Day 334 - Making Lemonade

lemon tree in our backyard

Alex wanted one of two types of trees in the yard of whatever new home we chose when we moved to California, either palm trees or citrus trees. Our new home blessed him with two small lemon trees. The fact that they are small is truly a blessing since we can reach the fruit wherever it grows. There are plenty of citrus trees near ours that tower over the houses that share the lots for us to see what life might be like if our trees were larger, both in terms of the logistics of picking the fruit and the quantities produced, particularly at this time of year.

We didn't know what we had last year at this time because the poor trees hadn't been watered for months before we moved in. We managed to get a few pieces from them last winter, enough to give Alex a thrill when he squeezed the juice from a lemon from his tree into his gin and tonic for the first time. We harvested all the fruit when we started seeing blossoms appearing. Can I even use that term if the quantity fit into one bucket?

Years ago in Berkeley, one of the houses I lived in had a large lemon tree in the back yard. I recall that tree having blossoms, immature fruit, and mature fruit all at the same time, so I looked forward to seeing fresh lemons in a few months. But the variety of trees here must be different. The fruit of everyone's citrus trees mature at the same time, at this time. There is so much plenty. No one seems to need any so giving them away isn't much of an option. 

It is a twist on the saying "When life deals you lemons, make lemonade." Just how much lemonade can one person be expected to make? 

Every day I pick a dozen or so lemons. And at least once a week I use my new juicer to extract juice, cups and cups of juice. I pour the juice into ice cube trays and freeze it, emptying the frozen lemon juice cubes into Ziplock bags so I can make more cubes. There are so many I had to start putting the bags into the spare freezer in the garage.

One of the trees is nearly bare of fruit, the smaller of the two. But I keep spying more fruit hiding in the larger tree. I have printed out dozens of recipes calling for lemon juice so I will have some purpose for all that juice later. In the meantime, I have been taking the traditional route - making lemonade.

by  Daniel Y. Go 

Back in Berkeley, I also made lemonade from the fruits of the tree in the back yard. Strangely enough, that lemonade didn't taste like any I had ever had before or since. Instead of a uniform slightly sweet but slightly sour taste, that batch of lemonade brought two waves of flavor, one very sweet, followed by one very sour. When I found a recipe online, it looked a lot like I remembered the earlier recipe, so I wondered if I would experience that same pair of flavors, one after another. But like everything else in Berkeley, those lemons must have been very different for the lemonade from the lemons from the trees in our backyard tastes wonderful, just a bit sweet and just a bit sour with flavors uniformly delivered with each swallow. I have been happily grabbing a glass of lemonade several times a day, feeling good about using the lemons and getting more fluids with each glass.

But then yesterday I had my session with a nurse on nutrition and diabetes. My fasting blood sugar levels from two tests in a row were just over the line (137 and 132) and my Hemoglobin A1c was just under the diabetes diagnosis point (6.2), putting me in the category of pre-diabetic. That makes paying attention to the nurse's instructions on both diet and exercise all that much more important. She advised that losing just 5-7% of my current weight could bring all those test results back down under the diabetic diagnosis point, but that won't happen without paying attention to what I eat, not just how much I eat, as well as getting regular exercise.

The first question she asked was whether I drank fruit juice. I thought the question was a sign that drinking fruit juice was good. When I replied that I have started drinking a lot more juice now that I have a juicer, she smiled and said I should stop right now. Instead of drinking juice, I should eat the fruit. But lemons, she said, aren't even fruit when it comes to nutrition. In her opinion, lemonade is nothing more than flavored sugar water. And that is not on the approved diet.

Now what? I guess my first resolution for 2014 is to find another positive, optimistic purpose for all those lemons since making lemonade is off the table. Here are a few I thought of today.

• I can put slices of lemon in my water. Or even drops of juice in the water to give it some zing. But that won't make a dent in the supply.
• I can put lemons down the disposal to freshen up the sink. But that seems wasteful.
• I can try drying the lemons to put into potpourri.

Any other ideas?

Happy New Year.

Day 333 - Centre Fihavanana, Antananarivo

by  Maxfear ® 

There was another Sandra in Antananarivo, the foreign service nurse practitioner at the embassy. And the call for Sandra was Centre Fihavanana, an enterprise run by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Antananarivo. The Centre has operated since 1985, providing a safe place for abandoned or abused women. The sisters set up homes in groups of three so that the women would all have two close neighbors they could turn to for help. In exchange for having homes to live in, the women embroider tablecloths, runners, napkins, aprons, and clothing items, especially T-shirts on which they embroider images of the many different types of lemurs. They also made cards combining handmade paper and cross-stitched or embroidered fabric. The women earned the profits, part of which went towards paying for their houses, important for their self-sufficiency and independence so they would not fall back into patterns that led to their being abused or abandoned or to begging, the only means of support most had before becoming part of the Centre's programs.

The Centre also provided health care for the children and training for mothers on how to care for their infants. Sandra volunteered with the Centre each Friday as part of that program.  She weighed all the infants to ensure they were gaining weight consistently. If a child failed to gain weight, Sandra provided the child's mother with instructions for what to feed the child and the Centre sent food home for the mothers as well as they also needed to be well nourished. Children in Madagascar did not look like most children in the west. They had no baby fat, no chubby cheeks. Toddlers in Madagascar looked like miniature, almost anorexic, adults. While I was never able to go with Sandra to the Centre, I imagine her spending much more time than necessary to weigh each child so that she could hold and cuddle them, provoking a smile and laughter to match her own infectious smiles.

Cards made by women
of the Centre Fihavanana

The Centre also provides schooling for street children between the ages of 3 and 12. Some of the children do well enough in the school to be accepted into the state secondary schools. A number of western tourist organizations have teamed up with the Centre, organizing trips for tourists to see for themselves how a very small donation can have an enormous impact. Hilary Bradt, a travel guide writer from the U.K., has included information about the Centre in her guidebook on Madagascar for the past ten years, and she brings groups to the Centre each year.

The year I was in Madagascar, I sent Christmas cards that were made by the women at the Centre. The cards had a cross-stitched design with Best Wishes stamped under the embroidered square. Sandra told me she had ordered Hanukah cards from the women for another friend and the women did beautiful cards with a menorah on each, but they then added the words Merry Christmas under it. The couple who ordered the cards were amused by the incongruity, but gladly collected and sent out the cards. 

I also bought a few cards with two beautiful white doves holding intertwined gold rings in their beaks embroidered on fine linen as well as cards with a cross-stitched pelican holding a baby by two corners of a blanket wrapped around him. I had a hard time parting with them, but I realized I could share the impact of them with others by using the cards to congratulate couples at weddings and the birth of a child.

It was not at all a surprise that Sandra had found the Centre and spent several hours each week with the women, children, and Sisters. Before she joined the State Department, she had volunteered for extended periods in Moldova where she collected watercolor paintings and sold them in the U.S. to raise funds for orphanages in Moldova. She also spent time in Rwanda after the genocide of 1994 that pitted the Hutus and Tutsis against one another. Sandra was able to return to Rwanda when her tour in Madagascar ended, this time with the embassy.

Centre Fihavanana was not my calling. It was the calling of the other Sandra. And I felt blessed to have gotten to know her.

Day 332 - Akany Avoko

My reasons for bidding on a job that would take me to Africa were quite selfish, but once I was assigned, I began to feel called to go there. Once I arrived in Madagascar, I was determined to keep my eyes, ears, and heart open in case the reason for the call was there. Instead, I found what others were called to do in Madagascar. Kathy's call was Akany Avoko.

Kathy and Gary

Kathy was one of two family members who shared responsibilities of the community liaison officer position. She and her husband Gary, the assistant regional security officer, lived next door. For much of the time I was in Madagascar, Gary was on temporary duty in Liberia where a second civil war had been tearing the country apart since 1999. In July 2003, two months before I arrived in Madagascar, the U.S. sent in troops to Monrovia near the embassy which had been under attack earlier. The result was a big gift for me as I had Kathy as my personal guide.

Kathy had learned of Akany Avoko, a children's home and school just outside of Antananarivo, and she was drawn to it immediately. Kathy included the school in many of the cultural activities she organized for the embassy. The managers of the home and the school were careful to ensure that it not be referred to as an orphanage. Some of the children were orphans, but many had been left with the home by families when the parents could not afford to keep them or had been removed from families when the children suffered from abuse. In addition, once a child reached a certain age, he or she could not be adopted. And if a child that age had younger siblings, those younger children also would not be adopted as they did not want to separate the siblings.

    

back of label of earrings made by
children at Akany Avoko Children's Home

    

earrings made by children at Akany
Avoko Children's School

The children who could no longer be adopted remained at the school until they were able to live on their own. In order to ensure they could support themselves and care for other family members when they left the home and school, they were given training in skills such as carpentry or sewing, embroidery, and other crafts. The home and school sold their work to raise funds to support it.

samples of raffia photo frame and placemats and decorative
handmade paper

Nearly all of the items the children produced relied on materials that they recycled. From soft drink and beer cans, the children would cut out designs, sometimes incorporating letters or other design elements from the cans into earrings, bracelets, and necklaces. The children were also taught to weave raffia, a native plant (the finest raffia in the world comes from Madagascar), and to create decorative paper from a variety of plants. These were items that Kathy arranged to have available for embassy staff to buy as Christmas gifts.

assistant public affairs officer Paul
at the embassy's Christmas party

As Christmas drew closer, Kathy, Paul, and I went to Akany Avoko for the school's Christmas program. It was held during the afternoon since electricity wasn't reliable at the school. In fact, when the program was about to begin, the electricity went out and the program had to be delayed until the power was restored or batteries could be found for the cassette tape player that provided the music for much of the program.

The school was managed by a Frenchman and his Malagasy wife. As the wife opened the program, she explained that the music and dance in the show was possible due to volunteers from a musical group in Antananarivo who offered classes in music, art, and dance for the children. She further explained that the addition of these cultural lessons to the curriculum of the school had made a tremendous difference for many of the children. Where there had been discipline challenges before music, art, and dance were part of the lessons, there were no discipline problems afterwards. Children who had previously been bored in traditional lessons found something that excited them in music and dance. And the program made that very clear.

If I had been able to spend more time in Madagascar, I would have enjoyed spending more time at Akany Avoko. But it was Kathy's call, not mine. 

Day 331 - Elephant Birds, Dwarf Hippos, and other Mysterious Creatures

elephant bird egg on the left by  edenpictures  A dinosaur that lived well into historic times, the elephant bird probably survived in Madagascar due to the lack of competition and lack of fear of humans. Since the birds survived until the 17th century, humans had plenty of time to discover how to hunt them, although it is likely they became extinct because of disease introduced with rats which arrived along with humans arrived. It didn't get its name because it was as big as an elephant or because it had a large bill but because it was believed it could snatch up and carry off a baby elephant. From the skeletons found on the island, the elephant birds reached ten feet in height and close to a thousand pounds in weight.  Like other large birds we know, such as ostriches and emus, the elephant bird was flightless.

a dwarf hippo
 by  Jen McKenzie

The eggs of an elephant bird held the equivalent volume to 180 chicken eggs. There have been claims that a complete elephant bird egg has been recovered from the sea as far away as Australia. In April of 2013 a complete, partially fossilized elephant bird egg was sold at auction at Christie's in London for more than $100,000. The elephant bird eggs for sale in the markets in Madagascar are reconstructed from pieces and go for much less, but since the birds are technically dinosaurs, I refrained from picking one up to tuck away in my suitcase.

There are reports that scientists may manipulate fragments of the DNA of the elephant bird, extracted from the eggshell, to resurrect it, a process called de-extinction.

a giraffe beetle
by  ledgr 

The oversized elephant bird is at one end of the size range of extinct animals. At the other end is the undersized dwarf hippo which also coexisted with humans for at least 1,000 years, perhaps longer. Dwarf hippos were not native to Madagascar. They probably migrated across the Mozambique channel from west Africa where another species of hippopotamus, the pygmy hippo, still exists, while the channel was shallow or while there were islands in the channel to help bridge the 225 miles that separate the island from the continent. But the dwarf hippo may have arrived in Madagascar as a normal-sized animal and grown smaller over time through insular dwarfism, a process of animals becoming smaller over successive generations when the area for foraging is small, such as on an island. The eyes of both the extinct dwarf hippo and the extant pygmy hippo of east Africa are on the sides of the animal's head instead of forward-facing on the top of the head as is the case for regular hippos.

In the 1990s, an anthropologist studying recent extinctions in Madagascar collected stories about an animal that had been seen in a west coast fishing village. Several villagers independently described the animal as recently as 1976 as resembling a hippopotamus that when frightened fled under water. No other animal in Madagascar fits that description, leading some to conclude that the dwarf hippo has only recently become extinct.

fossa
 by  csyork65 

tomato frog   by  David d'O

Madagascar has plenty of other unique wildlife including tiny frogs; insects including the long-necked giraffe beetles; geckos of all colors; chameleons; the lion-like fossa, the natural enemy of the lemur which is not in the cat family at all but rather is a relative of the monkey; and radiated tortoise. The inclusion of the fossa in the DreamWorks movie Madagascar was one touch that impressed me as it was entirely unnecessary for the story, but an accurate reference to Madagascar native animals. Since nearly all the large animals of Madagascar have all become extinct, and slash and burn agriculture has destroyed much of the natural habitat of the remaining animals, nearly all animal life in Madagascar needs protection.

Day 330 - Lemurs Galore

Ring-tailed lemurs at nature reserve east of Antananarivo

The animals that most people know come from Madagascar are lemurs. But until I arrived in Madagascar, the only lemur species I knew about was the ring-tailed lemur. They look like thin cousins of racoons, but with much longer tails. But there are so many more types of lemurs that are as different from one another as Chihuahuas are from Great Danes.

My first weekend, the assistant public affairs officer, Paul, and the community liaison officer, Kathy, offered to take me out of town to see some of the sights, including lemurs in a nearby nature reserve. We set off into the countryside where the hills were covered with terraced rice paddies. Even in Antananarivo there were rice paddies along the road between our houses and the embassy. Also in the fields were the local cattle, the zebu, which looked as much like buffalos as they did like cattle. The zebu are just one more connection between Madagascar and south Asia as the animals are native to that region. 

by  peach flavour 

Along the side of the road, we saw charcoal sellers, evidence of the forests being cut down for both this purpose and to make room for more rice paddies. What I hadn't expected, however, was that so much of Madagascar was covered by evergreen trees. I knew about the centuries old baobab trees that look like they are growing upside down with their roots in the sky  in the western areas of the island. Those trees once stood towering over dense tropical forests but now stand alone as the other vegetation in those forests have been cut down. The baobab is considered sacred, resulting it their being spared. An area between Morondava and Belon'i Tsiribihina in western Madagascar is the home of the Avenue or Alley of the Baobabs and is the center of local conservation efforts. In 2007, the Ministry of Environment, Water and Forests granted it temporary protected status, the first step towards it becoming Madagascar's first natural monument. Ecotourism is an important aspect of Madagascar's economy and visitors to the island frequently make their way to the Alley of the Baobabs. As I was not there for tourism, I missed seeing these magnificent plants.

black-and-white ruff lemur But the highlight of this first trip into the countryside, and every other trip thereafter, was the appearance of the lemurs. Lemurs are not to be confused with monkeys. Lemurs are prosimian primates, a line that did not evolve from the same common ancestor as monkeys, apes, and humans but rather evolved at the same time developing similar morphological characteristics. Lemurs have opposable thumbs, for example, but they do not have prehensile tails. They use their long tails for balance, but they cannot hang from them as monkeys can.

brown lemur

We arrived at a small nature reserve that Paul had visited before and were disappointed to find it closed. But there wasn't anything or anyone to keep us out, so we hopped over the bamboo fence that did little more than mark the outline of the park and headed down the paths that were lined by bamboo trees, many with platforms high above where the lemurs rested. There were no ring-tailed lemurs in this reserve. Instead, there were brown lemurs which look like pudgy cats with short ears and long tails, and black-and-white ruff lemurs which resemble monkeys dressed in tuxedos, and sifakas or dancing lemurs which do not walk or run but rather leap into the air and move sideways while throwing their arms in the air. Paul had just begun to describe the sifakas' unusual motions when a line of them headed towards us from the other direction. They probably were expecting to be fed, although there were bunches of bananas on all the platforms, making them easy pickings for hungry lemurs.  I chose to believe they were either curious or had danced our way in welcome. Here's a link to a video that shows first a black-and-white ruff lemur coming down from a tree as we approached in our canoe and then a sifaka will appear almost like a ghost dancing through the middle of the screen. An assortment of brown lemurs join them.

sifaka lemur, resting

Those three lemur types, the brown, black-and-white ruff, and sifaka lemurs, along with thr ring-tailed lemurs were what I saw most of during my stay. But there nearly a hundred different lemur types and new varieties are still being discovered. Hunting endangered species of lemurs for food and keeping lemurs as pets are both illegal in Madagascar, although both activities continue. An Italian couple I met in Antananarivo had a mouse lemur, a nocturnal variety, as a pet. The name was most appropriate as this lemur was no bigger than a mouse.  In addition, there are monkey lemurs, hair-eared dwarf lemurs, dwarf lemurs, giant mouse lemurs, fork-marked lemurs, aye-ayes, woolly lemurs, true lemurs, bamboo lemurs, greater bamboo lemurs, red ruffed lemurs, sportive lemurs, koala lemurs, and sloth lemurs. Many live in remote areas and only come out at night. A stay of many years would be necessary to be able to see them all.

Indri by  Daniel Rubio :)  Today, the largest lemur is the indri which is about the size of a baboon although a variety as large as an ape once roamed the island. The indri does not have a prominent tail like other lemurs, and they are monogamous, living in family groups of the mated pair and their developing offspring. An adult indri will not take a new mate until after the death of his or her partner. They live and sleep in trees, only coming out of the trees early in the morning which is also when they can be heard singing their distinctive songs. There are many myths about the origin of the indri which most Malagasy consider sacred, perhaps because of all the lemurs, the indri seems the most like humans. The indri is a protected species as the slash and burn agricultural methods have reduced their habitat, even in protected reserves. While Alex was in Madagascar, we spent Christmas in an area where colonies or indri were known to frequent, but we did not get there early enough to see them. We did hear them and I will never forget the sound. Here is a link for you to check out why.

Day 329 - Arrival in Madagascar

by  torbakhopper  Madagascar is the furthest-away place I have ever been for more than a visit. Iran, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen are all further east, but Madagascar is much further south. The initial flight from Washington to Paris was the usual 6 to 7 hours, but the flight from Paris to Antananario was twice as long - 12 hours. My flight arrived at night so I didn't see much of the red island until the next day on the way to the office. And once I saw Madagascar, I wasn't sure I was really in Africa, a sentiment many Malagasies share. Madagascar, officially the Republic of Madagascar and previously known as the Malagasy Republic, is the world's fourth largest island. While it sits just off the eastern coast of Africa, the land mass has more in common with the Indian sub-continent than with Africa. And the people of Madagascar have more in common with the people of Indonesia than with the people of Mozambique, its neighbor to the west.

The Madagascar land mass split from India about 88 million years ago, resulting in an isolated environment for the native plants and animals to develop into the unique breeds that exist there now. Over 90 percent of Madagascar's wildlife is not found anywhere else in the world. However, much of the biodiversity is threatened by encroachment by humans. Because so much of the island has been denuded of trees in order to be turned into charcoal for cooking, the rains run off the island, bringing its red soil into the sea, making the island appear to be bleeding. 

Like India, Madagascar has streaks of semi-precious stones underground. Garnets, amethysts, sapphires, topaz, tourmalines, citrines, aquamarines, moonstones, opals: all can be found in Madagascar. The markets are full of stalls offering these stones, rainbows of color arrayed for all to see and for the lucky ones to buy.

by  glowingz  The island was uninhabited by humans until just over 2,000 years ago when people from Borneo traveled in outrigger canoes along the coast of Indochina, the Indian subcontinent, the Arabian peninsula and finally along the east coast of Africa until they reached Madagascar. While most people in the cities wear western styles now, the traditional clothing worn by the people of Madagascar looks like the sarongs I saw worn in Thailand and Indonesia. The traditional religion involves ancestry worship. As is the case among traditional Chinese, several years after the burial of family members, the bones are removed from their burial places and are kept with the family during a period of celebration, then re-wrapped, and buried again. Where people live in houses made of wood and other impermanent materials, the bones of their ancestors rest in stone, brick, and even marble mausoleums since life is considered temporary and death, forever.

by  Praziquantel 

During the golden age of piracy in the 17th and 18th centuries, pirates took refugee in the coves on Madagascar. The island wasn't unified until France absorbed the island into the French colonial empire. The island gained its independence from France in 1960. When I arrived, the last elected president, Marc Ravalomanana, had just come to power. The world, especially the west and the United States government, had great expectations of him.

That was the stage onto which I landed.

Day 328 - Christmas Around the World, Part II

I wondered if my first Christmas in Germany was going to my loneliest because I had only arrived a few months before, I didn't have my Christmas things around me, and it seemed as though everyone else had somewhere to go for Christmas. Since no one invited me to join them, I decided I should invite a few to join me. But I didn't really want to learn that everyone else had plans to confirm that I was left out. So I came up with a back-up plan. I called a friend from my German class, Janice, who was in Bonn, and asked her if I could spend Christmas with her if it turned out that those I invited had plans already. She agreed, so I issued invitations. It turned out that several people agreed to come to my house for an early dinner on Christmas Day even though they had other plans for later, so I didn't travel to Bonn until New Year's Eve.

The loneliest Christmas I ever spent overseas turned out to be our first year in paradise, Barbados. I had arrived in Barbados right after Thanksgiving, and Alex and his son arrived the week before Christmas. Because Barbados did not have leased housing, we were stuck in a hotel room until I could find a house to rent. That is where we were for Christmas.

No one invited us to spend Christmas with them. I think it was because landing in Barbados is such a shock to most Americans that the tendency is to withdraw. The people I worked with had either just arrived (and were in shock) or were close to leaving (and were busy getting ready to leave). I suppose there were some who knew Alex and his son would be arriving and they thought we would like some alone time.

But on Christmas?

by  smcgee 

We joined the other guests at the hotel, all of them tourists, for a festive Christmas buffet on Christmas Eve. That, and the fact that the TV reported that President Nicolai Ceaucescu and his wife Elena of Romania were shot by firing squad that morning, is all I remember from that Christmas.

Our second Christmas was much better. One of the secretaries, Brenda*, invited Alex and me along with her boss and his family to her house for Christmas Day. She had picked up a large piece of driftwood from the beach in front of her house, painted it white, stuck it in a bucket and hung her ornaments on it as a Caribbean Christmas tree. The only black mark on the day was when Brenda's boss' wife said something about the embassy needing some good admin people. I felt compelled to counter that the embassy needed some more good admin people. Conversation died at that point for a few minutes.

Christmas in Moldova rivaled Christmas in Iran for discomfort as our Codru Hotel apartment in Chisinau was on the city's, not something so small as a building's, central heating plant. Most office and apartment buildings relied on steam heat which was never turned on before October 1 and was turned off in March. The year we moved to Moldova, however, the entire steam delivery system had to be repaired, delaying the start of the plant by a month or more. Again, the laws of physics didn't seem to apply as the heat never rose to our level. We used to go to work on the weekend to keep warm. In the evening, I went to bed very early so I could warm up under the covers.

Christmas tree in our Hotel Codru
apartment

Our second Christmas in Moldova, we were living again at the Hotel Codru, but by this time we had filled the apartment with furniture which helped warm it up. And we also invited lots of people over all the time. Body heat, as well as conversation, added a lot to our comfort.

That year, we also celebrated with the local employees. It turned out not to be such a good idea, but we Americans all brought in many wrapped gifts for a New England gift exchange - the kind where everyone has a number and when your number is drawn from the hat, you pick out a present from the pile unless someone has already opened a present you would like instead, in which case you can take that one and the person who had it gets to pick again. It probably has a few other names, too. It wasn't such a good idea because the local employees had a hard time understanding why anyone would want to take away a gift from them. It was fun for the Americans, but mystifying or even cruel in the eyes of the local employees.

While I was in Yemen, I got away twice to spend time with Alex. The first time was after the travel conference I attended in Budapest, and the second was at Christmas when I joined him in England where we stayed with his mom. Alex's son was still living in England at that time, so it was a great opportunity to spend the holiday with Alex's family - Mom, son Simon, brother Wayne, sister-in-law June, their son Steven and his wife Shelly.

Alex at the embassy Christmas party

Alex and I were able to spend Christmas together while I was in Africa as well. I was in Madagascar, the first of my three African countries. Alex flew in just before Christmas, in time for the embassy part at the ambassador's residence. After that party, Alex and I drove with Gary and Kathy, my next door neighbors, to a nature reserve where we had separate cabins, spent the days wandering the reserve to watch and interact with the lemurs, and explore the other unique plants and animals on the island, the fourth largest in the world.

*a name, not necessarily the right one

Day 327 - Christmas Around the World, Part I

I always found a way to celebrate Christmas while I lived overseas, although I often had to do without the little things that I associate with that holiday. Little things like Christmas trees. And lights. And lefse. And while my biological family was not with me for any of my around-the-world Christmases, I usually had a stand-in family until I got my own family - Alex and his son.

Iranian Christmas Tree

My first Christmas in Iran was colder and bleaker than many I had spent in Minnesota because my roommate Annie and I had moved from our second floor apartment above our landlord's home to a third floor unit in a building with nine apartments. That apartment had central heating, but that didn't mean it was warm. In spite of all that I had learned in science classes about heat rising, the heat in that building seemed to hover right around the ground floor.

There was a doctor's office in the ground floor and we understood that the doctor wanted the temperature in his office to be comfortable for his patients. I don't recall what his specialty was, but it seemed to Annie and me that his patients must not have had to take off many clothes to be examined. Our apartment was so cold that I used to keep my clothes on the top of the bedclothes so I could drag them under the covers in order to dress to avoid having to put my feet onto the cold floor.

We had no tree that first year. Instead, a small evergreen plant that a boyfriend who turned out not to be so reliable had given me served as our holiday tree.

The second year in Iran, Christmas coincided with the most inexplicable Shi'ite holiday of them all, Ashura. That meant everything was closed for Christmas: restaurants, theaters, night clubs, everything that might be construed as providing entertainment. We could get together in our homes, but we had to be careful not to be overheard. I also learned about the difference in the Orthodox calendar which is about two weeks behind our calendar. So while Christmas coincided with Ashura for us, there was another opportunity to observe Christmas just around the corner, on January 7.

I spent that Christmas with my surrogate family - Patty, Cheryl, Neal, Shirley, and Maureen. There may have been others there as well, but those five were the core for me. We exchanged gifts, but mostly for the fun of watching one another open them. For example, Patty received a bottle of White Out because we all knew her alter-ego, Patty Black, who appeared after a few drinks and whose tongue had an acid edge to it. But we loved both Patties and had a good laugh when she opened the package.

by  Resident on Earth 

The following year, I was in Romania where it seemed inevitable that all the foreign lecturers would go somewhere else for Christmas and New Year. Since two of my friends from Iran, Bill and Shellagh, were living in Paris, that is where I headed. Some may claim April is Paris is the best time to be there, but Christmas in Paris is pretty magical.

I saw the Eiffel Tower, Cathédrale Notre Dame, la Basilique du Sacré Coeur de Montmartre, Musée du Louvre, Château de Versailles, Centre Georges Pompidou, Arc de Triomphe, the Champs-Élysées, all on the list of the top 10 must-see sights of Paris. Another couple from Iran joined us for Christmas dinner, extending my pleasant experiences of Iran and helping me push away the unpleasant memories.

Next stop: Germany. While Christmas in Paris was magical, Christmas markets in Germany are enchanting. They are a little like a carnival fair with plenty of hawkers selling items such as scarf rings, hand-held vacuum cleaners, and silver polish, but there are so many wonderful and colorful things to see and food and drink to smell and consume that the commercial side isn't distracting. Since my household effects hadn't arrived yet by Christmas, I didn't have my usual Christmas decorations to put up in my apartment. After a couple of afternoons wandering through the Christmas market, I decided I had to have a tree. I bought a very small pine tree and then stocked up on wooden ornaments from the market to fill it with jewels.

by  mv_touristboard  I also was introduced to the Wichtel, Germany's secret Santa, although sometimes a Wichtel is known to play tricks, not just give gifts. My Wichtel must have known my household effects hadn't arrived because I got more and more ornaments for my tree throughout the days leading up to Christmas, My second Christmas in Germany was spent in England where friends from Romania, Gayle and Roger, lived. In addition to getting an introduction to life in England, Gayle and Roger introduced me to their other houseguest, a teacher from China on an exchange program in England for a few months. Having her with us as we traveled in their neighborhood was a good balance for my observations. Every time I noticed something, such as how small many of the homes in England are, she observed the opposite from her Chinese viewpoint, that homes in England are large. She helped keep things in perspective.

Roger let Gayle and me pick out the Christmas tree that year. We got one just the right height, but it had a kink not noticeable from the angle we looked when picking it out, making it lean over ever so slightly.

PJ and Heather in front; Sandra, Zofia, Pete,
and Marge in back

My first Christmas in Doha was spent with my surrogate family in that country: Pete, Zofia and their children PJ and Heather, and Marge. We played Pictionary and I couldn't believe how well those kids understood one another without words. PJ would scribble something on a paper and Heather would announce the word on the first guess. If they were cheating, I never figured out how.

By the second Christmas in Doha, I had met Alex, but he flew back to England to be with his son. I knew they planned to travel through Scotland so when I heard about Pan Am Flight 103 crashing over Lockerbie, I was frantic to know where they were. Alex didn't think to call to let me know they were fine, although on Christmas Day when I was at the house of our friends Alex and Jean, he called five times just to be sure I was OK and we were having a good time.

That's what happens when a telephone guy goes on vacation - he makes phone calls home all the time, except when I want to hear from him.

Day 326 - Sandra's Excellent African Adventure

by  alhaan86  Because Yemen had been such a pleasant surprise, when it was time for me to bid on an assignment after being back in the U.S. for two years, I started thinking about where else in the world I had thought I never wanted to serve, and one place came to mind immediately: Africa. I was on track to retire in two years, and I was certain there would always be WAE opportunities in Africa, the region with the largest number of small embassies staffed by those with the least experience (because we equate size with grade so only the most experienced employees get to fill the important positions at large embassies). Assuming I did a decent job, I could look forward to being sent back to African posts after retirement. But I didn't want experience in just one African country; I wanted to experience them all. One job would bring me as close to that goal as possible: roving management officer. A roving officer is very much like the WAEs I had come to know in that a roving officer gets sent to places where vacancies occur suddenly and thereby create a hardship for the post. But where WAEs can only work part-time, rovers work full-time. It didn't take long for me to realize roving officers were considered more valuable than WAEs because rovers don't have to leave when they had worked as many hours as they could during a contract year. It was all too common for a post with an expected six-month vacancy to have it filled by three WAEs who each had only two months left to work on their contracts.

There was also a financial incentive for me to fill that roving job. While I would be spending my time in Africa, I was assigned to Washington where locality pay bumped up my take-home above what it would have been were I assigned to an African post by 15%. And once I had been at a hardship post for six weeks, I would also collect the appropriate hardship differential, at least 15% and as much as 25% at the highest level of hardship. And I would collect per diem for every day I spent outside the United States. That all meant I could get ahead on our retirement savings as well,

I expected to spend my final two years with State as a rover, offering the possibility of working at eight or more posts, mostly embassies, in that period. I fully expected to be such an awesome management officer that when I retired the people I met in Africa would all ask for me when they needed temporary help, just as we had requested John when we needed a TDY communicator in Doha. The prospect of working - and traveling at the same time, still on somebody else's nickel - for six months of the year and then having six months of each year to do whatever I wanted to do during retirement seemed too good to be true.

And it was.

Plans are nothing, planning is everything.

I planned to spend one year in Africa before coming back to the U.S. for a break and then return to Africa for the second year. Alex and I planned to get together in Europe for some time together during that first year. That isn't as strange as it may sound since many times it takes less time to get between two African countries that are relatively close to one another by flying to Paris or Rome or London on European air carriers and then back down to the next country than to rely on local air carriers.

But that isn't what happened. 

Instead of being able to get together with Alex between assignments somewhere in Europe, it became clear very quickly that I would never know when I would be leaving a country until the last minute. That made it difficult for Alex to plan to travel to meet me. He was able to travel to Africa once where we spent Christmas together that year.

Instead of spending a year in Africa before returning to the U.S., I spent only nine months in three different African countries. Midway through my expected stay in the third country, I received an offer that seemed too good to pass up: the ambassador-designee to Nigeria asked me if I would agree to serve as his Management Counselor. Note the difference in title from what I have referred to up until now. I had been the management officer at several posts, but Management Counselor is a title appropriate for the Senior Foreign Service. Foreign Service Officers do not take the rank of the positions we fill. Ours is a rank-in-person system in contrast to the Civil Service rank-in-position system. So I could fill that Senior Foreign Service position even though I was still a mid-level officer. Filling that position wouldn't guarantee I would be promoted into the Senior Foreign Service, but it would sure help. The offer of the position was a very big deal.  Even if it was in Nigeria.

After consulting with Alex and my parents, each of whom I expected would reply with "Are you crazy?" but didn't, I agreed to accept the position in Abuja, Nigeria. That meant I had to leave Africa much earlier than I had planned, but it meant I would be able to spend another three years in Africa when I returned.

Plans are nothing, planning is everything.

I returned to Washington. Our son was living in our home in Virginia. Alex gave up his job and returned to Washington from San Francisco. I was assigned to the job in Nigeria. We painted our entire house ourselves because we didn't have time to find someone to do it for us. We had carpeting put in on two floors of the house and we put in a laminate floor on the main level ourselves, again because we didn't have time to find someone to do it for us. I used up nearly every hour of annual leave I had accumulated. We separated everything in the house into piles of what we wanted to take with us, what we wanted to have shipped, and what needed to stay in the house for our son. We had Nigerian visas in our passports. We had a date set for the packers to come in to box up and remove what we wanted shipped, but I still hadn't received my orders. The day before the packers were scheduled to come, I called to ask about my orders and I was told the Office of Medical Services wouldn't issue a medical clearance for Alex to come with me. Without a medical clearance, no orders would be issued. My assignment to Nigeria was curtailed before I had the chance to go there.

Plans are nothing, planning is everything.

Our son had been looking forward to having the house to himself for three years. Instead, he was now living again with his parents, one unemployed and one who had to hustle to find a job in Washington.

Things worked out. They always do. But my plans took a beating.

Day 325 - While Actually Employed

by  SalFalko  I knew there was life after retirement. I had been introduced to the While Actually Employed, or WAE, opportunities all the way back to my assignment in Doha when John was sent as our communicator while Steve was on leave in Australia to be with his wife for the birth of their second child. John wasn't the first TDY or temporary duty communicator, but he was the most memorable. He became part of our small embassy family so quickly that when we later needed a TDY communicator again, we asked for John. The TDY coordinator wasn't used to being asked for a specific individual and warned us that she couldn't make any promises, but she did send John. We ran into John again in Barbados and eventually spent a very pleasant weekend with him and his wife in Pennsylvania a few years later. In Moldova, we had a number of TDY staff, some sent from Washington where they otherwise worked, some, WAE. But it was Yemen where I began to see that working on a WAE basis after retirement was something quite desirable. One couple who arrived as a pair to help us were Ann and Allen. Ann was a retired consular officer who was one of several TDY consular officers sent to help Pat while Cynthia remained in Aden. Her husband Allen had been a foreign service officer back in the 1960s, although he resigned after a few years and chose instead a career in education. When he retired from teaching, Ann decided it was her turn to explore career options. She took the foreign service exam and entered the service just before she turned 60, right at the age limit. When she retired and explored WAE opportunities, Allen learned as a former Foreign Service Officer he too could work part-time for State. Allen was the first WAE GSO to fill in after David resigned. I think his first week on the job was the week of the ambassador's plane being hijacked.

Another of the WAEs who worked for me in Sanaa was Irene who also filled in as GSO. Her husband, Mel, was a retired regional security officer who worked for a company that provided training to law enforcement and security personnel. The ambassador had run into him while she was in the U.S. after the attack on the USS Cole. The ambassador arranged for Mel to come to Yemen to set up a training program for Yemeni security staff. Irene was our bonus.

Many more WAE staff were sent to Aden, some of them previously quite senior within State. When the FBI abandoned their Aden offices and moved back to Sanaa, these retired senior officials ended up in Sanaa, purportedly working for me. It was a bit intimidating to have the man who was the executive director of the Near East Asian Affairs bureau while I was the administrative officer in Doha nearly 15 years earlier working as GSO in Sanaa. I was especially pleased to have the opportunity to work with Georgia who had previously been the administrative officer in Doha and Sanaa. I knew how similar our situations were because people who knew her told me all the time. But since she was always ahead of me, she didn't know about the parallels in our personal and professional lives. She had also met her British husband in Doha, for example.

Working after retirement on a WAE basis is less than half-time work, but the idea of continuing to travel while the government paid for both the travel and accommodations made it a very attractive prospect for my post-retirement life. My career plans were set at that point for me to retire after two more years, at my 20th anniversary with State.

But plans, they have a way of not working out.

Day 324 - Ordered Departure

by  Loui Loui 

Each embassy must have a emergency action plan (EAP) and an emergency action committee (EAC) that develops, modifies, and approves the plan. At the time I was in Yemen, once approved, the plan was sent to Washington with a copy - and I do mean ONE copy - stored in a safe at the embassy because we wouldn't want the bad guys to get those plans. The fact that almost no one else within the embassy could get a copy wasn't as big a problem as it might at first seem. More on that later. But lest I leave an inaccurate impression, I want to state now that much has been done to improve access to those plans. My time in Sanaa was pre-Intranet, so hard copies were the primary documents. Soft copies existed in so many variants it was difficult to keep track of which was the final version. And the soft copies didn't have maps or other pictures worth a thousand words in them.

EAPs are the best example I can think of to prove the truth of President Eisenhower's statement, "Plans are nothing, planning is everything." I was rarely involved in situations requiring implementation of EAPs since my guardian angel kept me out of harm's way, but it was clear to me that no amount of anticipation could make a plan fit an actual event. Plans required that we identify essential positions and non-essential positions so we could quickly identify who would be ordered to leave and who must stay if the situation deteriorated. Ahead of events, position titles were handy shortcuts for these decisions. One consular officer, usually the chief of the section, would be identified as essential as resident American citizens would need assistance. The chief of the political section would be declared essential because that person was expected to have good working relationships with the leaders in the local government. The ambassador was designated essential. In the management section, the chief of the section was designated essential, but positions such as the financial management or human resources officers would be on the non-essential list.

But when an event occurs that triggers the need for ordered departure (we rarely used the word evacuation because that conjures up very negative images), the facts on the ground require adjustments. For example, in a deteriorating situation, the ambassador is often recalled to Washington either for consultations or to make a point with the local government about our government's displeasure with their actions or inaction. Or the chief of the political section may have just arrived and not yet met all the local officials, but a more junior member or the economic section chief has. Or the situation looks like it may require complicated logistics which makes the general service officer essential. Or the political officer may be a single parent who has no one to send the child to for the period of separation. The planning that went into developing the plan answers the question of how many people should remain behind, but the specifics of who should go and who should stay cannot be decided until the event happens.

When an embassy is in ordered departure status, no government employee or contractor is allowed to travel to the country without the specific approval of the Under Secretary for Management. The importance of that will be clearer later.

Another factor that no EAP can figure in is the experiences of those at the embassy when the crisis point hits. In our case, the ambassador was the DCM in Kuwait when Saddam's troops invaded. And she regretted not being able to get more of the embassy staff out of the country before they were beseiged behind the embassy walls. She didn't plan to repeat that, so her inclination was to order more of us to leave than the plan called for.

by  Rush Murad  Alex was able to come to Sanaa only once while I was there and his timing couldn't have been worse. He arrived just before we ordered dependents and non-essential personnel to leave. Because he was not on my orders, he couldn't be ordered to leave, but the ordered departure completely screwed up our plans. We had planned to travel to the Hadramaut to see the Manhattan of the desert and other interesting archeological sites. We also had planned to fly to Abu Dhabi for a few days. The ambassador insisted we not go to the Hadramaut as traveling there overland would take us very close to tribal areas that were not under control of the government. And if we left Yemen for Abu Dhabi, we wouldn't be able to return. It would not do for a request to the Under Secretary for permission for me to return because the request would have to explain why I was allowed to leave in the first place.

Another couple got caught up in the ordered departure as well. Pat was the head of the consular section. Her husband Steve had traveled with a TDY consular officer to Ethiopia where Steve had been a Peace Corps volunteer. They planned to be Ethiopia for just a few days. But the ordered departure began before they could return. The consular officer's suitcases were still in Sanaa. He had to travel to his next destination without them.

Steve's situation was more complicated. He couldn't return to Sanaa, but he didn't want to return to the U.S. because their daughter was getting married in Europe within a month. Pat and Steve planned to take their Rest and Recuperation (R&R) trip to attend the wedding. They had already made a significant adjustment in their plans as Pat had been assigned to two years of language training, one in Washington and the second in Tunis. Their plan had been to travel for the wedding from Tunis once Pat had completed the second year of training and then arrive in Sanaa for her assignment. But Pat was asked to give up the second year of language training in order to arrive in Yemen a year earlier when her predecessor made a last minute decision to retire. Pat gave up the training, arrived early, and now the ordered departure happened two weeks before she and Steve planned to travel for the wedding. The ambassador encouraged Pat to begin her R&R early. She did. Since Steve couldn't return to Sanaa, he also traveled to the wedding location early. I assumed (and you all know how that word can be broken down) that Steve's expenses for the extra weeks would be covered by the evacuation allowance (the only context where that term is used). I learned much later that because Pat traveled on R&R orders, their unexpected additional costs were considered their own, at least the first time the travel vouchers werer submitted. I encouraged Pat to resubmit them with an explanation from me, but I don't know if that happened.

Another couple who were expected in Sanaa also got caught up in the ordered departure after first adjusting their plans to accommodate the embassy. Michael was a first-tour officer who was assigned to Sanaa as general services officer. He expected to complete 30 weeks of Arabic, 4 more than junior officers usually were given for language training, because when he was assigned in the fall of 2000, we expected GSO David to complete his tour which would end in August of 2001. But then David resigned in December. So we asked Michael if he could arrive early in the summer instead of at the end of summer. This complicated Michael's plans because he and his wife had hoped to spend time in Italy with friends on their way to Yemen. After some negotiating, Michael agreed to come in May, provided the embassy would allow him take time off in September so he and his wife could attend a friend's wedding in the U.S. We agreed, and the bargain was struck. Michael kept up his half. We didn't do so well on our end.

First, the ordered departure occurred a week before Michael planned to leave Washington for Sanaa. His departure was delayed. But they had already sold their house, so they didn't have a place to stay. There is a predeparture allowance to provide ten days in a hotel, but the ordered departure extended past that period of time. They hadn't been evacuated, so the evacuation allowance didn't cover them. No one in Washington was willing to find a solution to their situation. I kept contacting new offices on their behalf until someone understood the need for their orders to be amended to provide extra days for predeparture.

House on a rock

Eventually the ordered departure was lifted, Michael arrived and got into the swing of things right away. At the end of his 30 weeks of Arabic training, Michael had achieved a higher score than most people did with two full years of training. We were very lucky to have him on our staff. He arranged for the farewell reception for the ambassador at one of the most dramatic locations near Sanaa, the house on a rock. The ambassador and I left Sanaa on the same plane at the end of August. In early September Michael and his wife returned to the U.S. to attend that wedding as we had agreed. 

And then two planes flew into the World Trade Towers in New York and another flew into the Pentagon in Arlington, VA on September 11. That resulted in another ordered departure from Yemen. That meant Michael couldn't return to Yemen. But no one from the embassy or the Near East Asian Affairs bureau of State contacted him to tell him he couldn't return. I sent him an e-mail message, his first indication that things had gotten complicated again. This time there was no question that he and his wife would be reimbursed for their expenses while the ordered departure continued. Once the ordered departure ended, Michael rerturned to Sanaa, but his wife decided not to return. She had never been all that keen to live in Yemen. But since they had sold their house, she had nowhere in Washington to live. I think she went to stay with her family elsewhere on the east coast.

Michael went back to Sanaa, but didn't want to be separated from his wife. The State Department hadn't yet started advising new employees that they would be required to serve tours without their family members, so he wasn't prepared for that. He requested his assignment be curtailed. Several others had done the same after the first ordered departure and the Department approved nearly all of them. But since this was Michael's first tour, his request was denied.  Michael stayed a bit longer, but he decided eventually to follow his predecessor's action and he resigned from the Foreign Service. 

The Department lost a very talented employee.