Massive Change of Pace

Don’t get me wrong. I love being in the States – life is so convenient there.

But it’s nice to be back in Nepal, despite the pretty low post-earthquake morale here. After an extremely hectic home-leave, which was difficult in ways we are not ready to talk about in the packing and preparation of our house for the next tenants, we are back with our stuff, in the alternative life we live where I don’t have to do laundry or clean toilets, have minimal gainful occupation, and can stay home playing with the girls and the dog and watch the monsoon rain pool outside (and inside, but that’s another story).  

Now, if only I had some Trader Joe's in the freezer I could get started on making dinner...

Never say "Never"

Two significant and vaguely inter-related events have taken life by the ankle shaken it all about. Both were pre-ordained by “I’ll never” statements I foolishly have made.

One: I’ll never homeschool my daughter. 
I actually really, really, like the idea of homeschooling. Molding the young mind, enticing her with topics and activities that she would love and wouldn’t be possible in a traditional school setting. But she and I working closely together on a daily basis? Ha! From our first homework assignment in Kindergarten (one of only two that year), where it took 30 minutes and many tears to count the number of Thursdays in February, I have had the strongest conviction that me teaching her is a Very Bad Idea. However, we have had a number of extremely frustrating educational experiences at the American school here, with the lack of actual education being so terrible and the parental scuttlebutt of next year’s teacher being so dour that we have actually discussed home schooling, for 3rd grade at least.

Two: I never want to be one of those moms with a tweenager and a baby.
Yep, I’m pregnant. After 6 years of trying to conceive and all the attendant misery, I get pregnant when I have a soon-to-be 8-year old and am staring my 40th birthday in the face. Despite the “never” statement, of course, we are absolutely thrilled. The future big sister was tearfully happy as well, and now that she has endured a number of pregnancy-related (mis)adventures (mostly, er, food-related) and had to put up with an exhausted mama, she is a little more wary. Still a good sport, however.

Currently we are on leave in the US. All the critical family members have now been told of the big news, and we are also getting a lot of practice explaining the coming school year thusly (God willing):

• Since we are, ahem, not too thrilled with the school anyway, we will start out the 3rd grade year homeschooling (aaah!). 
• Mid-November, daughter and I travel to the US, kicking our tenant out of OUR VERY OWN house. I will transfer to a midwife Ob-Gyn practice in Fairfax, have the baby there, and we will stay in the US until summer time. 
• Hopefully, the 3rd grader will attend our neighborhood school (if I can talk her into it, in a time of such major transition). We’ll stay till the end of the school year for her, and so that we can avoid a couple of trips back-and-forth to the US with the newborn (and the attendant springtime pollution that settles over Kathmandu). 
• Hubby will come to get us settled in November, come again for Christmas and baby’s birth (due first week of January), and come out a third time for US-based home leave in late May. 
• We all return to Nepal, baby in tow, in late June. 

Nelsons Roll

I have to admit that I am doing a little back-dating blogging. I started several posts and didn't get them finished - time to catch up!

Starting with our home-leave: "Home-leave" is an official term meaning "minimum four weeks of extra paid vacation for the foreign service member so that you remember what it's like in America and also so you still think this job is cool after a few years' hard labor."

We Nelsons have been trained not to count on where we expect to be living or working in the future. For now, we can absolutely assured that we have a whole month to be on vacation in the US. Seize the day! Believe it or not, many foreign service members decry their enforced home leave... Why you ask? Because they have forgotten what it's like to have only 10 days' annual vacation? Probably, yes, but also because it is expensive. The majority of people would have trouble spending more than a reasonable one or so weeks at their in-laws, and  other places to stay generally cost money.

Our solution to this was to stay the one or so weeks at the respective in-laws', to travel between said in-laws' homes by our car which is wisely cared for by my parents while we are out of country, car-camping on our way from one to the other and back again. Thus, our schedule looked like this:

1. A week in Europe on the way, where we immersed ourselves in wine, bread, cheese, art, Parisian charm, and Disneyland

2. A few days in NM doing crazy-mad shopping that is hard for those not living in 3rd world countries to comprehend, as well as dentist and doc visits

3. Driving, camping, driving, etc, to include the following stops:

• Rock climbing in the Jemez, NM
• National forest near Pagosa Springs, CO
• Mesa Verde National Park, CO
• Arches NP, UT
• Zion NP, UT
• A'le'inn cafe along the Extra Terrestrial Highway in Rachel, NV (a quick stop so we could get out of NV before the tires melted)
• Mammoth Lakes, CA (in a BED)
• Yosemite NP, CA



The accomplished Junior Ranger in her favorite milieu.

• San Francisco, baby!

4. 10 days' worth of playing, 7-yr-old birthday celebrating, and avoiding forest-fire smoke inhalation at my in-laws' in OR

5. Driving, camping, driving, to include:

• Boise, ID, and a visit to an old college buddy of Andrew's
• Yellowstone NP, WY
• Grand Tetons NP, WY
• An night with a hotel shower and laundromat in lovely Laramie
• A few nights at one of our favorite haunts, my grandfather's house in CO

6. Back to NM for the last of the crazy shopping, packing, eating, and telling everyone we see how awesome our trip was.

Now, my dears, now, I sit in a lovely home in a cloudy city on the other side of the world. A city crammed with people, motorbikes, and houses that go UP; with rooftops where people gather, work, eat, and stare at us; where the dogs, roosters, and the locally-made horn blowing keep waking us up at night; where prayer flags flutter from buildings, marigolds decorate doors and gates, and people, dogs, and cows walk around with the red tikka on their foreheads. We can see the hills surrounding much of the Kathmandu valley from our own rooftop. I look around, think back to just 2 or 3 weeks ago, and wonder which experience is the dream. 

Reflections of a first tour

A couple weeks ago marked 18 months of living in Kenya. Since we are here for one (2-year) tour, we are now beginning the practicalities of getting to the next post, including figuring out the best school options without having visited, scheduling home leave, and closely related to both of these, putting through curtailment paperwork such that we may get home leave completed before the new school year starts. In addition, we need to get through medical clearance; figure out how much and which stuff here to give away, sell, burn or otherwise get rid of; identify what is in storage that should be sent on to next post; and start mentally detaching ourselves from Kenya.

This detachment is perhaps the most complicated; and is also irritatingly predicted in books on third culture kids or global nomads. In some ways, we cannot wait to leave. The robberies, hijacking, and police hijinx are commonplace and it is only by grace that we personally have not had more problems. Larger safety concerns about terrorism and national elections loom over all our activities, such that there is a travel lockdown enacted and school is already canceled during most of election week. On the other hand, we have an idyllic situation. We have friendly neighborhood cookouts; the kids chase each other on the playground and set up secret forts in each others' yards; I know all the kids in my daughter's class personally and chat with their parents on the playground after school.

Between going to the States over Christmas and a recent spate of visitors that included both friends and a visiting prison ministry team, I feel we have done an excess of putting either a rosy blush on things or emphasizing a dour outlook, depending on the situation. I suppose there is no true objective view of one's personal and situational circumstances, and, as I was telling a vendor at the Masai Market last week, the truth is that no matter where you are there is good and there is bad. Being in the foreign service, the question you always come back to is, "Is this a better life for our family than we could provide if we had stayed in America?" That is the true rubbing point.

In deference to my dear friend who recently told me, "I just don't want to mess up my kids!" I have been thinking about the "Kenya impact" on our daughter, who has now officially lived longer in our government housing in Nairobi than in any other location in her life.

• In the US, I would have walked her to the bus stop or driven her to the neighborhood school. Here, I walk her to school. Our school district in Virginia was a good one, but by its very nature and size would not have been as nurturing, individually-oriented, or parent-involved as our nearby Christian school here.

• In the US, Andrew's commute would have meant that our daughter almost didn't see him during the week, and here he is usually home at least 2 hours before her bedtime.

• In the US, having guards and soldiers would not be so commonplace that my daughter would express uncertainty if there wasn't one around.

• In the US, we would not have to rearrange our route home from lunch because students were protesting and burning tires in the middle of the main road, nor explain away why we are showing obvious concern at the number of people on foot rushing toward that site while we are trying to rush away in a locked car.

• In the US, our daughter would not have developed an ingrained sense of the need to visit and help orphans.

School  near Rift Valley / Western province borders so
rural the kids hadn't seen white people before.

• In the US, our daughter would not realize that the vast majority of people in rural areas of Kenya live in mud and dung huts, where they grow their food, herd cows and goats for a living, and collect water from puddles or muddy streams in jerry cans.  

• In the US, I would not feel the wrenching mama-bear need to protect my daughter from viewing the culture and non-urban attitude against women and girls that I have seen here with my own eyes and mourned in my own heart.

• In the US, I would not have looked into the faces of desperation, defeat, and hope which I have seen far more of in prisons here than I ever intended, and realized but for the grace of God it would be my husband in this place, the father of my child, and realize how much greater is the faith of others who can survive the intermittently applied justice in this country.

Prisoners in Migori, near Tanzanian border, enjoying our
ministry (and enjoying being photographed).

Honestly? If I'm really, truly honest: I'm tired of it. I'm tired of seeing how much need there is. In a country with bountiful natural resources, a thriving tourist trade, a huge port, and a populace that possesses ingenuity and understands hard work, why isn't it better here? (Reasons too numerous to count, we know). How are concerned Westerners supposed to deal with this? More specifically, how is our family supposed to deal with it? To our daughter, we are very matter-of-fact: it's just the way it is. Even for a 6-year-old, it's not a satisfactory explanation. On the one hand is my kid strapped into her safety seat in the diplomatic-plated vehicle with her coloring book in hand, and on the other is the dirty, barefoot kid on the side of the road carrying water on her head and her baby sister on her back. The difference between them comes down to which continent their DNA happened to be formed on. I am a woman of faith, and at some point I can hear my God saying to me, it's just the way it is.

I appreciate what we have been able to experience and learn in beautiful Kenya, but I think we'll be ready for a change of scenery.

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.

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.

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!

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.

Household help haiku

Laundry, floors, bathrooms

Does it need to be this clean?

I can't find my socks

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.

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."

Kenya Christmas

Snooping in our own windows.

Among the series of chaotic events leading up to our move was the fact that our Christmas box did not make the "go to Kenya" shipment -- and it was sent to storage. This was almost the only box I actually took the time and effort to sort through last year for the move. I was mad at sorting time - choosing which memories and kiddo's decorations home made over the years should move or go to storage made for an unhappy momma. Then having the box literally miss the boat was Not Happy. We managed to bring a few things with us, like our hand-quilted-by-Aunt-Charlette stockings, but otherwise we improvised. My mother sent us some ornaments and my daughter stepped up her project-making. Thus, her orange boa adorning the left side and many marker and paper ornaments. That rosemary monster bush on the left sacrificed a number of unruly branches to a wreath that hangs over the mantle. Still seems to sunny for Christmas, but we are playing CD's and having cocoa anyway!

Age Creeping

Preface: Google is having trouble fixing the "Follow". I can't follow other blogs and you may have issues trying to follow mine.

I have to thank my dear friend Sara for electronically wishing me a happy birthday the day before my birthday, US-time. Hers was the first wish to come in -- the second was the University of Michigan Alumni Association, and next the UNC Alumni Association. All this moving and I still haven't managed to lose those guys.


The weather for my birthday weekend was what we are coming to see as typical - warm enough to play outside in shorts if it's not raining, but cool enough to build a fire if it is raining. Thus, Andrew made steak on the grill and still built me a fire in the fireplace.


The wee lass worked on her art. You can barely see the edge of our artificial Noble Fir Christmas tree purchased with much hassle from the States, and of course boxes -- nothing says "Home" like open boxes.
Here is her tremendous creation - "mom and dad and their thrones." Bold, daring, yet with an endearing sentimental twist.




One of the great things about Kenya is that Andrew can indulge in buying me flowers whenever, and neither of us feel guilty about how much he spent - because it's not that much! Aren't they gorgeous!

Pleasantville

It's weird how living among expats in a foreign country is in many ways more like being in America than it was being in America. Take the following:

1. Our neighborhood has nice sidewalks lined with flowering trees, a playground where all the kids gather, a pool and gathering spot

2. Neighbors always say hi or wave as we pass.

3. I walk my kid to school every day.

4. At first glance, there may be more Africans at our home church in Herndon, VA, than there are at our ex-pat dominated church here.