That which does not kill us

September 4, 2018September 6, 2018 / cdncarolina / 2 Comments

Life in Canberra got a little more interesting last week. Spring has started springing and the magpies have started swooping.

Yeah, there was that whole other thing with the leader of the ruling party being ousted and a new prime minister being installed in the top Aussie spot, but I’m telling you the magpies are more interesting.

Feathery

When we arrived in Canberra last October we were given a notebook containing information about our appliances, a check-in list, and lots informational pamphlets about caring for furniture and living in our government owned house. None of this was much different than what we got when we moved into our Kinshasa house – except the sheet detailing the snakes and spiders that want us dead.

spiders

Everyone knows that Australia is full of things that want to kill you. Sharks, crocs, box jellyfish, the deadliest snakes on the planet, many of the most deadly spiders on the planet – they are all out there, lurking behind the next bush, tree or waterhole. But, almost a year in, we haven’t see a single snake (yes, I’m knocking wood right now…). We’ve seen a few spiders, but nothing that has struck fear in our hearts. And, being as we live in the “Bush Capital” we are thankfully far away from all the water-based Down Under terrors.

But, as we round out the first half of our tour, I’m starting to suspect that the things that are really likely to kill you in Australia are things that nobody tells you about.

For instance, there is no sheet in our book for kangaroos. Kangaroos won’t bite and poison you, but there are a lot of them and they are in the middle of the roads.

All. The. Time.

Watch out!

They are basically the equivalent of deer in North America. You round a corner and there they are: kangaroo in headlights. Like deer, roos move in an unpredictable way, so all you can do is slow down and hope for the best. So far I’ve had a coupe of close calls, but I’ve been lucky enough to avoid a kangaroo collision. Still, I’m pretty sure that if I meet my end on this tour, it’ll be because I ran into a big burly kangaroo buck on the road, not because a Red Belly Black snake got me.

And then there are the magpies. At this time of year, magpies strike fear in the hearts of Australians as the males become dive bombing kamikazes attacking pedestrians and cyclists that dare venture too close to their nests. As a result, from August to October, Aussie bike helmets start sprouting zip ties in an effort to ward off attacks, and visits to the website https://www.magpiealert.com/ become more frequent as people from all over the country log on to report areas where they have been swooped.

swooping helmet

Today we received a management notice at the Embassy with safety tips for staying safe from magpies including:

· Travel in groups where possible as the birds often target individuals.

· It is important to try to stay calm, if you panic and flap then this is more likely to appear as aggressive behavior and provoke a further attack.

· Try to protect your eyes with your hands, those large beaks are very sharp and eye injuries have been previously recorded.

· Remember magpies are urban species too, so there is generally no escaping them!

Am I the only one who reads this and immediately pictures Hitchcock’s classic film The Birds?

The Aussie magpie is about the same size as a good sized crow. They’re known for learning to recognize human faces – and remember them for years. They mate for life – and can live for up to 20 years – and establish territories for whole families, which, as a group, are called a “tiding.” As a side note, I can’t decide if a “tiding of magpies” is better than a “mob of kangaroos,” but in my book they both come close to rivaling a “murder of crows” and a “mumeration of starlings” as group names go.

When we moved in last year a small tiding of magpies came to call on us. Over the course of the year our favorite magpie, who C named “Feathery,” has found a mate and they come to our house every morning, stand on our doorstep and “carol” to us in the hopes that we’ll give them some food – which, often to B’s chagrin, I almost always do.

My hope is that the friendship I’ve built up with Feathery and her family will afford me some immuity from the murderous intent of the local male magpies this swooping season. But, since I suspect I’m in far more danger of injury from my neighborhood magpie than I am from a roaming croc, I’m going to don my zip ties, travel in groups, and check the website…just in case.

To Bee or not to Bee (or how we met Eric, the Half-a-bee-keeper)

January 30, 2018September 9, 2020 / cdncarolina / 2 Comments

Our house in Canberra has a fantastic back yard. Some green-thumbed former FSO took the time to plant dozens of roses, azaleas, and other assorted flowering plants and it gives a totally inaccurate picture of the current residents’ gardening skills. Frankly, I’m terrified that my slightly-less-than-green thumb will be the death of all of them.

I’ve been puttering around, watering, fertilizing and trying my best to keep our garden in the manner to which it has become accustomed, but it’s still unclear how successful I’ll be. After being limited by extreme African temperatures for the last two years, I’ve also been tempted by just about every cooler weather loving plant I stumble across. Lavender, rosemary and blueberry plants have all made their way from Bunnings (the Australian equivalent to Home Depot) to our house. I’ve also bought every herb (pronounced like the man’s name here, not “erb” as in the U.S.) I might possibly use in my cooking. The only problem is that I’m now paralysed by the fear of killing every one of these plants when I replant them either in larger pots or in the ground – the result of which is that they are all still in the original pots and I’m finding every possible excuse to avoid relocating them to more permanent homes.

Most of my excuses relate to all the other important things I have on my daily agenda. Ready to re-plant? Nope, gotta do laundry, or make dinner, or go to the grocery store, or walk the dog. Just about anything seems to trump the terrifying prospect of prying roots from a container and relocating them.

Then, on Saturday B gave me what I consider to be not only a totally legitimate excuse, but one that so far no one has questioned: a swarm of bees living in our yard.

I’ve long suspected that there was a hive of bees in the large gum tree on the edge of our property. I can hear a near constant buzzing when I’m outside during the day, but since I rarely see actual bees I wasn’t too worried about it. Then B came in from playing soccer with C and said, “Um, you’d better come outside and see this.”

We walked to the front of the house where, just hours earlier, I had been pooper-scooping, and B said “bend down and look under that tree.” And there, hanging off a branch about 2 1/2 feet above the ground, was a massive, vibrating bunch of bees.

They seemed totally uninterested in us, but there was a steady stream of them flying in and out of the swarm. It was misshapen, with a basic bullet shaped core, but with large lumps protruding from various places. When I made my way outside early the next morning, however, it was an almost perfect half oval hanging from the branch, buzzing and quivering, and effectively making our front yard a no-man’s land.

Bees are fascinating. They make one of the sweetest most amazing substances known to man, but they are also capable of killing a human being. But what I thought I knew about bees was nothing compared to what I learned from our new friend Eric, a local beekeeper who helps out families, like ours, when bees suddenly appear (cue Carpenter’s music and a slight change in lyrics…).

In a nod to Monty Python, Eric is really a half-a-bee keeper – since bee keeping is a hobby, – but he still managed to find time in his weekend and very kindly came to our house on Sunday morning to help us with our “little” problem.

When he arrived, Eric walked right up to the swarm and looked at it while bees flew around his head. “That’s a good sized swarm,” he said. “Um, yeah,” I thought. “Thanks Captain Obvious. Now what are you going to do about it?”

Eric returned to his Ute (that’s “utility vehicle” for our non-Australian friends), pulled out a beekeeping hat and veil, and then walked straight back to the tree, positioned his bare hands on top of the branch that held the bees, and started shaking. His BARE hands people. Inches from the bees – shaking them. B and C and I stood back, mouths agape, ready to flee for the hills, but Eric just calmly put the top on the box, poked a couple of holes in the side and top, and then sauntered over to us – totally unstung.

Eric was also not only full of interesting bee information, but was also pretty funny as he demonstrated the bee “waggle dance” and explained how it was that tens of thousands of bees came to be – literally – hanging around our backyard.

It turns out that swarms of bees are not unusual around Canberra in the spring. After a new queen is born she proceeds to steal half the hive from her mama and then she and her swarm find a “way station” – an airport lounge was Eric’s analogy – while scouts go out to find a more suitable permanent home for the new hive. Our tree was the way station in this case.

Once Eric shook the queen into the box all the rest of the bees followed, mostly climbing in through the holes Eric had made. Eric then picked up the box, put it in the back of his Ute, and bid us adieu. In the case of our bees, no scouts will be needed as Eric will kindly provide a hive for the new swarm, and presumably the bees will kindly provide some honey for Eric. We’ll have to get our honey from the grocery store though – at least until I can convince B to let me add beekeeping to my “What will D do” list…

Boxes of fun

November 30, 2017November 30, 2017 / cdncarolina / 2 Comments

We received our HHE (make sure to pronounce that “heych, heych” if you are going to be authentically Australian) yesterday, so what better time to write a blog post, right?

It’s not that nothing has been going on here, or even that I haven’t written anything, but for some reason I just can’t find the inspiration and motivation to get pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and write about – or finish when I start writing about – life on our latest adventure. In part I think it’s because Australia is so “normal” after DRC that it feels like everything I write is really booooring.

Let’s be honest, I spend my days going to the gym, Costco, Ikea, and/or the grocery store, then coming home and cooking, cleaning and – once school lets out – driving C around to her activities. Sound familiar to anyone in a first world country? Every once in a while I’ll be walking around ALDI or Costco and think “Seriously? Is that what we signed up for?” For me, leaving Charlotte and following B into the Foreign Service wasn’t about getting an “easy” post and enjoying all the comforts of home – because if I wanted to do that I’d do it at…HOME – it was about exploring different and unusual places while still serving our country. Most people probably think that everyone who joins the FS wants to serve in Paris or London, or Canberra, but, while I wouldn’t say no to Paris (or London), many FS officers actually want to explore the road (or country) less travelled.

Don’t get me wrong, Australia is beautiful and we are enjoying so many things about it, but there is nothing shockingly different about it. I think that is especially true for me because Australia often feels like a Southern Hemisphere version of Canada – lots of polite people obeying rules, enjoying universal healthcare, and spending as much time as possible outdoors barbecuing and drinking beer. Instead of moose, we see roos here, and instead of groundhogs, we see wombats, but the differences are subtle and you have to dig a bit deeper to find them. By contrast, everything about our move to Kinshasa was different and new – I had to use my imagination and creativity at every turn in order to do the simplest things (ie: eat ice cream, a bagel or bacon) – and since my imagination and creativity were in high gear writing just seemed to come a bit easier.

SO what have we been up to since we got here?

We visited Sydney for my milestone (never you mind which…) birthday and can’t wait to go back again – though the Sydney I first visited in 2000 was, not surprisingly given that she was hosting the Olympics, a much shiner version of what it is today. We visited the “coast” and were blown away by the virtually empty beaches with gorgeous views of mountains in the distance.

C on Bondi beach – wearing the same hat I wore on Bondi beach during the Olympics!

We’ve made friends with some magpies who now regularly come to our door to talk to us/beg for food, and we’ve revelled in daily seeing beautiful cockatoos, galah parrots and rosellas – in our backyard, among other places. We’ve made friends with Eric, the half-a-bee keeper, while he helped us remove a swarm of bees from our garden (more about that in another post), and we’ve been lucky enough to make friends with other families here, which has made our transition a lot easier.

We climbed the hill behind our house (a couple of times), had a hail storm, and B and I attended the Marine Corps Ball. C has started – and almost finished – school, or at least the last term of school. As of Friday she’ll be on summer vacation AGAIN. Never let it be said that sometimes the life of a Foreign Service child isn’t pretty awesome – altogether she’ll get 5 months of holidays this year – just don’t tell her that when we leave (if we go back to the Northern Hemisphere) she won’t get much of a summer holiday at all…

All in all it’s been a good couple of months. We are feeling pretty settled and we are looking forward to planning some trips in the new year. However, it’s pretty clear to me that this adventure will definitely be on the low key end of our Foreign Service life so far, and that’s ok, cause low key is good after chaos, and good when you don’t know what will come next…

Kangaroos and Quiet

October 10, 2017 / cdncarolina / 2 Comments

Shhhh…do you hear that sound? It’s the sound of no one yelling “MOMMA!” It’s the sound of no one watching football. It’s the sound of no one packing, or unpacking. It’s the sound of a neighborhood far from the beep, beep, beep of walk signals, and the sirens of a busy downtown. It’s the sound of my first day alone in our new house with nothing to do but sheepishly return to my blog.

I’m going to be the first to admit that I’ve struggled over the last few months. I have grieved the loss of Kinshasa, the Congo, and the people who made up our life there. The fact that I’ve been deep-in-my-core angry at the “new” State Department and the lack of respect it has shown not only to me and the other thousands of EFMs, but also to its own officers, has not helped to get me back in a writing/blogging state of mind. I’ve wanted to come back, but I have not been able to write without ranting and that’s not what this blog is about.

But today is a new day, on a new continent, in a new hemisphere and it’s time I make my way out of my funk.

It’s hard to describe to people what it was like to live in the Congo. For those who live comfortable lives in the first world, it defies description. But it has been even harder to make anyone – even B – understand how profoundly unhappy I was to leave a place that is, in all possible descriptions, a place of hardship. Even now, sitting here in my new and lovely kitchen, with every possible convenience within 10 minutes safe and beautiful walk of my door, I am teary-eyed thinking of the life we left behind.

Maybe it is because, as our first post, I was determined to make Kinshasa a good experience and so my attitude from day one was designed to make me as happy as possible. Maybe it was the fun I had speaking French and reviving a long dormant skill that let me use my brain in ways that are rare once you inch toward a half-century of life. And maybe it was simply the people –American, international and Congolese – and the fact that I had not prepared myself as well as I should have to leave them behind. I miss them. A lot.

Foreign Service life is designed as a revolving door. You rotate into a place, spend a few months, and then rotate back out. Just as you are headed out the door you realize where everything is, and what everyone’s name is, and how to navigate the world and streets you live in. And then, just as suddenly, you are in a place you don’t know how and you have to start all over again. This is where I am now, though admittedly learning how to navigate Canberra – a planned city designed for ease of navigation – will not be akin to learning to manage the chaos of Kinshasa.

My first impressions of Canberra are of calm. The streets are bizarrely empty and the quiet is almost deafening. The only noise is the magpies and the parrots calling from the trees. We arrived during a school break and for the first few days I drove around and rarely shared the road with more than a couple of cars. It was eerie.

C’s school is literally a stone’s throw from the house, and just past that are a couple of great coffee shops and a small IGA. There is even a gym, so when I get inspired I can get back to working out.

We haven’t seen too many (live) kangaroos yet, though B spotted a few while we were driving around over the weekend. Apparently they are everywhere, and they are certainly common enough to be the road kill of choice, but you must have to get accustomed to seeing their brown against the brown of the end of winter grass and brush because we have been peeling our eyes to no avail.

Since we left just as fall was gearing up in Virginia, it is also odd getting adjusted to the upside down-ness of things. The dogwoods and azaleas are blooming here. There are wisteria vines everywhere, and the cherry trees are decorating the roads with their pale pink petals. It smells like my grandparents’ garden in England – rosy and fresh and spring-like. But, it’s still chilly and I want to put on my dark sweaters ready for falling leaves, rather than light jackets ready for spring showers. Lord knows I love a good heat wave, so I am not sad to be following the sun for yet one more summer season, but I am definitely going to be ready for my boots and wooly sweaters (or jumpers if you are Australian – C has already told me she needs a jumper, not a sweater!) in April (see, weird, eh?)

The fact is, no matter how beautiful and utopian Australia is compared to the Congo, I am still going to miss the life and people we had there. But, I’m ready to accept this new reality and work toward making it as joyful an experience as the last two years were for us. And when the door revolves again in 2019, I’m sure I’ll leave with sadness and grief as well. In the meantime, there are new people to meet and make “mine,” adventures to have, and kangaroos to spot.

And the winner is…

July 7, 2016July 7, 2016 / cdncarolina / 11 Comments

It’s taken us a couple of weeks to digest the news of our next assignment. It will be hard for many people to understand, but our initial reaction to being assigned to Canberra, Australia was disappointment.

We made a rookie Foreign Service mistake. We got our hearts set on a particular job at a particular post. It was French speaking, in Europe (so only one flight away from home and dozens of amazing traveling opportunities), with a truly international population, relatively easy pet importation regulations, and with good school options in the Northern Hemisphere system. Instead we got an English speaking post, one of the most homogeneous places anywhere, about as far from our families as you could get on the planet, with some of the most difficult and rigorous pet importation rules in the world, on the Southern Hemisphere school system (Feb-Dec).

So, while we are FULLY aware of our luck in getting assigned to an amazing, beautiful country, we’ve had to take a few weeks to grieve our dream post, and adjust to the different kinds of difficulties built into this new reality. Perhaps most difficult for us will be determining how best to handle Miller. In order to avoid a six month quarantine in Australia (and reduce it to a 10 day quarantine) we will likely have to take Miller back to the US with us in December when we go home for our second R&R. Then, for six months our home here will be empty of his sweet face and gentle presence. I cry every time I think about it. And, at the same time, we will have to rely on family, or friends, to look after him in the US and to ensure that he goes to the vet about a dozen times during those months to have a series of tests to meet the Australian import rules.

Then there are cars. Only right hand drive in Australia, and their import rules are strict on that front too. So we’ll be in a position to have to buy at least one, and probably two, cars when we arrive. We’ll also have to decide whether C will go ahead a grade, or stay behind a grade as we get used to “summer vacation” in December.

And finally, there is community. Kinshasa is a hard place to live and work, but we are surrounded by the most fantastic people who are making our time here amazing and wonderful. This group of people buoys us when we’re down, cheers us when we’re up, supports us when we need help and have been there from us since the moment we stepped off the plane last year.

Canberra is a tourist destination. A large international capital – the safest capital in the world, apparently. We wonder whether someone will meet us at the airport, cook a meal for us when we arrive, take us shopping, show us how to get a cell phone, cable and internet service, tell us what restaurants are good (and invite us along when they go), introduce C to other kids her age, help us navigate the schools, and explore the city with us as people have done here, or will they just assume that we can figure that out on our own in an English speaking first world country?

Maybe it is best that we are still adjusting to the idea of Canberra. I promised myself that I would not “leave” Kinshasa before it was truly time to board a plane. I don’t want to spend the next year looking out the window for the beautiful hills of Canberra and missing the less beautiful, but fascinating, streets of Kinshasa right in front of me. There is so much to see and do here. I don’t want the mirage of clean water and bounteous produce aisles to distract me from seeing the smiling woman in a blindingly colorful dress, balancing a huge basket on her head and a baby on her back, saying “bonjour” to me as we pass each other on the dusty, rutted city streets.

So this is the last you’ll hear of Canberra for a while. This blog is about now, not about a year from now. Next July, when we leave Kinshasa, I’ll turn my attention (after enjoying a wonderful 3+ months in the US and Canada) to Australia and our new life.

Congo is not finished with the adventures it has in store for us, and we are not finished with the things we are destined to see, do and learn, deep in the heart of Africa.

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