMs, eligible family members) off to a foreign developing country where there isn't even the retail therapy afforded by Target or Williams Sonoma, and leaving him/her to figure out what to do with themselves while the person who counts (the Direct Hire) gets on with their career. I actually have started another post on the brutally honest aspects of this, but I'm going to leave it... it's a soft underbelly that all of us out here have but - at least us USG types - don't really talk about.

Let me instead expand upon one of the clear marriage advantages of settling into a developing country. And that is, The Housekeeper.

Working moms the world over have the same problem. Feminism be d----ed, you know that when it gets down to it, even when your man is useful in the kitchen or occasionally helpful with other things, he never does enough. I will not go into detail, as my dear hubby is one of my few faithful readers and I would hate to run him off, but working wife/mother people out there can probably hear what I'm saying from my soapbox without me having to put it in black and white.

BUT, friends, with the miracle Housekeeper installed, like magic, all you have to work out between you is dinner and kids (and you don't have to do those, either, if you get a cook and a nanny, it's a personal preference thing though, we like cooking and we often like our kid). Suddenly, your lot in domestic life might seem like a fair trade off for his normal level of effort.

Not only this, but your sense of unity increases. Now, in the same tradition used by great military leaders over the centuries, you have a common enemy. When items in your sparkling clean kitchen are put away in the wrong place, or you can't find your shoes, or the light is left on in the hallway... It is always the Housekeeper's fault! You mutter to each other and address issues with her to no avail, but at least you are not turning your pet-peeve venom on your spouse.

This, dear USAID and missionary types, is the distinct advantage we have over those swanky, dry-martini-drinking, coat-and-tie-wearing, "our next post is Rome"-spewing  State Department rats colleagues.

Have fun with your fine local wine, high quality cheese and delightfully edible meat. But when you are done eating, you guys have to bicker over who is doing the dishes.

Home is where the stuff doesn't matter

So, my daughter being an only child and a sweet but rather indulged one, is really into this phrase that - upon turning 6 - seemed to go from the occasional thing tossed out there to one of the most frequent phrases that pass her lips. The phrase is, "I know." But not just "I know"... it's "I know" and is usually followed by the enunciation of "Mommy" or "Daddy" with an undertone of sincere and deeply felt irritation.

Most days, I can handle one or two of these, but after that nothing is more guaranteed to turn said Mommy into a fire-breathing monster with fangs and smoke coming out her ears.

The other day, however, it actually made me smile.

We were doing the kiddo's hair before school, and the key element of the ritual on that particular day was using the new sparkly pony tail keeper that she picked out of the classroom treasure box as a reward a couple days before. She was sitting, holding the pony tail keeper, while I wrestled with getting the hairbrush through her hair, and the conversation went like this:

Her: You know, sometimes, when there is something you really want, once you get it, it's not such a big deal any more.

Me: Like things from the treasure box?

Her: Yeah, like I really wanted this hair band, and now that I have it I'm like, eh, it's OK, but it's not such a big deal.

Me (practically jumping up and down to have such a teachable moment presenting itself): Well, we all like to get "stuff", but having things is not what makes us happy--

Her (interrupting): I know, Mommy.

Me (not deterred): Sometimes we feel like if we could just have this, or have what someone else has, we would be happy, but it's not about the THINGS we have--

 Her: I know, Mommy.

 Me: --it's about being content with what God has given us, because we know He loves us--

 Her: I know, I know, I know, Mommy!!

Me: OK.

Fantasy Day

I wake up and stumble downstairs in jammies, because there's no one installed in the kitchen at an indecently early hour doing dishes and mopping.

I leave my home without having to go through a series of gates and wave to a dozen guards on the way out. Nor are there guards at the entrance to my daughter's school where I drop her off, who ask questions about her behavior or demeanor that in my own culture are none of their business.

The street is wide and smooth, with no inexplicable speed bumps or outrageously poorly maintained asphalt, and no one attempts to make 3 or 4 lanes out of what is painted as 2 lanes.

Children are walking to school in shoes, on sidewalks, and I don't have to swerve into oncoming traffic to go around men struggling to push an overloaded cart up the hill.

There's a the drive-through at Starbuck's, and the cashier is curt but polite, and doesn't ask what else is in my wallet when I hand her some bills that require change.

There are traffic lights, stop signs, and signs indicating street names. I do not see anyone driving the wrong way in my lane even once, and buses and trucks are able to maintain a speed greater than 15km an hour.

At the grocery store, I find a parking space that is not on the sidewalk. I do not have to be searched to enter the store; nor is there a soldier sitting outside the store with a rifle. At the butcher, when there is a busted sewer drainage pipe and they have to dig under the floor to repair it, they actually close the shop, rather than continuing to do business with an open sewer pipe in the store.

After school/work conversation with the neighbors does not revolve around the recommended frequency of deworming or best places to use for importing heavy duty shocks and struts.

For dinner I pull out some frozen risotto, salad-in-a-bag, baby carrots, and hummus, and steak that is so fresh I can't even smell the "eau de butcher".

We enjoy a peaceful dinner uninterrupted by people asking us to test our house alarm or distrubingly loud crashing or popping noises from the road across the way.

Later, we sit down and flip through way-more-than-8-including-sports-and-news channels. Nothing is on, so we settle on my default: House Hunters International. Thing is, that show always makes me wish I could live someplace that's more interesting.

Overheard at the UN

While my husband and I were having lunch at a lovely table outdoors at the UNON food court today a gentleman and lady walked by at a business-like clip carrying their food trays. We heard a snatch of their conversation as the click of their heels on the sidewalk approached and then faded.

Him: Are you settling in OK?

Her: Yes thanks.

Him: Do you miss Lebanon?

Her: God, no.

Dastardly recipes

You cunning little list

of ingredients and measures

Making it sound so simple

with pictures of untold pleasures

Foodnetwork magazine

and many websites that I've seen

Exclaim the ease and taste

and the way to make in haste

World's Best Burger

Homemade Apple Whoopie Pie

Easy veggie dishes

30 minute lie

I cannot find phyllo dough

or rump roast to cook slow

I have no Polish kielbasa

or seasoning to make masa

Frozen veggies as a backup

are something that I lack of

And now I hunger even more

for food not in my local store 

Tales from the Person who Counts: Lukenya

Editor's note: Below is a contribution from my other half, the "direct hire," the one with a name and not just a designation of "eligible family member" on important documents. (Note within the note, This does not mean they actually care about him. Ref the movie Julia and Julia...if you are FSO and you've seen it, you understand.)

One of the outlets for my increased leisure time has been rock climbing while wife and daughter play at home.  Yes, rock climbing in Kenya, who knew!  I've been a couple of places with co-workers, namely Hells Gate and Lukenya.  I'm not an expert by any means and I'm still amused by some of the unique scenery and hazards in Kenya. Driving up to the rocks, we have seen a small herd of giraffes. Baboons are fond of fouling the same rocky places that are great for climbing.  Eeew.  While on approach looking for the route, it's best to keep an eye of these and other critters.  I swear after a climb on the walk back down I saw the rock cave where Simba was born.

Just sayin'

My daughter pointed it out. I have never said a thing out loud, though I have thought it every time we read this book...

Plimoth Plantation, a 1627 reproduction village, known to us from our love of the book Sarah Morton's Day 

Modern-day homestead in Western Kenya

Madam Secretary

If a winning smile, long sleek hair, fashionable use of the color black, and a love of travel is what it takes to be Secretary of State, we may have a future cabinet member in the family.

Secretary Clinton and some great kids, August 5, 2012.

Jambo

For the first time in her memory (and indeed, ever), our girl has gone back to school. She has never known the comfort of going back to a place that she knows and is comfortable, and where there are friends and teachers she missed over the break. The playground this morning was a chorus of little-kid hello's and hugs, with random teachers being nearly knocked over with kid-enthusiasm.

My girl is over the moon with her new classroom (freshly built!) with its lovely view and smiling young teacher, as well as more than a half-dozen faces that were already dear to her. The picture here is of the all-school first day assembly - the high school band there on the tennis court as the "all-school" size has outgrown the auditorium.

And, how did I get this picture, you ask? It is true, I myself am there picking up my kid. After many difficult arrangements at the end of last term and a stint of 8-to-5 workdays including a few weekends, I did a great big head slap and decided to cut down my work hours. How hard was that?

Kwaheri

After a month of soccer, swimming, playing, swinging, animal-viewing, cooking, journaling, reading, pretending, camping, dancing, and partying, we have said goodbye to my dear friend and her two kids. Our kids have always gotten along very well, but I figured a month of together time would truly test the limits. Not true! Or rather, there didn't seem to be any limits. So our stand-in family has gone back to deal with reality, and we stay here suspended in this somewhere between the clouds and the African plains. We are sad they left, but sooo happy they came.

The 3 Musketeers watching Kenyan dances.

Turning Six!

Avocados: almost free. Blueberries: gasp! expensive. Birthday tradition lemon cake with avocado frosting: priceless.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - our wee girl turns six today! Sunday we decorated the front yard and steps with glittery hanging stars, put stick-on flowers down the hallway and into the living room, hung balloons and ribbons, and had the neighborhood girls over for fairy house painting, fairy hunting, and other sparkly things (dubbed by my daughter as her fake birthday party).

The best part was having my friend and her kids here. Not only did my friend skip lunch with me in the mad rush to get everything ready, but I love how her kids love! They made the party day really special, and continue to help the kiddo celebrate the "real" birthday today with grace and giggles.

Happy Anniversary to Us

Yesterday was our 9th wedding anniversary. At times I can scarcely believe how long it's been, but at other times I think back (5 years in VA, 3 other states, Virginia again, now Kenya)... eh, yeah, we've had some time to go through some stuff. Andrew brought me home 18 wonderful roses.

I also can't believe it's the end of the third week of my dear friend and her two kids visiting us. Only one more week (sniff!). This week, after a return from weekend camping and safari'ing, has been a whirl. Much like last week, we are taking kids to sports camp, applying sunscreen, and going to the store for endless amounts of apples, carrots and yogurt, and somehow getting in a nearly-full day's work as well.

The wrench in this week's plan was that said dear friend got laid low, very low, by what I decided was Campylobacter (darn food on the camping trip!).  I succumbed to a lesser degree, but it's enough to make me wonder whether I'll be able to eat our lovely anniversary dinner. Yes, we are going OUT tonight for dinner, leaving the child in the blissful care of a mostly-functional friend with her two awesome buddies.

Snorts under the Stars

Doing a little catching up, here, but last month we finally went camping! It was big on my list to be out under the big sky far away from city civilization. When school got out we drove up to Lake Baringo, one of  several lakes that dot the length of the Rift Valley in Kenya. We took a boat ride, which revealed birds and crocs while we floated over submerged lake islands - there had been a lot of rain. We didn't have to venture further than the shore edge, a few dozen feet from our campsite, to see the hippos.

Yes, this is where we camped. The closest hippo was just to the right of the sign... but too much in the bushes to get a good picture.

After dinner at the covered-patio restaurant (gotta love roughing it in Kenya!), we gazed at the stars, demurred on the campfire, and crawled into our sleeping bags as the deep and rumbling hippo snuffles and snorts carried us of to a 9PM sleep (yeah, we've been tired!).

The next day we drove to Lake Bogoria. We were very impressed with the state of the tarmac. (Yes, tarmac, and it was in great shape!) We went in the northern gate of the park and were almost immediately treated to lots of flamingos, beautiful scenery, and hot springs.

Flamingos, mountains and lakes, oh my.

Despite what the ranger had said, the road to the south gate wasn't actually passable (at least, we weren't willing to try without having a winch, and someone to winch us). Instead of backtracking we decided to go out the western gate. It was on the park's map. It was on the GPS.

Note to self: If you find yourself saying "This road should work" when you already know another road is perfectly good, DON'T TRY IT. Just suck it up and backtrack.

After a journey that resembled a cartoon car going up and down hills, on a very rocky, bumpy, dirt track, we finally made it to the gate. Which was at a wee village. The gate was closed and locked. And the wee village was very, very quiet. Andrew got out of the car, and walked around looking interested in the gate. This process sends up the muzungu alert. Soon enough, a little boy came running up to Andrew, and stood there looking at him. Andrew pointed at the gate and asked a question. After a bit the boy smiled and went running, and soon enough an older man came to the gate, reached down and unwrapped the chain and still-locked steel padlock from the posts, and opened the gate. Er, thanks.

Note to self: If you find yourself saying "How do we get through this locked gate in the middle of nowhere" always try to simply open the gate. It just might work. 

After what seemed like hours and hours, very few cow/sheep/goat sightings (which just shows how middle-of-nothing we were for a while) and several exclamations that went something like "This is really on the map?", "This isn't a road, it's a river bed!", "You've gotta be kidding me!" and repeated renditions from the back seat of "are we there yet?", we finally reached the highway. Another four short hours through death-defying traffic and we would be home. Andrew would have kissed the tarmac if he wasn't so anxious to push the car above 15 km per hour.

And then, I got to deliver the news to the wee one that 1) yes, she could watch a dvd now, and 2) when we got home, we were going to babysit two kittens. After 5 weeks with us the kittens went home last night amid many tears (from the child) and sighs of relief (from the curtains and my office chair).

Cutie faces, loud purrs, funny pounces, sharp claws.

Running

It's been one of those months...hence, things have been quiet on the blog. A few things have kept us running with feet spinning around like cartoon characters.

1. End of school year / beginning of "let's keep the kid busy and make ourselves crazy in the process" (sign up for camp, get a schedule, pay the money, and expect it to happen...? Not in Africa!).
2. A long-awaited camping trip! Which totally rocked except for the fact that the roads on the map really shouldn't be on the map if that's what they are calling a road (a future post). This resulted in a very long drive home.
3. The Great Sandbox Debacle (I'm not ready to talk about it).
4. Piloting of the training I've developed on temporary contract with a locally-located WHO office (develop materials, enlist participants, and carry out the training...? Not in Africa!).
5. Andrew's scheduled travel to a conference, it's on - off - on - off - on! (and so is his work on the paper he is to present).
6. The CATS, which we are kitten-sitting, adorable as they are, with their kitty boxes and their kitty claws and their penchant for climbing, disrupting the normally (un)productive evening working hours. 
7. Three people, sick for two weeks.
8. The child, who loves the cats so much, that she barely lets the poor things' feet touch the ground.

This weekend I am looking forward to actually running, paying some attention to my kid, and, best of all, picking up some of "our people" from the airport! 

It's that time of year again...

We are now nearing the 10-month mark for our time in Nairobi. The 2-yr or 4-yr cycle of moving in the foreign service will be a level of geographical stability our kid has never known.

Our lifestyle since 2007 has been something like this:

• Summer: Celebrate the kiddo's birthday and then move to a completely new location
• Fall: Get settled, find friends
• Winter: Get restless with making the place "homey" and move furniture (OK, this is me)
• Spring: Start planning for the next move, including what to get rid of before we leave, what to get more of before we leave, and stressing about what to do for school/childcare during the move and once we get there
• Summer:  Celebrate the kiddo's birthday and then move to a completely new location
• Etc.

We are VERY excited to not be moving this year. Our child actually knows the school she'll go to and she loves it. I do not have to think about what to do with the stuff we really want to keep but never actually use, Andrew does not have to figure out an entirely new payroll, leave, and retirement system. Truly thrilling!

On the other hand.... It is a daily occurrence, now, to see the moving trucks in our neighborhood. Folks are moving out, houses serviced by an army of cleaners, carpenters, and logisticians, and the next family moves in. I AM happy that we are staying put, but I'm a little jealous of those who are leaving too. 

When we move, during our last week we do a "goodbye tour," (yes, we move so much we have procedures!). We visit all the fun places or restaurants where we would hang out. Our wonderful mini-person, goaded by her father, always puts an enthusiastic spin on things. When we do this I find myself actually feeling nostalgic about leaving places we didn't even like that much, and it puts such a nice but bittersweet spin on leaving.

I miss the excitement of packing up our most essential possessions, heading for the airport, stopping through a new city, maybe staying overnight and exploring there, on our way to our final destination. And of course there is the new HOME. What will HOME be like? What hiding spots will the wee one find? How big of a garden can I plant? 

Every time we uproot the child I wish we could just "be home" and not deal with the constant relocation, and yet... it's so exciting to go and be in a completely new situation, with the 3 of us setting off to explore. If we lived in just one place, for an indefinite term...wouldn't it be boring?

All in all, that feeling of not being rooted is a reminder that our ultimate home is not here on earth. One day in the great blue beyond, we will finally be truly home. Cue Audio Adrenaline!

Making it home

It's not that you can't get stuff in Nairobi, because you really can. But it's usually expensive and not as good as you were hoping. We enjoy cooking and have always done a number of items from scratch out of the pure principal of the thing. Now we have expanded our repertoire. I am looking at it as practice for when we have our own little bed & breakfast / adventure outfitter (one of many "we'll settle somewhere, someday" dreams).

Naturally, there is weekend pizza. This one I took a picture of because of the bubble-monster that formed. But it was yummy.

There is also homemade lasagna. I made the noodles (don't have to, but we do) and the sauce, and seasoned minced beef to taste like sausage. I did not make the cheese, I bought that (thank you Brown's).

Mexican night is at least one night a week at our house. I make our tortillas, and Andrew makes the refried beans and salsa (except for right now, when we are flying high on a Sadie's salsa care package from mom!). I also make muffins and homemade granola or granola bars for school snacks and munchies. I make hummus and all other manner of dried-legume preparations.

We make bagels - including Andrew's sourdough bagels which are in addition to his previously perfected sourdough bread and Saturday morning sourdough pancake ritual.

The thing is, in 2 years we won't be in this kitchen or house or country, but we can still have Mexican night and Saturday pancakes.

Home is where you make it.

Alert Messages

These days we all have our emergency procedures for school, work and home. Both Andrew's office and mine have alert systems in place, I get the family-member appropriate messages from the Embassy as well as continuing to get the ones from North Carolina (I keep trying to get off the NC list, apparently it's non-negotiable).

Last week's alert in Nairobi:
"There is a grenade attack at a church. At least one confirmed dead, several rushed to the hospital."

Last week's alert in Chapel Hill:
"The police department is investigating multiple peeping incidents that reportedly occurred early Friday morning."

600 Kenyan Shillings

....which is just over $7 most of the time, will get you:

• 6 liters of milk (~1.6 gallons)
• A pound of lean ground beef
• Half a wheelbarrow full of compost manure
• 1/4 cup dried blueberries 
• Less than a pint of grocery store ice cream
• An imperfect but pretty 16-inch flower pot
• A mediocre sandwich on decent bread
• A pair of beaded flip flops
• Half, yes HALF, of a 99-cent made-in-China bouncy ball (I paid for a whole one...)
• 5 Roma tomatoes, 10 carrots, one red onion, a pound of fresh snap peas, 2 heads of garlic, a bunch of basil, 5 apples, 2 yellow bell peppers and a pineapple

Dairy

We struggle a bit with dairy products here. The quality just isn't fantastic. In most cases, it's better than nothing (in some cases, nothing is better).

But yesterday I went to the store to buy milk (which we are now recommended not to buy... another story), and not only is the sell-by date in just 3 days, but the the refrigeration in the dairy section has not been functioning for an indeterminate number of hours.

Cheers!

Footprints on the wall

What a delightfully slow Easter weekend we celebrated. The wee one was gratifyingly excited for Easter and celebrating Jesus' love for us. We died eggs (brown, though they are, we tried) and hung kindergartner-made decorations.

We also had some bug issues. A swarm of dull witted winged things seemed to have congregated on one wall in our house.

Warty, being our Easter egg tree.

It was a bit deflating to have no one to celebrate Easter with (the bugs were summarily squashed and evicted). We've been swamped with figuring out house help and vacation and me temporarily switching jobs and cast-related medical visits, we did not get around to inviting anyone, and nobody invited us. Not to be daunted, however, we had a lovely day, and celebrated the wee-one's first complete week without casts on Easter Monday with a quick safari. (Hubby wanted to get the car muddy. Check.)

When we arrived home in the afternoon, the kiddo seemed a bit warm, but she was acting fine and I didn't take her temperature (the next day was my 5th day on the new job....She'll be fine in the morning! Totally!).

Ahem. Morning temp: 102.7, with a headache.

Afternoon temp: uuuh, that can't be right...? Her temp was so high that I think my digital thermometer wasn't correctly calibrated. Off to the doc we went. Despite the embassy clinic saying it is closed, we got in. No wait!

We came home with a diagnosis of strep throat, two bottles of penicillin, one bottle of "motrin" to alternate with Tylenol and one bottle of generic Benadryl (in case she's allergic to penicillin.... you should just have it around anyway, you bad parent).

The kiddo crashed for the afternoon, and roused asking for dinner. Good sign?

An hour later, the husband was cleaning toast vomit off the kid and I was cleaning toast vomit off the chair, the carpet, the stool, the wood floor, and the bookshelf. Oh, and my jeans. As I'm walking between the vomitorium and the laundry sink for the third time, I notice the shoe print on the wall.

No bugs though. Just keep slapping them down, one at a time!

Things I don't miss

• Home Despot Depot
• Election year campaign ads
• Forecasts of "wintry mix"
• Cleaning toilets
• Hiring contractors
• Stink bugs and mosquito swarms
• DC-area customer service charm
• Utility bills
• Seeing zebras, rhinos, and giraffes at the zoo instead of in the wild

Things I miss

• Safety seals that both seal and are safe
• Shopping, pick a store (except Home Depot) 
• Actual television programming
• Snow
• Driving around without dealing with the panic first
• Pre-packaged food options (our fave salsa, canned soup)
• Trolling the garden center for annuals and herbs 
• The relative ease of seeing family

A & A on R & R

Life is not so hard for an expat in Nairobi. Still, we looked forward to our R & R vacation over the school spring break. Here are some of the highlights.

Amsterdam: 1 Historic Haus
Early morning arrival, cold weather (!), strolling the now-familiar canals, and... wonder of wonders...the grocery store. Stocked up on cherry tomatoes, yogurt, deli meat and cheese, baguettes, and drooled over just about everything else. Had a lovely visit to the Anne Frank House.

Bonn: 23 Castles
Stayed in long-time friend Laura's lovely flat in her lovely neighborhood while she chauffeured us and met every whim. Saw castles and monasteries, visited Rhineland, ate great food, drank great beer, and purchased all manner of crazy things like soccer shoes for Andrew and a sling for kiddo's arms. One of us cried when we had to leave Laura's cat behind (poor Andrew just loves those kitties!). We counted 23 castles on hilltops along the Rhine as we rode the train to the Frankfurt airport.

Florence: 500 Steps

Our "attic" room at a B&B afforded views of the famous Duomo created by Brunellsechi right outside our window... you just had to look down the street a bit. 500 steps from our B&B to the Duomo and a center of tourist-action. Also 500 steps up to the cupola...which was more like 1000 for Andrew since he had to carry the kid up most of the way. I did not anticipate how much I would freak out to have my naturally-reckless 5-yr-old jumping about the exterior cupola walkway----way high up there --- nor did I anticipate that she would freak out trying to get down those steep, steep, narrow, dark echo-y stairs (hmmm, maybe I should have). It didn't help that she couldn't hold on to the railing due to the casts. At the Uffizi I was really glad Andrew had taken art history in college - the child had a lot questions.

Rome: About 20 dead popes
We did not count them - the popes interred at St Peter's Basilica - because there was a serious concern that they would outnumber the German castles; simply not acceptable. The adults estimated and worked hard to convince the child the castles won. The Forum / Palatine Hill and Coliseum were predictably and amazingly impressive. We did not take a peek at St Paul's jail cell - apparently the catholic church has turned the formerly free jail-cell viewing into a multi-media event, considered to be irrelevant at best and offensive at worst (according to the all-knowing TripAdvisor).

Home: 1 ginormous traffic jam
It took us longer to take the taxi back to our house than any of the train rides or within-Europe flight. The traffic "flow" engendered by the inexplicably placed downtown Nairobi traffic circles and the brand-new roads that seem to have little concession to how cars get on and off them is mind-boggling. However, reaching our own little garden oasis and all 3 of us collapsing on our extremely comfortable and much-missed bed made me think... maybe home is where the mattress is!

Rough day

I don't know why I never considered the possibility of a broken bone in my kid. Because she's a girl, I guess. She climbs like a monkey but holds my hand going down stairs and doesn't attempt anything too daring unassisted.

But alas, I was sitting, having a little chat with another mom (rare!), our girls were playing, and a little slip off a little swing sent us into 7 hours of hospital time over 2 days, with a sleepless night in-between. The hospital visit - for fractures and not breaks, at least - entailed 5 exam rooms or specialists on 3 different floors and standing in the cashier line on at least 4 separate occasions (not including the pharmacy visit). We are tired.

While the process was daunting the docs were good. The kiddo has two casts, one of which allows her thumb and one finger to barely touch, the other doesn't allow her fingers to close at all. Somehow we've got to muddle through a thousand daily tasks that are now quite tricky. And the plane ride for our upcoming vacation. The poor kid says "I do not like these times!"

Our first boat safari

It was about 10 days ago now, but we took the car out to enjoy the new heavy-duty off-road struts and springs (standard options for regular old in-town driving). We ended up on a boat safari, mainly to see the hippos, like these guys:

We also got to see a kingfisher, swooping in for the (well-staged) kill. And I enjoyed these guys all in a row:

After, we had a picnic in a spot where giraffe had been munching earlier (note the artiste, struck by sudden inspiration, is about to abandon food in favor of crayons):

As we were leaving, we couldn't help but notice a little bit of a ruckus amongst the zebra and buffalo, in fact, the ruckus was such that we didn't think we should continue to drive:

After the stampede passed by, a few zebras left behind were quite literally belly-up, feet twitching in the air. Once we noticed the Kenya Wildlife Service rangers walking around, we ruled out the possibility of lions in the area and, naturally, got out to investigate. On rare occasions, I really love how the safety/lawsuit craziness that so permeates US culture has very little foothold here. We got the up close and personal view of KWS tranquilizing and moving these zebras to another locale:

When I made conversation with the other tourist couple in the photo above, I was especially glad there hadn't been a lion. That adventuresome couple are 85 years old if they are a day. They wouldn't have stood a chance with a lion. (Flash forward: I hope that's me and Andrew 50 years from now! On safari, that is, not facing down a lion.) A guy who had been horseback riding, from a nearby lodge, jumped in to help. Much like my dad at our local mechanic when he was here visiting, this is not an every-day developed world experience:

Let me tell you, that zebra was HEAVY. Makes me wonder how they manage the elephants.

Why my housekeeper thinks I'm crazy...

Our housekeeper: a kind and cheerful emissary from the real Kenya into our own little Pleasantville. She cleans like a fiend, as noted in a previous post, and we are really her first expat family. With this comes a world of intercultural exchange and misunderstanding. So the top 10 reasons my housekeeper thinks I'm crazy, mind you from her perspective:

10. My child colors, cuts, hole-punches, glues, folds, and proudly displays every scrap of paper she can get her hands on... and I'm OK with it.

9. We do not shove all furniture against the walls.

8. We keep a tennis ball in the guest room.

7. We keep our shoes inside.

6. We have all these things sitting near the bathroom sink that she is forced to push into the far corner every day to make it habitable.

5. I had her make pasta and hand-cut it instead of using the perfectly good cutter on the pasta machine.

4. We keep used coffee grounds and eggshells in a can on the kitchen counter, and she is not allowed to throw them away and wash out the can.

3. We are obsessed about making sure the trashcan, dishwasher, and washing machine are full before anything is done about them.

2. We eat cheese but not goat.

1. I had her cook fish in the toaster.

A force to be reckoned with...

It's been a tough and interesting few weeks, and I am continually grateful for the wee one and her funny / frustrating / fabulous antics to take over our focus.

If you really know my sweet-faced little kiddo, you know that beneath the silly jokes and kitten alter-ego there is a streak of ferocious. For example, this week she has both been complimented on how well spoken she is ("delightful") and she has struck fear into our panga (machete)-wielding gardener.

She's either melting you with sweetness or making you want to run the other way, that's our girl.

Household help haiku

Laundry, floors, bathrooms

Does it need to be this clean?

I can't find my socks

Saving the world, one PowerPoint presentation at a time...

Exhibit A: I have always, always, been grateful for my job. I can't think of another job where I could have survived 9 months of morning sickness, several state-to-state moves, and one (so far) country-to-country move, and kept the same job, provided health insurance to our family through my husband's job-search slog, and worked with the same talented and wonderful people. Despite many things in life not going the way we would have planned, I see this job, being able to work from home and take my job wherever we go, as a true God-given blessing.

Exhibit B: I have always, always felt my job is worth doing. What I produce goes to train front-line public health workers and epidemiologists. I have received, on rare occasions, face-to-face praise the work of our Center and for projects that I gave my heart and soul to - expressions of how much our content has helped or how far our content has reached across the globe. Awesome.

The surprise: I'm the effective room mom for my kid's class. I didn't even know this until yesterday, when someone from the parent-teacher fellowship (our school's PTA) contacted me about teacher appreciation week. Now that I think about it, I'm the one who shows up, on occasion at least. I only have the one kid. I can build flexibility into my schedule and it's a 5 minute walk from my front door to the classroom. I don't do it often - after all I do work full time.

The other moms? Keeping in mind there are only 11 kids in the class...of the ones I've met, one is stay-at-home for now, has multiple kids, and is extensively involved in everything school already. Several others have save-the-world jobs. And here, I mean, really, seriously, they are out there saving the world. As in Save the Children, World Vision, and UN Somalia program.

Me? I work on PowerPoint about 80% of my day. I fuss about the best verb to use for learning objectives and capitalization for bullet points. I explain how to use epidemiology. I could almost do it in my sleep by now.

I think I'm going to step up the room mom effort.

Summertime...

I can't deny that the living is easy. We may be at risk from robberies, carjacking, and terrorists, but we sure do have a nice pool and playground. The kiddo and her buddy played full out Saturday, and my kid at least had to give it up by 6:30 that night.
It was a warm day, as they have been, reminding me of late spring in New Mexico. Also like NM, it hasn't rained in a long while. Last week, upon coming out of the auditorium used for church services, it was cloudy. Not just clouds in the sky, but actual overcast-ness. You would have thought there was a giant shooting star up there, given the murmurs that rustled through the crowd, hands gesticulating upward. It's been a long time since there was potential for a rain drop! It cleared up shortly, though, and the weather has remained stubbornly pleasant since.

Nairobi haiku

Bump, swerve, hold on tight

That one was ten inches deep

Nairobi pot holes

Home is where the....

Home is where the Super Bowl party starts at 2:30AM.

The romance of Cheerios

Yesterday was one of those days when the power just did not want to stay on. I'm reminded of this, because the same is true today. I was merrily typing along and all of a sudden the screen went blank. Not so bad, since I'm working off my laptop. But the infernal beeping from the circuit panel can really drive one off of one's rocker.

At any rate, yesterday things seem to have settled out by late afternoon. Something also went haywire with the Internet. It was probably driven crazy by the beeping and ran back down the LAN line as soon as it entered our house. I did, however, smartly write down the phone number for my evening conference call back to the States. (How embarrassing when you miss a call cuz your Internet went out and you didn't write down the number previously delivered via email so you could use your cell!)

We had spent the early evening making noodles - that's for another post. Silly us, we didn't realize we were frivolously wasting our power. My talented husband agreed to cook so I could spend some face time with the wee one. And alas, the power went back out. Only now it was getting dark. And we were using the stove. And there isn't a single thing we can eat in this house that doesn't require power to be edible, with the exception of PB&J (not that good...how I dream of soft, American store-bought bread!) or cereal.

So we set the dining room table with candles, silverware, place mats, and cereal boxes. The kiddo was thrilled. The grownups were hungry. We did get the juice back later in the evening, and had a late dinner sans child. She had homemade noodles for breakfast today.

Life in the Bubble

My lovely husband came home midday and took me to lunch the UN. They have some seriously good food by local standards - even if dealing with other pedestrians on the way to the cafeteria is a confusing dance of which side of the sidewalk to tread (international driving rules...right or left?).

After lunch, I dropped him at the Embassy and took the car home. Not 2 minutes after coming in the door, the house phone rang. It's one of the guards from the Embassy.

Guard: Hello, do you know if Andrew is having any food delivered?
Me: (thinking, although we sometimes have home delivery of veggies, it's never on a Monday) Not that I know of...
Guard: I understand he has just driven home; but there is someone here at the Embassy with food.
Me: That we me driving home, we just went to lunch. I don't think the food is for him.
Guard: Ok, it must be another Andrew then, thank you.

Big Brother, anyone?

Interchangeable parts

We had the next-door neighbors over for dinner. Their young child says to me, "Our house is just like this one, except that it has a Mickey Mouse puzzle instead of a Star Wars puzzle."

Trying not to be too existential about that...

Sports Day

Something about kids cheering for other kids just puts a smile on my face. Today was Rosslyn Academy's annual sports day - a first of its kind for our kindergartner, and us parents got to watch "teams" across the grades band together. Those Montessori schools we've been going to, prior to now, have a "big day out" at a historic organic farm, or plan major events where children line up in front of parents, sing lovely songs wearing photogenic outfits, and everyone sedately munches Whole Foods veggie platters and homemade ethnic snacks until the parents are kindly shuffled out the door.

Not so at Rosslyn! OK, our biggest school previously went only up to 4th grade and had less than 50 students. We have just experienced the entire middle and elementary schools out on the track - shouting their cheers (my vocal chords are shot -- Go Red Team!), lining up heats - Kindergarten through third grade - older kids on another field, girls then boys, siblings running all over, I would be shocked if my own kid heard a word of instruction that was directed at her (Kiddo! That person up there is talking to YOU! Pay attention!). Every few minutes a responsible adult turned around to ask, where is so-and-so?... and in short order an energetic youth was sent off on a scouting mission - always returning successful, I might add.
The littlest ones ran the 50m and 100m, and had the option to run the 400m. Well, one goes, they all go, so they all ran it, and I think shocked their PE coach out of her shoes. The school did not happen to mention in all the papers that went home that the parents should be sure to have their running shoes on: Between the starting line, the jumping and shouting, the finish line, and the zig-zag across the infield, it was quite a workout. When my kiddo saw me cheering for her toward the end of her very long lap, she swerved right off the track so she could collapse my feet. Oh ho! I swooped and grabbed her arm, dragged her back out there, and we finished together. In fact, a significant number of parents joined in the race with their flagging kiddos. How great is that?

The last "event" for our kids was play time in the pool. Perhaps a woman has not well and truly experienced motherhood until she goes into a 12 x 16 ft changing room with at least 60 girls, half of whom are dripping wet, all changing clothes, horsing around, being goofy, loud, or upset, all at the same time. I was speechless. The kiddo left her backpack in there, and I tried to send her in to bring it back out (how would we ever find it otherwise?), and she blurted "I can't go back in there!!!!" I see her point.

At any rate, hats off to the amazing staff at Rosslyn. The level of dedication, organization, patience, and pure good-heartedness that it took to carry that off was deeply impressive. Thank you.

Night night

As he's climbing into bed after locking the safe-haven gate, Andrew says, "If I'm ever thrown in prison the sound of lock-up will feel like home."

My dad, looking at zebras, with Lake Naivasha just beyond. Just another weekend in Nairobi.

My parents came out for 3 weeks at Christmas, and we had a great time while they saved my tukus once again on the child care front. Swimming, endless games of pretend, computer games, books, the park, they really wore her out.

A couple months ago the kiddo came home from school with her weekly journal, where she had noted that mommy went to the track over the weekend (lovely picture too). I exclaimed to dearest hubby: "We took that child on safari [any self-drive in these parts is stress inducing] and she writes about me going for a jog???"
He answers, "Really, which is more unusual?"
Ouch.

Blonde moment

Here's a way to get someone in Nairobi to look at you like you have two heads...

Me: I left my shopping bag on the table outside. Has anyone turned it in to you?

Shopkeeper: (speechless)

Whoever you are, I hope you like my purchases.

This is new

Andrew went rock climbing with a neighbor for his New Year's day off. You've gotta watch out for that baboon pee, it makes the rocks slippery.