PCS

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The Mechanics of Settling into DC

The Washington Monument from the fountain at the WWII Memorial

This post is long overdue. One could even say it has become OBE or Overcome By Events in State Department parlance. And yet I cannot quite shake the thought of putting pen to paper in an attempt to explain at least some of the processes we went through to unexpectedly curtail from an overseas tour to Washington, D.C. To explain what is largely a bureaucratic logistical exercise based on policies and procedures laid out in the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual but can become exasperating and stressful.

Moving the Cats from Guinea In a Hurry. Traveling internationally with pets has never been without its challenges. {see here and here and here for example] On airplanes, my cats have traveled cargo, excess baggage, and in-cabin, but also in the car when we drove across the U.S.-Mexican border to Ciudad Juarez. Transportation though is just one piece of the puzzle. The greater challenge is the @%$&! paperwork. It has to be done quickly and correctly in a short timeframe within the 3-7 days of travel. Before going to Guinea, Europe had instituted new rules that required all pets transiting the EU to meet the same requirements as if they were entering those countries. Though we needed an extra document endorsed by the United States Department of Agriculture / Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA-APHIS) for the plane change in Brussels, that was all given that our travel originated in the U.S. However, coming from Guinea, designated as a high-risk rabies country, one needs to have a titer test completed at least three months before travel. This would not be possible with my shortened departure timeline. Therefore, we could not fly to the U.S. through Europe. Instead, we took Ethiopian Airlines via Addis Ababa, which required us to fly nine hours in the opposite direction first, subjecting ourselves to 34 hours of travel time door to door. And the cats to 34 hours in their carriers. This included Ramen, our new diplo-kitty. It was stressful, as usual, but we managed, again.

Temporary Lodging. When transferring from an overseas posting to the U.S., a Foreign Service employee can utilize the Home Service Transfer Allowance or HSTA. It helps employees and their families to defray costs upon their return. It can cover lodging and some per diem for up to 60 days, with some possibilities to extend should household goods not yet arrive. This gave C and I a place to stay while I worked out my next steps.

Before our arrival, I had reached out to the same company that provides temporary lodging for government workers that had housed us the year before. I wanted us to be in the same apartment building we had lived in during my French training as I figured it would provide the easiest post-curtailment landing for my daughter. I did not know where we might be after the temporary lodging, but at least I could initially ensure she would be somewhere familiar and would start at the same elementary school she had been at before we went to Guinea. We move so frequently in the Foreign Service that living in a place more than once is a rarity. Not only were we able to get the same building, but when we checked in we found we had been assigned the exact same apartment we had vacated only 7 months before! Alas, the HSTA covers for only so long and I needed to find something more permanent.

Enrolling the Kiddo in School. Once we moved to Guinea, I thought I was done doing the school enrollment for a few years. Yet here we were suddenly back in northern Virginia. Luckily, I had been through the process once before when preparing for my Guinea assignment at the Foreign Service Institute in Arlington, and the schools in the area are very familiar with military and foreign service families moving in and out of the area. Thus the paperwork was pretty straightforward. One thing I could not do in advance though was the tuberculosis test, which is mandatory for enrollment. Though our Health Unit at the Embassy in Guinea could perform the test before departure, a test conducted while still in a country with a high incidence rate of TB will not be accepted.

It had taken longer to arrange the curtailment than expected – with bureaucracy it is always a waiting game – and thus our flight got us back to the U.S. after school had been in session for a week after winter break. To get my daughter C enrolled as quickly as possible, the TB test was a top priority. After landing, we went through immigration, gathered our belongings, got a taxi to the hotel, and then with my father’s car waiting at the hotel, we headed straight to a clinic to get that blood draw. C was then able to start school a few days into the following school week.

[Not so fun fact: Later screenings found that my daughter has latent TB, most likely as a result of our serving in Guinea. The majority of persons with latent TB in the U.S. acquired it overseas. She had to undergo long-term monitored treatment for it. Just one more gift from Guinea and an unexpected side-effect to our lifestyle.]

The Search for Permanent Housing. As a Foreign Service Officer, there is not really any housing that is permanent until one leaves the service, thus permanent housing refers to the lodging one lives in for the majority of the tour. Overseas that is one’s assigned housing. In the U.S., it is the housing the employee finds to live in.

With my 4 years of college living in dormitories, my 7 years living overseas with various study, work, and travel, and the combined 14 years overseas with the government, I have not had a whole lot of experience looking for housing. Though I had found a remote assignment and could have lived anywhere, like my condo in Florida, I felt that 1. professionally it would be better for me to be in DC, and 2. personally it would be better for my daughter to be where she had been before. When I took her to school the first day back, a friend of hers from the year before spotted her, ran toward her, and they hugged while spinning around as if they were in a movie. I knew then that staying in the DC area would be 1000% the right decision.

However, knowing you want to be in a certain area and finding housing there are two very different things. House hunting is exhausting. There is research into what one is looking for and then checking out what is actually available on the market. Then setting up viewings. Each place has positives and negatives and I imagine C and I living in each one. In many ways, it feels similar to the bidding process we go through to get our next assignments. Then one finds a place and has to apply and hope the other side likes you too.

Thankfully, I absolutely lucked out and the fourth place we look at is a gem and the owner likes us and picks us over the other potential renters. Then, because I have lived in furnished places for decades, I had to buy furniture. I had odds and ends such as a rocking chair, a decorative bench, two wood storage cabinets, a piano, and many wall hangings, but I did not own a sofa or a bed, end tables or a TV stand, dressers or desks, bookcases or lamps. I expect that seems odd for someone my age, but it must be fairly common among those with this kind of nomadic life, right? Even though I tried to buy economical pieces, all the expenses did add up. Still, there was a bit of fun to the shopping spree.

After all that, it is little wonder that I was not very keen to pull up stakes again only six to 12 months later and decided instead to remain in DC. Every move just comes with so many challenges; it never seems to get easier. It might indeed be getting harder the older I and my daughter become. Yet there are many positives to being here and C and I look forward to spending some more time here before we head back overseas. Now that the mechanics of settling in have given way to feelings of being settled.

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Coming to America Pandemic Edition: The Final Days and the Journey Back

It has been about six weeks since we departed Malawi. I have needed this time to recuperate from the move and the weeks (months? year?) leading up to it. Undertaking an international move at any time always comes with its challenges and stressors. Add in family members, a nanny, a cat, and a pandemic and things can really leave one mentally, emotionally, and physically drained. Through much of my Home Leave I have cycled through some complex feelings as I try to come to terms that my daughter’s life and mine in Malawi were in the past. I am finally able to write.

The last days in Malawi were hard. Due to some personnel gaps and a definite COVID-19 third wave that impacted Embassy staffing (a return to near 100% telework) and an inability to get temporary staff from Washington to Malawi, I again stepped in to handle some emergency Consular cases on top off completing some final political reports. Having things to work on was important as I was the last of my cohort to PCS (Permanent Change of Station; i.e. move internationally with a change in assignments), and no longer really felt I belonged in Malawi. U.S. colleagues I had spent three years working with had all departed. Others were on leave for 3-4 weeks. COVID has ensured that meeting new people was difficult, if not impossible.

But it was harder for my daughter. As an only child she can generally entertain herself well, but school was out, her best friends had left Malawi for good – heading to their next postings – or vacation, and all but a few suitcases of our things had been packed and shipped. Although there were a few kids around we had COVID tests approaching to allow us to depart Malawi and enter the US and I could not risk opening our very small bubble. I had stayed in Malawi for four years, in part to give her more stability, but those last few weeks I felt like a pretty terrible mom. And in that last week, my independent daughter, who had never, ever, verbalized any interest in a sibling, in fact had said she did NOT want one, asked if during our time back in the US I could adopt her a kid sister. (The answer, for many obvious reasons, was an emphatic NO). This lifestyle comes with some amazing opportunities, but also some pretty hard realities.

And then suddenly it was time to go. We departed on a Wednesday, so we had our COVID tests on Monday, 72 hours before departure. The 24 hour wait seemed interminable. And then the results – Negative for us all! – hit the inbox and I could finally let out some of the breath I had been holding. Wednesday morning was about as boring as one can expect sitting in one’s empty house – that is about to become someone else’s house – eating the last bit of food, doing the last bit of cleaning, until the Motorpool driver arrived to ferry us and all our suitcases to the airport. Luckily (?) I had one last emergency visa to attend to at the Embassy to give me an hour of purpose, and a colleague checked one last political point. I was still needed!

Arrival at the airport, without leaving something behind, was the next phase to relax a little. All our suitcases: check. Child: check. Cat: check. Nanny: check. My sanity…check back for that later.

But the airline had not seated us together despite my going to the city center office a week before to make this specific request. Sigh. After some demanding and groveling, definitely not my finest diplomatic moment, that took at least half an hour and involved several employees and trips to other offices, we managed to get seats close to one another. My nanny, who had never been on a plane before, looked a little scared. My daughter, who did not want to be parted from the nanny, looked sad. Me, I was frustrated and starting to feel quite sure I had left my sanity back at the house, maybe under the bed?, but we had to accept the situation and move forward. Then the COVID test results checks, my handing over Embassy badge and phone to my colleagues (my last tether to my position there), immigration and security, and we made it to the lounge and then boarding the first plane. As we took off, I could let out a bit more of that held breath.

But not all. We had the Addis Ababa transit gauntlet still ahead of us. I will note a few lessons learned. One, traveling with a large block of extra passports looks suspicious. Old passports are a record of travel and C and I have quite a few – 12 past passports to be exact. I travel with them in my carry on to keep them safe. Yet, at the exact moment when the security person riffling through my bag found them, it dawned on me how very Jason Bourne (if Jason Bourne was a bungling idiot) this might look. I got an odd look, then a question: What are THESE? But my rushed explanation must have found a sympathetic, or simply tired, ear, and she shrugged and put them back. I dodged a bullet, in the form of having to explain myself in enhanced screening, with that shrug.

Two, do not have your child conduct air travel with light up shoes. In all the hullabaloo of preparations it did not occur to me that my daughter’s sole pair of sneakers – which light up and have a charger – would cause security issues. [Insert face palm emoji] Of course they did. I enjoyed an extra 15 to 20 minutes at security trying to explain the concept of her shoes. They wanted me to light them up to show them, but I had never charged them, did not have the charger, and they had ceased functioning long ago. I explained this to one person, then another, then possibly a third, as they ran the shoes through the security machine repeatedly. At one point I told my daughter it was highly likely we would need to leave them and she would have to travel in her socks. She didn’t love the idea. I didn’t either, but I had passed the point of caring. Then suddenly we were told we could continue with the shoes. We hightailed it away as soon as we could.

Three, traveling with a cat in cabin is getting trickier every year. When I first traveled to China with two cats in cabin, I had developed a system of dumping (gently!) the cats into a pillow case so I could carry them through security while the soft kennel goes through the machine. I have read that cats find this temporary soft prison comforting. And that this method reduced the possibility of a scenario of a freaked out cat, jumping from my arms, possibly bloodying me in the process, and leading to a mad chase through an airport. I have a vivid imagination and can see exactly how that would happen. Now, I less than elegantly shoved my one feline, who had wizened-up to this technique and did not want to participate, into the pillowcase; her black tail swishing angrily out one end as I walked through the metal detector with as much grace as I could muster. For some reason the male security agent thought I had a baby – stuffed into a pillowcase. [Insert a shoulder shrug emoji] He made a cooing sound. But when the kennel came through and I then shoved a furry body back inside, the agents, too, wizened up. They demanded to know what I had just held through security. (I will note here that to my great relief, the security gate was nearly empty — there was no line of angry passengers waiting for my circus to end). This led to some discussion and displaying of the now rather pissed off cat. But I was then asked to walk back through security with the cat in my arms sans pillowcase. My cat, who hates to be held, must have been terrified enough, as she did not move a muscle, while scanning the airport wild eyed. I held her in a death grip, pretty wild eyed myself. Convinced the furry creature I held was indeed feline and not human, and not a security threat, we were allowed to proceed.

Waiting at the boarding gate though, I heard my name announced over the loudspeaker. I thought, perhaps I have been upgraded, and will have to sadly turn it down due to my entourage. But no, the Ethiopian Airlines agent wished to inform me that he had seen I was traveling with an in-cabin pet to the U.S. and unfortunately the U.S. was not allowing any pets to enter. This was false. About two months previously the Center for Disease Control had suddenly announced an ill-timed, ill-coordinated, and ill-planned ban on dogs entering the U.S. from 114 countries. This “ban” (though not a full ban as there are ways, at least for the time being, for pet owners to obtain a waiver with certain, though often difficult to get, information) was for DOGS only. I had a cat. But I had already learned that several other airlines had taken advantage of this CDC action to discontinue pet transport. I was seized with a sudden fear that Ethiopian had decided, that day, to follow suit. But apparently, the Gods of Travel, were again on my side and simply mentioning my pet was a cat led the agent to simply nod and walk away.

We made it on the flight to the U.S. I released a bit more breath. I had one more travel hurdle ahead of me. I was bringing my nanny with me to the U.S. As a single parent, I had struggled in the past to find child care when in the U.S. Although my daughter is now 9, she isn’t quite old enough to be at home alone, and sick days, school holidays that do not match mine, teacher work days, weather-related late starts, early dismissals, or cancellations can wreck havoc on a parent’s work schedule. However, and I am going to oversimply this because it is rather complicated, when a foreigner enters the U.S., Customs and Border Patrol (i.e. Immigration) usually gives a period of stay of up to six months. I needed to ask for the maximum period of stay of a year. For that I would likely have to go to “secondary.”

If you have ever entered the U.S. at an airport or a border, you are greeted by a CBP agent, who has only so long to review your information and ask questions. If additional questions or details are needed, those frontline officers do not have the time to do it, so one gets sent for additional screening or “secondary.” Although I was exhausted by 22 hours of flight time, 28 hours of travel time, all the snafus, and all the stress of preparations, I needed to be on the ball when we landed and presented ourselves the CBP. The first officer was very nice, but had not heard of the type of visa and said we would need to present our case in secondary. I was prepared to do so. What I was not prepared for was the hour wait in the additional screening area. This was not my first time to secondary as during my last Home Leave I had been selected for the honor and when I lived in Ciudad Juarez I was pulled into secondary a few times when re-entering the U.S. from Mexico. But this time, I had asked to go there.

There we waited. And waited. And waited. We saw many many people arrive, but few people leave. CBP seemed understaffed. I am sure some cases were complicated. Though I do not know CBP work first hand, I have certainly utilized CBP information in Consular work and I imagine the kind of information they see on their screens and the questions they need to ask are similar in many aspects to visa interviews. We were all tired. I clutched the pile of paperwork I had prepared to present our case. I watched the clock. C and her nanny, JMC, watched videos together and played word games, but they were bored and confused too.

At last we were called up and again I lucked out. The officer had previously been military stationed abroad with his Foreign Service (diplomat) wife and he knew exactly the kind of visa we had as they had researched it as well. The interview and review of documents did not take long and soon enough we were released with a one year period of stay stamped in the nanny’s passport. (And wouldn’t you know it, as we walked to get our luggage we ran into the first CBP officer just getting off shift and he stopped to ask me how it went. He was genuinely happy for us and said he was glad to learn about this type of visa. I love that kind of full circle stuff).

As we came out the double doors from security and immigration, I let out that last bit of air I had been holding in. We had made it! Hello, USA.