Best Buys

We've found that living abroad entails a few deprivations--mostly minor reminders of America. There remain a few items that make our lives so much easier and more comfortable that we're frequently reminded of how grateful we are to have made these best buys.

1. VPN (virtual private network). How did we live abroad for over 2 years before we finally purchased one! It allows us to mask our location and change it virtually to the U.S. (or a bunch of other places). It allows us to view webpages (barnesandnoble.com) and services (Netflix) that are not available to people with a non-US ISP. Thus, we've been able to watch non-Bollywood movies and the Olympics (thanks CBC and BBC, but not NBC).

2. Couch covers. In a world where EVERYONE has the identical furniture including couches, ours can at least appear to the different than others.

3. Espresso Machine. Have a favorite corner coffee shop that serves espresso, lattes, and mochas?  We don't. Even if we did, we'd still be grateful to have an espresso machine to save us from a treacherous drive for some coffee.

4. UPS (uninterruptible power supply). A battery back-up to keep power on the TV, DVD player, and computer during the frequent power fluctuations/outages saves us the agony of losing work on the computer or having to re-start the movie multiple times.

5. Pam. Yes, it's that useful. You try going without cooking spray and see how your baked goods turn out.

The Social Network

It's not a gripping box-office-busting movie about people using technology to waste time make innovative connections (much like blogging...).

It's a Mode of Survival. I can't believe I haven't mentioned it before now.

It is the second most important reason that you are always nice and smiley with your neighbors, colleagues, and acquaintances. (The first most important being that, despite being scattered literally from wherever you are to Timbuktu, the foreign service community is eensy weensy and it's just nicer if everyone is nice).

Here is an excerpt from the classified section of this week's school newsletter:

Anisa Flowers, under the green umbrella, (next to the clay pots and garden chimneys), on the side of the Limuru Road, between Redhill Rd and the Shell petrol station before Village Market, is one of the most reliable, and reasonable suppliers of excellent quality flowers in Kenya!

Yes, that is how you find a run-of the-mill business. Without The Social Network, how would you know the lady under the green umbrella is so much better than the guy with the wooden awning on the corner of Redhill and Thigiri at the sign for the turn to New Muthaiga? Just try looking it up on the yellow pages.

Yet another benefit of sending your kid to the missionary school: Missionaries actually spend time living here, and in addition to providing hilarious or horrifying tales of the crazy things they have endured because "the government" does not see to their comfort, the Missionary School Social Network has a memory that is easily 10 or even 20 years old.

From barber to ballet instructors, if you ask around you will find someone who knows someone who can give you a phone number, and soon enough you and your family are set. Just be prepared for the phone calls, because word gets around. Soon enough someone will give your number to someone else so they can find that ballet instructor too.

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.

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.

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!

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.

Websites that don't cooperate

Issue: All our kid-photos since day of baby's birth through age 4, as well as various vacations and remodeling projects, are stored and shared online from Kodak Gallery.

Obstacle: Kodak Gallery does not like my IP address, and won't let me access my own photos to make our annual kid-picture-filled cheesy calendar for the grandparents. Grrr...

Solution: Shutterfly! I realized after a friend posted her photos and oohing about how cute and big etc her kids were getting... I can actually SEE these photos! It's going to take me a while to catch up, though.

I know a lot of expats use a VPN, but I have a work-related VPN that only covers access to work related sites and servers, and it cannot work with other VPNs. Double grrr.

Other websites that are on the naughty list (I won't put links since I can't see them anyway):
Pottery Barn
Williams Sonoma
ABC (streaming video)
NBC (streaming video)

That video becomes really important when you don't have a TV, CD player, or even a clock radio!!

Sites that are internationally-friendly:
Crate and Barrel (they even ship all over Kingdom come!)
Amazon (a dear friend)
Kohl's

There are other online shopping sites that let us visit, but won't ship to a DPO address. Enter 3rd party shippers. That's a whole other hassle.