visitor

by Alex Posted on March 28, 2013

“Grandma go airplane.”

That’s what Flynn has been saying to anyone and everyone who will listen, in both English and French, since his Grandma Jeanne took off a few days ago after a five-week visit to Benin. He doesn’t seem as broken up about it as I would have expected. It’s just a fact.

“Grandma go airplane.”

Yes Flynn, you’re right, she did.

Flynn of course loved having one of his grandmas around, and I loved that spending all day every day with an English speaker allowed Flynn’s English to catch up with his French.

So, it seems only appropriate to recount Grandma Jeanne’s visit for you through some of the new phrases Flynn picked up from her along the way…

  • “I will catch you Grandma” — Said when chasing her around the yard, which was often.
  • “No bed, go couch” — Grandma Jeanne passed on at least one of her bad habits to Flynn: sleeping on the couch (with the TV on). I haven’t succeeded in breaking this one yet.
Tired boy.
  • “Under blanket, mommy bed” — Under the blanket in mommy’s bed is the only other possible bedtime option, according to Flynn.
  • “Ready, set, go!” — Said before diving headfirst over and over again onto “mommy bed,” which is what seems to always happen there, rather than sleep.
  • “Ohhhh Grandma…” — Said, of course, in the tune of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse refrain, “Ohhhh Toodles…” Grandma Jeanne watched a lot of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse during her stay, although I’m not sure she minded. After communicating with Flynn’s nanny via cave man sentences and gestures, hearing some English was probably welcome, even if from Mickey.
  • “Flynn go swimming pool” — Yes, we often went to the swimming pool, especially when you, like Flynn, categorize “swimming pool” as any body of water in which you can get in, be it an ocean, a lagoon, a bath tub…
Hi there swimming pool.
  • “It’s okay” — Once at the “swimming pool” (lagoon) we forgot Flynn’s floaties. It was a little nerve-wracking for us, but he wasn’t fazed. On the few occasions when his head fell under water and we quickly snatched him up, he giggled and assured us, “it’s okay.”
  • “For Flynn” — Accompanied by a territorial snatch whenever a new toy began to emerge from Grandma Jeanne’s suitcase…
  • “How about… cookie” — Yes, Grandma Jeanne shared many cookies. Flynn learned that “how about…” could also get him ice cream, outside, a walk…
  • “Mmm mmm good” — Rarely said about anything other than cookies or ice cream.
Here Grandma, take this pickle. It's not "mmm mmm good."
  • “How about… double decker bus” — Grandma Jeanne made the mistake of once doing a Google image search of airplanes for Flynn. She never got to use the computer again, what with Flynn’s constant demands for helicopters, trucks, diggers, firetrucks, ambulances, buses and even double decker buses, which he learned about from Grandma Jeanne.
  • “Flynn need that” — Said emphatically when “best toddler toys” was entered as a Google image search.
  • “Pick you up” –A little confused about his pronouns, yes, but this still got him what he wanted.
  • “Grandma draw… horsie” — Grandma Jeanne spent a lot of time drawing with sidewalk chalk anything requested of her, usually animals.
  • “Cock-a-doodle-doo” — Speaking of animals, Grandma Jeanne taught Flynn what all kinds of them say, from a rooster to a donkey to cat to a cow to a sheep to a pig to a duck, and more.
Hee haw.
  • “Go outside car” — Though she stayed home with Flynn while I worked all week, on weekends we headed out to show Grandma Jeanne what Benin is all about, from markets to art vendors to stilt villages and beaches.
  • “Come on” — Said when grabbing Grandma’s hand and leading her over to whatever he wanted her to be…
Come on, this way.
  • “Grandma, come back” — Despite not seeming terribly broken up when “Grandma go airplane,” he does miss her.
Come back.
Posted in Travel | Comments Off on visitor

gone fishing

by Alex Posted on March 11, 2013

Andy’s back in DC and my mom is with me here in Cotonou. One good thing about this arrangement is that unlike my husband, my mom shares my love for seafood. So after a year and a half in Benin I finally made a trip to the fish market.

Notice there are no women on that dock? Yeah, it’s because they’re not allowed. While the men haul fish off the boats, the women are waiting under a shelter with big coolers filled with slabs of ice. In go the fish to sell to shoppers like us.

It’s crab and lobster season, but having never prepared or cooked either of those crustaceans ourselves we decided to keep it simple and stick this time with shrimp. And what shrimp they were.

Of course, it wouldn’t be an authentic expat-in-Benin cooking experience if everything went perfectly as planned. Our dreams of giant coconut shrimp were shattered when the grocery store that always has shredded coconut this time didn’t in fact have shredded coconut. Sigh. West Africa wins again, as they say. We settled for simple fried shrimp, which were good too.

 

Posted in food | 2 Comments

the beninese walmart

by Alex Posted on March 10, 2013
A small section of Dantokpa, West Africa's largest market.

“So what do people buy at the market?” my mom asked on our way there.

“Everything.”

“But I mean, like, food? Clothes? Books?”

“Yes, all that and more.”

“Are there other places to buy things?”

“Well yes, but there’s more at the market.”

To best comparison I could think to draw for her was to the Walmart that served as the commercial and social hub of our rural Midwestern hometown. Sure, you could buy stuff at the drug store or the few remaining specialty stores downtown, but why would you do that? Everything was cheaper at Wal-Mart, and plus, going there doubled as an activity. You were bound to run into countless others you knew and spend the afternoon gossiping.

Fried, dried, or fresh, there's fish galore.
Peppers and spices of all varieties.
You can get a pedicure, even.
Or purses.
There's so much it's hard to know what to buy.

For outsiders like us the West African market experience can be a little overwhelming. We looked at fabric and rugs and purses, but in the end all we came away with were some sunburns.

Posted in Benin | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

an unusual catch

by Alex Posted on March 3, 2013

We went to the beach this weekend.

Nothing unusual there. There’s not a whole lot else to do in Benin, so it’s rare a weekend passes without a beach trip.

At the beach we saw dozens of people from local fishing villages working together to cast and pull in giant nets.

Nothing unusual in that sight either.

What was unusual was what they caught.

Let’s me warn you. While I found this fascinating to observe, most others around me couldn’t stand to watch and averted their eyes. There was talk of pooling money to offer to buy the creature and set it free, although in the end this didn’t come to pass.

I’m not posting anything graphic here, but scroll at your own risk if you don’t want to see a cute sea animal no longer living happily in the sea.

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I was lounging up under the paillote so was quite far away. Flynn, however, was down by the water with his grandma and got a front row seat.

 

Posted in FS Life | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

flag day take two

by Alex Posted on February 24, 2013

Loyal readers of this blog (all three or four of you) may recall that we blogged incessantly about my second tour bidding last summer, and then when assignments came out, silence. When we finally posted it was to tell you that the news was not what we’d hoped.

Now, you may have noticed something similar happening — lots of blogging about Andy starting A100 and our bidding preference. And then, Flag Day came and went, and nothing from us here on the blog.

But fear not, dear readers. Our silence is not because we got bad news. It’s simply because being a geographically separated tandem couple is a little more challenging than either of us bargained for. Plus, immediately from Flag Day Andy headed off to the airport to meet Flynn and me in London for a long weekend. (More about that to come.)

So, we’ve been a little busy.

My apologies that this announcement is over a week overdue, but let me finally share with you our good news. On Flag Day Andy received…

Yes, that’s a DC flag. Andy will be doing a one-year management job in Foggy Bottom. And we’re thrilled.

It’s funny how time changes things. When I was bidding we were so excited about being scattered off to some exotic faraway place. We really would have been fine with going anywhere… except DC. I mean, who joins the Foreign Service to be posted in DC? Or so we thought then.

But after two years abroad we actually welcome some time in the land of Targets and Trader Joe’s and toddler playgroups. More importantly, Andy accepting a one-year DC job is our best bet for keeping our family together in the long run.

What happens next?

Well, he starts work on Monday. In the meantime, Flynn and I will stay in Benin through the summer to finish my tour. Then I’ll work in DC for a little while before we head off somewhere new in early 2014. My current onward assignment will be cancelled, and sometime in the fairly near future we’ll be bidding on our next post together off of a new list.

Clearly there are still some hurdles to clear in getting us posted together, but this is a big step in the right direction.

Posted in Tandem Issues | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

love

by Alex Posted on February 13, 2013
Flynn's chosen valentine.

Hello and Happy Valentine’s Day from London, where Flynn and I are loving the cold, the sidewalks, the sites, the toy stores, and most of all the food. More to come soon about our brief but very welcome respite from West Africa.

Posted in Travel | 1 Comment

bid lists and priorities

by Andy Posted on January 28, 2013

The most exciting day of A-100 is flag day, when you find out where and how you’ll be spending the next two years of your life. The second most exciting day is the day you receive your bid list, when you find out what your options are. The weeks in between are spent arranging and rearranging bids, considering and reconsidering preferences, and trying to figure out where some of the lesser-known cities are located.

When Alex went through this three years ago, we thought long and hard about our list and what our preferences were. We wanted somewhere Francophone and in Africa. We also wanted a hardship post, but not one that was particularly dangerous (we prefer our hardship in the form of wandering goats, not wandering rebels). Alex wanted a public diplomacy job. All of those preferences helped inform our final list. A few posts met all of them. A lot of posts met some of them. And a small handful met none at all.

This time, though, things are different. When someone asks me what my preferences are, I really only have one – we want to be posted together as a tandem couple. Simple right? Sure, we’d love to be a little closer to home and it might be nice for Flynn to continue his French, but the only thing we really, truly care about is being together as a family.

It sounds pretty straightforward. Just one little preference. But with the simplicity comes a troubling dichotomy. Unlike last time, when there was a whole spectrum of possibilities, from great to disappointing, and everything in between, now there are only two possibilities – together or apart.

Maybe that’s a little bit of an exaggeration. From what we understand of the tandem options (of which there are a relatively small number), a couple do look better than the others. And no matter which of them we get (if we do, in fact, get something that will allow us to be at the same post – and that is no guarantee), we’ll remind ourselves that just a few weeks ago we wondered if we’d be together at all.

Even with our one preference, we still managed to arrange and rearrange our choices over and over again, trying to find the way to best express what we’re hoping for. But with my bid list submitted, we’ve finally let it come to a rest.

Now there’s nothing to do but wait.

Posted in A-100 | Tagged , , , , , | 8 Comments

what a difference a year makes

by Andy Posted on January 22, 2013

The first day of my Foreign Service orientation was last Monday and, unlike nearly every other day when we’re at the training center in Virginia, on this first day we met at the State Department headquarters in DC. It’s a part of town I know pretty well.

I took the crowded morning metro to Foggy Bottom and went up the escalator. I was greeted by rainy and unusually warm January morning. I couldn’t help but notice that just a few yards to my left was the hospital where I had surgery almost exactly a year ago, and that I’ve visited at least a dozen times since.

As I walked to the State Department, I passed the building housing a small food court used mostly by students from George Washington University and where Alex and I sat somewhat stunned after my diagnosis last January. I remember looking around, so uncertain about the future and so bitter at all the smiling students who weren’t just told they had cancer. It didn’t make sense, but I wondered how they could be so happy at a time like that.

It seems so dramatic, now, to look back and think about how upset I felt. After all, everything has been great since then. The cancer turned out to be just about the least dangerous type one can get and every follow up I have had has shown no sign of its return. I don’t think of myself as a “cancer survivor.” I save that moniker for the other people I saw getting chemo – the ones who knew the names of all the nurses and other patients and who had obviously been in the chemo room before and who obviously had a much tougher road than I did.

Even so, I felt amazed to see that food court again and to realize that despite all that has happened in the last year, I still ended up back here, but under circumstances that are so much better.

Posted in Personal | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

the best kept r&r secret

by Alex Posted on January 20, 2013

In the Foreign Service, certain posts entitle you to an R&R or two during your stint. What does this mean? Basically just that you and all eligible family members get a ticket to your post’s designated R&R spot (typically the closest major city — a Paris, London or Sydney, for instance) or, alternatively, to anywhere in the U.S.

You know what counts as the U.S.?

U.S. territories.

You know what’s a U.S. territory?

The U.S. Virgin Islands.

Paddle boarding.

I’ve done quite a bit of Caribbean traveling and I assure you the USVIs are as pristine as Caribbean islands come.

Magen's Bay.
Giant iguanas.

So you’re in the Caribbean, but there are some added perks. You don’t have to use your passport. You don’t have to change any money. You can use your U.S. cell phone. You can go to the grocery store and buy Doritos.

These aren’t necessarily things that matter to the average traveler, but to us, whose regular lives are filled with otherness, this slice of Americana is comforting.

Can you imagine a more picturesque spot for zip lining?

If the government’s going to pay to send you back to the U.S., can you really justify visiting Poughkeepsie instead of this?

Perfection.

Worried about the expense? Don’t be. You can camp at a beautiful beachside campground, Cinnamon Beach. You can rent a house at any price point. There are hotels too, of course, and if you time your trip right you may even be able to get the government rate at some of the swankiest ones. (For future reference, we lucked out in late November/early December.)

Pelican.

So what’s there to do in the Virgin Islands? Well, all kinds of stuff.

Jellyfish.

We did a lot of relaxing out on the beach, swimming, paddle boarding, kayaking, windsurfing and snorkeling. If you’re a hiker, St. John is mostly national parks. If you’re a shopper, there are tons of places to get fine jewelry on the cheap in downtown Charlotte Amalie. If you’re a scuba driver, well, the chatty guy next to me on the airplane swore it doesn’t get much better than here.

St John harbor.
Frenchtown on St. Thomas.

We did a sunset sail out on a yacht. We took ferries to other islands. I ate  a lot of seafood. Andy ate a lot of jerk chicken.

Fish tacos.
One of the two most famous local joints.

True to our typical travel tendencies, we also did some anthropological investigating to learn as much as we could about life on the island. Because American citizens don’t have to worry about pesky citizenship or job permit issues, there’s an interesting assortment of quirky mainland “expats.” We met someone who stopped as part of a cruise and never returned his boat. We met someone who came for a friend’s wedding and ended up selling his return ticket in the classified ads — apparently a common move before 9/11 and new airline rules. We met someone who couldn’t get an academic job in marine biology so decided to come live his passion and be a tour guide. It’s probably a good thing a cute little little toddler was waiting for us back in the States, or else I can’t promise we wouldn’t have made a similar decision.

Ritz Carlton on St. Thomas.

One thing I’d warn you, though: rent a car. Sure, you can get by without one. There are island taxi services — basically pick-up trucks converted to seat a bunch of people in the back. But they’re pricy and not terribly reliable. We think we actually saved money having a car, and it was certainly more convenient.

Trunk Bay on St. John, famous for its underwater snorkeling trail.

We’re not the sort of travelers who go anywhere twice, but for here, we may make an exception.

Life is good.

Sadly, the rules are different for home leave, the month or two between tours when diplomats have to re-acclimate to American life and culture.

During home leave, territories don’t count as the U.S. (unless you actually come from one of them).

It’s really too bad. Weeks of camping out here? Sigh. It would have been grand.

C’mon Virgin Islands, time to make a bid for statehood.

Posted in Travel | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments