CRASH! BANG! PACK!

June 23, 2015June 25, 2015 / cdncarolina / Leave a comment

So, you’re walking along and suddenly you come across an AK-47 lying in front of you. What do you do?

RUN, right?

A couple of weeks ago that is exactly the way I would have answered that question, but now that I’ve spent a week at the Foreign Affairs Counter Threat (“FACT”) training, I could, with some level of confidence, carefully pick up and “make safe” said weapon by removing the magazine and any unfired bullets all while keeping it “muzzle safe” (ie: not pointing it wildly at anything other than the ground).

All that being said, I suspect my first reaction would still be to run away. Far, far away.

In addition to my “make safe” training on guns, I can now also put on a tourniquet (in case you are bleeding profusely), and know how to look for IEDs that might be on my car. I hope I will never need any of this training, though as someone who learned to drive in Canada I have used the “skid control” lessons on more occasions that I care to count. I’m guessing I won’t need to worry about skidding on icy roads in Kinshasa, but who knows about muddy or rainy roads…

Don’t worry – I’m not giving anything away here – this information is available freely on the web (after all the training we did on security I was VERY aware of not telling anyone more than was available publicly). CBS also did a small segment on FACT which you can watch here. Among other things it shows the two most exciting parts of the training: learning to ram a car and watching a car get blown up.

By the end of the week I felt pretty bad for the cars involved in the training. They were rammed, shot at, and, eventually, blown up – it made me feel a little like I did in Ferris Bueller when they destroyed that beautiful Ferrari (except that we were destroying the Ferrari’s poorer cousin, the Crown Victoria). The dummies we used to practice medical training and self-defense didn’t fare much better, but at least they “lived” to see another day. Pretty sure the cars left the training facility and were towed straight to the scrap yard.

With my FACT training over it was back to Arlington to pack. Lucky me, I was not only packing for our BIG move, but also for a two week trip to Michigan and Canada to visit family with C. Since B is in the middle of “ConGen” (the general consular training that he is required to take – and not allowed to miss at all) he had to stay home. We’ll miss him, but at least he’ll get to join us over July 4th.

Packing for the trip was good practice for packing our suitcases for July 26, though I think I’ll have to cut back on the clothes I put in my carry-on bag. Packing it to the gills when you are driving somewhere is fine, but I have a feeling the airline will not consider it “carry-on compliant” in the overstuffed state in which it entered the car. No matter though – for now it just needs to get us through the diversity of weather from 90 degrees in Arlington to 53 degrees in Northern Michigan/Northern Ontario, not the scrutinizing gaze of a random rules obsessed flight attendant.

Our tickets to Kin are now officially booked – including the dog (after many hours on hold with Brussels and United airlines) and our consumables pack-out is schedule for the week B is at FACT. Now we are just waiting for our final dates for pack-out of our HHE and UAB and then we’ll be all set and ready to go on July 26…we hope.

Strengths…and weaknesses

June 5, 2015June 5, 2015 / cdncarolina / 3 Comments

I am directionally deficient.

I’ve heard people lacking in directional ability described as “challenged,” but for me it goes way beyond that. I can, quite literally, walk (or drive) to a location and mere hours (and sometimes only minutes) later leave said location and head in the exact opposite direction from the one that brought me there earlier. It drive B bonkers.

I resigned myself to this disability many (many) years ago and I am totally unphased by driving miles out of my way, realizing I’m supposed to be going north, not south, and then having to turn around and go all the way back just to begin again at my original starting point. Like most weaknesses in humans I have managed to adjust (leave earlier) or adapt (have Google maps perpetually “on”).

On the other hand, I get the law. I am totally comfortable with the direction I need to be heading when researching, writing, and arguing the fine points of most legal arguments. I never have to backtrack (or almost never). When I am handed a legal problem it feels like shrugging on a well worn and well loved jacket that I can trust to keep me warm on a chilly night. I know it. I understand it. I feel strong and powerful and smart and competent surrounded by it.

And then there is parenting. Some days I feel worse than deficient. I feel totally and utterly unqualified to be parenting the remarkable human child who is CJM. Other days (well, maybe not whole days, let’s say fleeting moments) I feel like maybe I’m getting it right, maybe I do “get” it and C might turn out pretty ok despite my lack of training and qualification as a mother. It’s a total crapshoot as to which of these wildly divergent feelings I will have at any given parenting moment – sometimes I feel both at exactly the same time.

Two nights ago C and I watched Little Mermaid together. She is Disney Princess obsessed (much to my chagrin), but she had never watched the movie. On our way home she announced, “Mummy, I am not afraid of the sea witch any more so I would like to watch Ariel tonight.”

Ok by me, I love the Little Mermaid.

So we watched the whole movie and she was, true to her word, not afraid of Ursula. Then came the end of the movie – you know, Ariel and Eric get married, there is great rejoicing, everyone is happy? Everyone, that is, except C, who burst into hysterical and inconsolable sobs, tears streaming down her face as she crawled into my arms and wept.

Me (dumbfounded), “Pumpkin, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t want Ariel to have to leave her Daddy,” C replied wailing.

“But she’s grown up (aside here that for the first time I realized at the beginning of the movie that Ariel is 16!!! – so not grown up at all…but for purposes of this discussion I’ll ignore that disturbing issue…) and she found Eric who she loves and who loves her and they got married and her Daddy is happy for her.”

C shouts, “But the Sea King will be ALL ALONE without Ariel and she will MISS HIM!”

This went back and forth for quite some time until finally C threw up her hands (literally) and said “I don’t want to be a grown up EVER.”

Hmmm…me either kid, me either.

I still don’t know what the right response to all this was. I used all the logic, reasoning and rational thinking I could muster, but C was having none of it. So I ended that evening feeling totally incompetent. The problem is that now I’m “retired” from the law – or at least from my firm – the opportunity to shrug myself back into feeling competent is receding from my grasp, so I went to bed still feeling incompetent.

Two weeks ago I would have gotten onto the computer and boosted my ego with a little legal work. Instead, now I’m left with running errands all over the city in preparation for our move (7 WEEKS AWAY) which inevitably means that at least once a week I get on the Metro going the wrong direction, or walk/drive miles out of my way trying to find something I need. And I’m left with parenting.

It turns out that I am starting to think this will be the largest and most significant struggle of this lifestyle change for me: the percentage of time I spend feeling lacking and stupid v. the percentage of time I feel smart and competent. Cause it also turns out that we all – even very grown up and outwardly successful people – need to feel competent a few times a day to prevent the dissolution of our egos into mush.

As I work through these feelings, I am having a lot of sympathy for B because I’m pretty sure he’s been feeling like this for the last 30 weeks.

Learning a new language is humbling. B, and the other folks he joined the Foreign Service with are smart, smart people. They are, I’m guessing, not used to feeling stupid or incompetent in very many situations. But spending 6 hours a day learning a new language from scratch is a breeding ground for feeling incapable. For weeks now B has been warning me that he would not pass his final French test. He swore he believed he would not get the 3/3 (oral/reading) score he needed and we would be in D.C. for another 6-8 weeks. So I was resigning myself to a lot more time in D.C. – this time without a job – and I was a bit panicked about trying to find something to keep me occupied and not feeling incompetent. But it turns out that B was not French deficient, as he had feared. He got his 3/3 on the first try and so all of a sudden (it feels very sudden since I had been trained to expect an extra 2 months of prep time) our departure date is looming – we are wheels up to Kinshasa on July 26.

B: Competent in French and Parenting…

I’m going to work on new competencies now – organizing boxes of shipments, sewing, writing, transporting 70 lb dogs 6,500 miles – but will all of those help me to feel mildly competent when my main role will be to parent – and, in seven weeks, to speak French in a country as vastly different from here as possible? I don’t know, but I sure hope so…

Ode to North Carolina (and the joy it brings me)

May 11, 2015May 11, 2015 / cdncarolina / 1 Comment

My love affair with North Carolina began like many love affairs – I was drawn in by looks.

I went to university in Louisiana, but my family lived in Canada, so four times a year, once in summer and once in winter, I got in my trusty Chevrolet Celebrity and drove the 1,300 miles between those two places. A little over halfway through that journey – 12 of the 24 hours in, I’d hit North Carolina. In those days (the late 80s/early 90s) North Carolina was the only state I drove through that had wildflowers planted in the highway median. The program apparently started in 1985 – so by the time I was making my yearly treks in 1987 the flowers were pretty well established and were beautiful.

My journals from those days are packed away, so I can’t quote myself exactly, but sometime in 1989 during one of those drives when the flowers were particularly beautiful, I wrote in my journal that I had “a new favorite state: North Carolina.” I’ll never know whether my pronouncement then influenced my choice of law school later, or whether it was predestined that I end up at UNC, but 20 years later – most of which were spent in that state – I still consider it my favorite.

The funny thing about moving in 2015 is that it is not terribly difficult to keep in touch with people. There are phones attached to our hips all day long – and we can not only use them to call the people we love and miss, but we can use them to text, email and facetime those same people. But it is impossible to keep in touch with a place you love, other than through sporadic visits. C and I made one such visit recently – spending 4 lovely amazing days in Charlotte, the place that will always be our “home” even when we are half a world away.

We were in Charlotte in March and it still felt like winter in D.C. It was cold and damp and I spent a good part of every time I was outside reminding myself that I wouldn’t have to endure a full winter again for at least two years while we are in Africa. To know me is to know that I am ALWAYS cold in the winter. I feel like I spend months just trying desperately to warm up. I can’t tell you how many times people say something to me like “but you’re from Canada, how can you be cold here?” Seriously though – I’m cold EVERYWHERE that it isn’t over 75 degrees. And besides, I’ve done winter, folks. Nineteen years of living through Canadian winters was enough winter to last a lifetime. I’m done with it – a yearly Christmas vacation of snow, skiing, skating and tobogganing is great – but a week of it is enough.

So we left D.C. where it was 36 degrees and we arrived in Charlotte, where, on our first day there the high was into the 70s. And the trees were budding. And the daffodils were blooming. I swear I almost dropped to my knees in joy when I saw those daffodils. We were outside without winter coats. My hands did not feel like Snow Miser was clutching them all the time. It was heaven.

Am I wrong or does Snow Miser look a little like B’s boss’s, boss’s, boss…

Then we started visiting – places, people, friends, restaurants and my heart was both a little fuller – and a little emptier. We stopped and looked lovingly at our house that B and I built – arduously picking fixtures, colors, layouts, making nooks and crannies where there were none, and C asked me if we could stay there. Then I had to say “No, because someone else is living there now.” It solidified my belief that we have done the right thing by keeping the house for now and renting it out, because I am not ready for it not to be ours – not ready to shut the door on the possibility that one day we can stay there again.

Charlotte, because it is a “young” city – with lots of transplants who are also young – is an ideal city for a child. I’m convinced that there is more to do with a 4 year old in Charlotte than in D.C., which, with its depth and breadth of history, is more suited to a 10 year old, or 15 year old. Charlotte is full of museums and parks and places that are geared to small children and we tried mightily to visit as many of those places as we could.

And, perhaps most importantly of all, Charlotte is full of people who mean the world to us. So, despite what I said above, and despite the fact that it really is SO much easier in this day and age to keep in touch with people, there is nothing quite like hugging the people you love. Sitting with them on a back porch, with the warm (WARM!) sun on you, drinking wine while your children, who were once the dreams you talked about, and then infants together, play in the yard and start the next generation of friendships which will endure through time and, now in our case, space.

I am going to miss our friends and family without a doubt, but I hope that I will also get many opportunities over the next couple of years to chat with them, talk to them and visit with them. I know I won’t get that opportunity with Charlotte or North Carolina. The feeling of peace and belonging we feel there will have to travel with us, in our hearts, to deepest darkest Africa, and wherever else this adventure might take us.

Gluttony

April 28, 2015April 28, 2015 / cdncarolina / 1 Comment

Apparently I am a glutton for punishment.

And, I’m also a bit of a glutton.

My last day being a practicing lawyer was supposed to be this Thursday, April 30. I was mentally prepared (and both trepidatious and excited) for that day when one of my partners called me about three weeks ago.

Law Partner: “Hey. So, you know that case you are transitioning to me?”

Me: “Yup.”

LP: “Well, it looks like it is scheduled to go to trial June 1.”

Me: “Yup.”

LP: “Don’t suppose you’d like to stick around and help me try it?”

Me: “Um…I’d have to check with B.” (Mentally thinking that B might, literally, kill me if I work for another 6 weeks – particularly work to get ready for a trial…not exactly “part time” work)

LP: “Well, check with him and let me know. I wasn’t sure if it was cruel to ask you since we all agreed here that you wouldn’t be able to help yourself from saying yes. But, since I could definitely use the help, I figured I’d just be cruel…”

Ah, these people know me too well.

So now I do not have 3 more days of work left, but 43 (or so) more days. And part of me is thrilled; SO excited to try a case with my wonderful LP and the wonderful client we represent in this case. And part of me is, like, “WHAT THE HECK IS WRONG WITH YOU!” Sigh.

C is shaking her head too…

In this midst of the hand-wringing over my job, B and I have also been continuing our “gluttony” quest of checking off restaurants on the Washingtonian’s List of the 100 Very Best Restaurants. We’ve hit No. 1 and No. 95, and 15 others in between, with one more (No. 11) scheduled for later in May and a couple of others that we plan to check off before we go.

I have to admit that I am not sure I agree wholeheartedly with the placement of each of these restaurants on the list – for instance No. 22 was head and shoulders above No. 15 both in terms of food, and service (price too, admittedly, but still…) and No. 95 was better (and way cheaper) than No. 54, but, nevertheless, it’s been a fun (and quite delicious) way to spend our “date” time in D.C.

It’s also shocking to me given the quantity I feel like we have eaten in this quest that we have not even cracked 1/4 of the 100 restaurants on the list. But the quest will continue – at least until we roll our way onto a flight to FullSizeRender (13) Kinshasa – so maybe we’ll at least reach the 25 number before we leave.

FullSizeRender (11)

In other exciting news, we found out this morning that we got our housing assignment in Kin – and that we got a house! HOORAY! We will be in a compound with a number of other families with young children, and we will have our own yard (Miller, the Dog, is doing his happy dance) and our own pool. SO EXCITED!

We really are doing our best to enjoy our time left in the D.C. and the U.S., and C and I are about to head out on several cross-country adventures to visit family and friends, but after eight months here we are also itching to get on our way to the D.R.C.

With somewhere to live it feels like the countdown is ON!

Shots and Black Passports

April 9, 2015 / cdncarolina / 1 Comment

In the last few weeks we have begun the business of having many holes poked in us in preparation for living in Africa. Through those holes many foreign viruses have been injected with the hope that our bodies will be fooled into producing T-lymphocytes and antibodies so that, should we meet up with the same foreign viruses in Congo, our bodies will be prepared. So far we’ve all had Yellow Fever, and the first two of the three Rabies series. B and I have also had Polio and Hep B, and B has had Hep A. “Luckily” for me I got Hep A when I went to Belize, and C got Hep A, B and Polio as part of her regular vaccinations. Since B and I haven’t had polio since we were under 25 (only a couple of years ago obviously…) we had to have it again. None of them have been too bad – at least not for B and me.

Unfortunately, poor C has been particularly unlucky since at her four year “well child” visit in early March she got four shots as a matter of course, and since then we’ve dragged her to the medical unit at FSI twice for three more shots, with two left to go. Yesterday morning, when I went to wake her up, I rubbed her back, handed her a cup of milk and her first words were “Mummy, do I have to get a shot today?” Ug. The second time we went back she crawled under the chair in the examination room and announced that we couldn’t see her so she couldn’t get a shot. Yeah, I wish that worked kid…

B and C will also have to have a typhoid shot, but we’ll wait until closer to our leave date for them to get that since it only lasts two years. I opted for the “oral” typhoid pills, which means that I’m already inoculated against typhoid – and my immunity is good for 5 years. C wasn’t eligible to take the pills, but it was an easy choice for me: take four pills over eight days and be immune for 5 years, or have a shot and be immune for two years (and keep having to get boosters). I don’t mind shots, but why get an extra one (or two) when you don’t have to?

What was bizarre about taking the pills was that there is a huge label on the bag I was given that said “LIVE TYPHOID VIRUS.” Uh, what? I have live typhoid in my fridge? Once I started taking them I was walking around NOVA and DC thinking “I’m walking around with live typhoid in me…weird.” Knowing how flipped out people get about things they don’t understand I kept imagining people’s reactions on the Metro if I suddenly said “I’m sorry, I carrying typhoid inside me, could I have a seat to myself?” I’m betting I would have gotten a whole car to myself.

And just in case anyone is wondering, all those horror stories about rabies vaccines that have to be given in your stomach are related to folks who get bitten and have to have the vaccine plus immunoglobulin, for us it was a little shot (three times over a 6 week period) in our arm – not a big deal.

The other big news is that we got our diplomatic passports – the black ones. They sure are pretty…

These are for our “official” travel. When we travel for fun we’ll use our regular blue passports. C and I are planning a trip to London in September to celebrate my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary and I’m guessing we’ll use our blue passports to get into the U.K., but our black ones to get back into D.R.C. when we return. Luckily I’m used to juggling passports having spent most of my life with two passports and the last few years with three…now I have four…wonder how many people can say that?

Things are definitely moving along…six more weeks of language training for B, then his consular training, then “crashbang” then…Africa…wow.

Juggling

March 22, 2015 / cdncarolina / 2 Comments

A few weeks ago I finalized a deal with my firm for my transition from “Partner” to “Eligible Family Member.” I will continue to work through the end of April and then on April 30 I will officially withdraw from the firm and will cease being a partner at Parker Poe. The finalization of the deal was a huge relief to me and I took it as a sign that I was going to have infinitely more free time to do all the things on the “What will D Do” list. HA!

As I write this it is 11:28 p.m. on a SATURDAY night and I just logged out of the Parker Poe system, primarily because the program I was working in kept crashing. So much for free time.

I’ve really only kept work for one of my clients. I really enjoy working with them, and the work is always interesting, so I figured it would keep me happily engaged, bring in a few dollars, but leave me plenty of free time to start working on my list. Only I now have briefing on multiple cases for this client which, coincidentally enough, won’t end until April 30. And as luck (or unluck for them) would have it, another lawsuit was filed against them last week, just when I was anticipating things slowing down. The best laid plans and all that…

At the same time I have been working on my list. My primary focus has been on laying the foundation for potentially finding employment at a later date, whether in Kin, or at our next post. The State Department has been working over the last several years to come up with ways to help family members with overseas career development. There has been a lot of talk lately about the programs not being very effective, but I haven’t yet experienced the results because we haven’t yet gone to our first post, so for now I can only speak to the various opportunities and possibilities that have been brought to my attention – and which I generally have found exciting.

One program is the Global Employment Initiative (GEI). One aspect of this program is the ability to work with a Global Employment Advisor (GEA) to streamline a job search in a particular region, provide job coaching and training workshops and other career services – all for free. I have an advisor in Africa who has been responsive and has talked through several options with me, though I think at this point the main help I need is figuring out how to update my resume after 18 or so years. Let’s just say my CV is not internet compatible.

There is also a “pilot” program to offer EFM’s the opportunity to accept consular jobs at their spouse’s post (ie: work on the visa line). This program requires taking a written 75 minute test similar to the Foreign Service Officer Test (FSOT) that B took – lacking only the essay portion – and then, if you pass that, taking an “Oral Assessment.” The OA for the AEFM/CA program includes a writing section where you are given a closed universe of information and asked to write a memo or other document, and a “structured interview” which includes answering questions about yourself, your background, and trying to figure out what the appropriate answer to a bunch of “scenario” questions are. It is missing the “group exercise” in the Foreign Service Oral Assessment (FSOA)(thank heavens because there was one REALLY obnoxious guy taking the FSOA the day I took my “fake” OA and I might not have tolerated his BS for long in a group exercise…).

I took, and passed, the written test, and then a few weeks later took, and passed, the OA. This OA is even scored like the FSOA – out of 7 with 5.3 being a passing score. I got a 6.3, which I’m really happy with, though I have no idea what that will mean in practice. Now, like B had to about 2 years ago, I’m in the process of getting my security clearance and, once that is done, I’ll be put on a list for possible consular jobs, but only in the posts where I am already living with B. There are some great advantages to this program (like being able to accrue government pension) so I’m hoping that when I’m ready the fact that I’ve jumped through all the hoops will put me in a good position to get a consular job one day.

I was going to try and take the 6-week consular class while we are in the U.S. too, figuring I could knock that out without having to figure out the logistics of possibly coming back to the states to take it when we are overseas. I even took another written test (Government bureaucracy in action…) in order to be put on the waiting list for the class. But, now that I’ve done all that, I look at the calendar between now and the end of July and there is no way I’m going to have a block of 6 weeks in which I do not need to work, or have not planned other things (the fun things I’ve been waiting for like spending a week with my family and a week with B’s). It just seems that time is running out and I have (as is my tendency) booked myself so full that I’m still running around crazed despite all my great desires and plans to have tons of free time.

Amid all of this work and future job planning, I rented a sewing machine so I could work on my “go back to sewing” plan. HA again! It has sat, covered, on the dining room (if you can call just another part of our living the dining room just because it includes a table…) since I brought it home. Next week I’ll lug it back up to the sewing studio and, I’ll venture a guess, it won’t have been used. I do have some really nice material to take with us to Kinshasa though. Sigh.

Onward with the juggling I go…

Identity

March 13, 2015 / cdncarolina / 1 Comment

As I get closer and closer to the end of April, when I will officially “retire” from my firm, the prospect of stepping back from my life as a lawyer becomes infinitely more real, and infinitely more terrifying. It is not the prospect of moving to Kinshasa that makes my stomach drop from nerves and stress, but the prospect of no longer having my identity as a lawyer – as a partner and part of a law firm where I have spent my days (and a few nights) over the last 17+ years.

As I sit here researching a point of law, my heart pounds and my stomach turns over when I think about the fact that I may not have access to Westlaw in a few months. I may no longer be able to be part of intellectual conversations about how to respond to a tricky issue, or what the best strategy would be for solving a problem for a client. This is tempered by my excitement too – excitement for the additional time I’ll get to spend with B and C, about my ability (at least while in Arlington) to take classes at the Apple store, and all the other things I’m excited to get to learn, do and be a part of.

Right now though, it’s more about trying to figure out what will happen to the part of me that is the D, Attorney-at-law. Will it be like a vestigial organ, always feeling like it is still there? Will I try to reach for it, or think with it, at inopportune times? Will it fade into my past like knowing how to put racing bandages on a horse, or draft a press release? Will I still be ME if I am not a lawyer?

I just don’t know the answer, but even the question makes me feel a little sick.

What will D do?

March 4, 2015March 5, 2015 / cdncarolina / 3 Comments

Soon after B took his Oral Assessment last year he sent me an email. In it he expressed his concern about accepting an offer to join the foreign service. Not concerns about the work, the travel or the constantly changing lifestyle, but concerns about me.

“I’m worried about what you are going to do,” he wrote.

I was at work at the time. Piles of papers on my desk, billable hours and client problems occupying my mind and my time. But I stopped when I read his email. I put down the case I was reading and cleared a place on my desk. I put a blank piece of paper in front of me and wrote down what immediately came to my mind when I posed that question to myself.

“What will I do if I’m not a lawyer any more?” This is the list I came up with.

1. Raise our daughter. Seriously, what an opportunity! Most of my friends who are still sitting at their desks piled with paper and cases and timesheets would kill for the chance to take a sabbatical and get multiple hours of uninterrupted hands-on time with their children. Don’t get me wrong, this is a terrifying thought as well as a joyful one, but I’m up for the challenge.

2. Read the pile of books I have not gotten to for 15 years. Books used to give me such pure pleasure. I still feel it sometimes when I’m in a bookstore and see something I’ve always wanted to read, or a book I have loved in the past. It brings a little heat to my cheeks and excitement to my heart. Sometimes I even give in to that feeling.

“Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland and Donna Tartt’s The Secret History! Oh Joy,” I thought to myself last week when I saw them. “And on sale! Woo hoo!”

I bought both books and brought them home, caressing the covers and gazing longingly at the words on the first page. Then I got home and thought, “When in the heck am I going to read these?” I hid them in the back of our bookcase along with a dozen other books that have been waiting, some for months, others for years, to be read. No more! When we get to Kinshasa I am going to make it my mission (or at least part of my mission) to read these books. I know I’ll need to escape sometimes (or many times) and Donna Tartt, Jhumpa Lahiri, Margaret Atwood and several others are going to help me.

3. Finally make C’s baby book. Like many working mothers I have a box full of mementos and pictures and little “notes” to myself that deserve a place in an official baby book, but so far they haven’t gotten out of the big plastic boxes I’ve been shoving them into since C was born in 2011. This one is high on my list and I’m hoping to get it started before we leave so that I can get everything scanned in before we hit the heat and humidity of the Congo. FullSizeRender (3)

4. Organize photos, albums etc. I’ve got this friend (who shall remain nameless) who has managed to create a yearly hard copy photo album of all her family’s memories of a given year. I dream of such an achievement. For now I’ll accept some vague organization of our vast collection of digital photos. Step One – take free iPhoto and iMovie classes at the Mac Store!

5. Write – a book, an article, a blog…for myself, or not. Ta-Da! Mission accomplished in the form of a blog…now I just have to write more than once a month…

6. Learn to knit. Knit. So when making this list I didn’t know we were going to move to Africa. I’m now rethinking how useful it will be to knit as that typically involves wool, scarves and sweaters, which are unlikely to be needed in the Congo. Maybe I’ll save this one for when we get posted to Norway one day…

7. Go back to sewing. Sew. When I was living in Toronto after undergrad I did quite a bit of sewing – for myself and others, and I really enjoyed it. But that was also a time in my life where I had so much free time that I considered the cast members of All my Children to be close friends. I don’t anticipate having THAT much free time again, so I don’t aspire to FullSizeRender (5) Project Runway, but some cute kids clothes for C with the amazing African fabrics I’ll have access to? Yes please! I’m taking some private lessons in D.C. at a fabulous little studio called “Bits of Thread” so hopefully I’ll be back in “top-ish” form by the time we leave. Traditional-African-fabrics

8. Learn a new language. French isn’t new for me, but I’m trying to learn it better if nothing else. The Foreign Service is pretty amazing in terms of the support and offerings they provide for helping EFM’s learn a language. Lord knows, they could throw us all into our new environments head first with no training at all, but they’ve recognized the benefits of having family members who can converse in the countries in which they are living. Right now I’m taking two “Distance Language Learning” classes through the Foreign Service Institute. I’m not terribly “distant” given that I’m less than a mile from the FSI campus, but my classmates are in Madrid and Dakar and having the opportunity to converse in French three times a week is wonderful practice (though it is not so great for anyone who has to speak to me in English immediately afterwards…)

9. Teach English as a second language. “Know Thyself” was obviously not at the top of my mind when I made this list. While I would love to do something useful and helpful while we are in country, it may be that being a teacher (of any sort) should not be at the top of my list. But, then again, this is at No. 9, so maybe at the very least I can do some mentoring with folks who want to practice their English. Mentoring I can handle, but I’ll leave teaching to my awesome sister-in-law, mother-in-law and the other people who teach for a living.

10. Work for an NGO. Ok, I’m going to admit it, until about two months ago I didn’t actually know what an NGO was. Hello? Private sector lawyer here…not something that was important or relevant to my life at the time. Now, however, I’m fascinated with the number and variety of NGOs and the work they do in the Congo and elsewhere in the world. I’m still exploring this one and there are a lot of possible options, so stay tuned. Oh, and “Non-governmental organizations: any non-profit, voluntary citizens’ group which is organized on a local, national or international level” – in case there is anyone else in the dark!

11. Work for a US or foreign Company doing contract legal work. I’ve got the training, I passed the bar, why not put it all to good use? Again, lots of possible options here, so I’m slowly exploring what is out there.

12. Work for the embassy. In recent years the State Department has increasingly recognized the importance of helping diplomatic family members find work. There are a lot of available resources to help family members, and I’m doing my best to take advantage of them. I’ll save the details for another post (I promise it will come in less than 30+ days…), but there are a number of possible jobs that I might be able to get at the embassy – everything from mail sorter to working on the visa line just like B.

13. Volunteer to do pro bono work. After 18 years of using my law degree for “evil” (or at least for the “Man”) it is exciting to think about using it for good. I suspect there will be no shortage of opportunities to do volunteer work in Congo, and I’m excited to find one (or more) that fits my passions.

No more working for the Man!

14. Eat bon bons. A valid use of my time, non?

15. Work out. Clearly this will be required if I spend too much time on No. 14… I am looking forward to having the ability to work out again in a place where it will NEVER be 10 degrees or less like it has been in D.C. for seemingly months now…

freezing

16. Do freelance writing or editing. I used to do freelance work, so why not try it again? There are some very specialized magazines out there that are always looking for articles. I once wrote a story for “Forest and People” magazine, and I wrote several for “Education Today.” Those were in the days before computers were everywhere (I’m 100% sure I must have mailed a hard copy of my piece to the magazine, but that seems impossible in this day and age) so it might be even easier to do this remotely now.

17. Be happy and enjoy the adventure of our lives… This one I try and accomplish every day. So far, so good.

Swearing (in)

January 30, 2015 / cdncarolina / 2 Comments

Ok, yes, I know, this post is a little late. It’s probably become pretty clear in the last few months, that B did, in fact, “graduate” from his A-100 (the 6-week entry level orientation class for FSOs), get sworn-in, and move into language training. Nevertheless, I feel that I owe him (if not his parents) a post commemorating the actual ceremony. I really do have a good excuse for my delay – as you will see below, B got the opportunity to take a snap with his boss’s-boss’s-boss’s-boss – The Secretary, and I was waiting for a better version of that picture, but, it turns out, no one has any idea where that “better” picture is, so it’s time I gave up the wait and went ahead with this post.

For most new foreign service officers the anticipation for A-100 is HUGE. For us it was, truly, years in the making. B took (and passed) his first written FS test (the FSOT) in 2009. I remember him logging into the State Department website from a train station in Hamburg so he could register for the test. We were on our way to Copenhagen after a week long driving excursion around Sweden, Belgium, France and the Netherlands courtesy of Volvo. We had just dropped our new Volvo off at a port outside Hamburg so that it could be shipped back to Charlotte for us. B was anxious about getting a test date that suited him, so we found an internet cafe and I looked over his shoulder as he picked a date in October to take his first test. It felt like an important moment, and, I suppose, you could say “the rest was history.” But, in this case, history repeated itself (over and over again) until he was invited to the Oral Assessment in 2013 for the first time, and then again in 2014 for the “money” OA. The oddest thing is that B never actually “failed” any test – he passed every FSOT, and he passed both his FSOAs, but in the interim he just didn’t make it passed the mysterious PNQ’s (Personal Narrative Questions). In any case, from 2009 until June 5, 2014, all we had really hoped for was B getting into an A-100 class. That was the prize – what happened after that was, frankly, somewhat vague and, even more frankly, something so far into the future that we never talked about it.

Similarly, once you are actually IN an A-100 class the only thing people are really focused on is Flag Day. It’s the day everyone is worried about, anticipating with excitement and dread, and spending hours researching. But Flag Day is not the end of A-100. Although far more family and friends travel to D.C. for Flag Day, there is actually a “Graduation” day – where the new FSOs are sworn-in and welcomed to the State Department as official diplomats. For B, the swearing-in took place a week after Flag Day. B’s mom stuck around for the week (which was great fun for me and C) so we could all attend the swearing-in together. Unlike Flag Day, which takes place at FSI, the swearing-in takes place at Main State – or the main State Department building in D.C. This was especially nice for us since we have three friends who work in that building (two of whom are the folks we visited in Mexico and who got B interested in this life in the first place) who we’d be able to see. One of those people happens to work directly for the Secretary of State, John Kerry, who was the speaker for the event, so I was looking out for her from the moment we walked in.

Turns out she was the one person who I didn’t get to talk to, but she also provided B with a fabulous surprise. The Secretary seemed genuinely excited to be welcoming these new diplomats to their new life, and he spoke for quite a while about the importance of their jobs – and the jobs of all FSOs and employees of the State Department – to aid in the diplomatic mission of the United States. It turns out he actually spoke for a bit longer than he was originally scheduled, which meant he was late for his next phone call, which meant that B’s surprise was a bit rushed. At the end of his speech, he stepped down, looked around to B’s class and said “Where is J’s friend from law school?” Technically, B is not “J’s friend from law school” – I am, but B is J’s friend, so she pointed him out and the Secretary said, “Come down here so we can take a picture.” B tried to get out of it, but Secretary Kerry was having none of that, and when your boss’s-boss’s-boss’s-boss’s-boss tells you to get to the front of the class and have your picture taken, you do it. So B climbed down and stood with the Secretary and our friend J and had his picture taken. Pretty. Damn. Cool.

Bizarrely, when the official photographer sent along the picture it seems that J, B and S (which is actually what he is called by many FSOs when they are not directly addressing him) were looking at someone else’s camera. No one can figure out who took the picture or where the picture might be, so all I’ve got is the one above, but you get the idea.

C does NOT like to have her picture taken…

SO, there are several asides to this story (as there generally are with all my stories, in case you hadn’t realized). First, yes, seriously – the trip was, pretty much, courtesy of Volvo. In our quest for a new car we had been pointed to the Volvo Overseas Delivery program by a friend. Turns out that, if you buy a Volvo directly from the factory, and then go to Gotteborg, Sweden to pick it up, you get a pretty awesome deal: two round-trip tickets to Sweden, a car from the airport to the factory, a personalized “introduction” to your new car, a tour of the factory (with Swedish meatball lunch included, of course) and one night at a local hotel. If this weren’t enough, you also have the option of taking your new car and driving it wherever you can get to in Europe for 14 days with paid insurance. You can then either return it to Gotteborg for free transport back to your local Volvo dealership in the U.S., or you can drop it off in any number of other European ports for a small fee. Then you fly home and 4-6 weeks later, voila, your car shows up at your dealership and you drive it home. We opted, after visiting FS friends (J and her husband, N) in Brussels, spending a day driving around Paris, and spending two days in Amsterdam, to drive to Hamburg, leave the car there and take the train to Copenhagen for a few days before flying home. It was a fabulous trip made all the better for being basically free.

Hello Volvo factory!

Smorgasbord!

Notre Dame

mmm…gaufre et glace! (a true Belgian waffle)

Amsterdam

Copenhagen

The second aside relates to the actual dropping off of the car. As an English speaker with some French ability in my back pocket, most of my travels have taken me to places where one of my two languages was the official language, where (as is the case with the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark) everyone speaks English BEAUTIFULLY, or where the language is close enough to French that I can at least get the gist of what I’m reading or hearing (Mexico/Spain). Germany was a whole different world for us.

The Hamburg port authority is not the bastion for English speaking Germans, that I can say with certainty. When we arrived at the locked and guarded gate we were met by a man who clearly knew not a single word of English. We, conversely, knew not a single word of German. What followed was a pantomime of idiocy by me. It’s one thing to use hand gestures to indicate a direction, or that you want to eat or drink, but I was lacking in the appropriate hand gestures for indicating that I needed to drop off my car for transport by boat to the U.S. Much hilarity ensued (on our behalf, the German guard did not seem terribly amused). We did eventually get in (after several phone calls by the guard to someone else – heaven knows how he described us) and drop the car off. Then we had to navigate (via taxi and subway) back to the city center of Hamburg to catch our train which, I promised B, would be on time (it being a German train). We made it to the train station with only minutes to spare before our scheduled departure only to find a sign in German which included the words “120 minuten spat” – which, we figured out, meant that our train was 120 minutes late. So much for on time trains…but this 120 minute delay gave us enough time to find an internet cafe so B could sign up for the FSOT, and as they say, the rest was history…

Dangerous assumptions

January 14, 2015January 14, 2015 / cdncarolina / 2 Comments

Yesterday a woman died on the D.C. Metro. I have no idea who she was, or where she was going, but she was certainly just minding her own business on her way somewhere (or from somewhere) when the Metro car she was riding in filled with smoke and, ultimately, she lost her life.

As everyone knows, last week 12 people were sitting in their office, writing stories, drawing cartoons and, again, minding their own business, when terrorists charged into their offices and summarily executed them in Paris. The next day four people were murdered while they went grocery shopping in Paris by another extremist terrorist.

Today people will die in car accidents in D.C., they will be shot in D.C., they will be mugged, robbed, or raped in D.C.

Yet, I’m pretty sure if I told everyone we were moving to Paris with the State Department no one would say “Aren’t you worried about the danger?” And I know no one said that to me when we moved to Washington. So why is everyone so worried about us moving to the D.R.C.?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m 100% sure people will die in Kinshasa today as well, but the point is what is the difference?

I’ve been pondering this question as I do more in preparation for our move, and as I hear the terrible news both far away and close to home. It strikes me as an odd juxtaposition against the slightly askance look I get from people when I talk about moving to DRC and one of their first questions is always about whether we are worried about the danger there. The Congo is, to be sure, a place with a violent history, with political unrest, guerrilla groups and millions of poor and unemployed who make many areas dangerous by their sheer desperation. Statistically it is more dangerous than D.C. or Paris. But statistics mean very little unless you look at them with a critical eye.

When I was much younger and afraid of flying my grandfather once told me that more people in the world die from being kicked by donkeys than die in plane crashes. I’ve never checked on that statistic, and it turns out it may have been made up by an “expert,” but even if the donkey statistic is true, does it matter to me? I’m sure lots of people in un- and under- developed countries have donkeys. However, I do not, on a daily, weekly, monthly or even yearly basis come in contact with donkeys (I can think of three donkeys I’ve come in contact with in my lifetime – none of them even kicked me, let alone tried to kill me). I do get on planes though, pretty often. So, am I more likely to die by getting kicked by a donkey than in a plane crash? No, clearly not.

Which leads me back to the dangers of the DRC. If we were going to live in the city proper on our own without any of the support we will have, I’ll admit it would be crazeeeee. But we’ll have 24 hour security when we live there. We’ll be traveling on diplomatic passports and driving cars with diplomatic plates. We will know the places to be avoided – and will be required by the Embassy to avoid those places. We will live in the most affluent part of the city – full of other affluent people and, no doubt, policed significantly more than anywhere else. And, perhaps most importantly, we’ll be aware. Aware of our surroundings, aware of who, what and where to look out for, and aware of how to get out of those places and circumstances as quickly and effectively as possible.

How will know how to do all of this? We get to take FACT training. That’s “Foreign Affairs Counter Threat” training to you and “Crash Bang” to everyone in the Foreign Service. We’ll learn skills to better prepare us “for living and working in critical and high threat environments overseas.” B has to take this course, and it is “highly recommended” that I take it too. And I will, in FACT, be taking it. FACT training teaches emergency medical care, improvised explosive device (IED)
awareness, firearms familiarization, and how to perform defensive/counterterrorist driving maneuvers, among other things.

No one gave me any training to move to D.C. even though, statistically, I’m sure it is more dangerous than Charlotte. So this is why I’m not freaked out about the “dangers” of Kinshasa. I know our friends and family who ask about the danger are only worried about us, and I love them for that, but we will be aware of our surroundings, we’ll wear sunscreen, we’ll avoid snakes, guerrillas and, I promise, donkeys.