single parent

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5 Pros and Cons on Being Posted to D.C.

It has been a year since C and I returned to the US after curtailing from Guinea. Now that we have been here awhile and begun to really settle in, I think its time to talk about the positives and negatives of Washington, D.C. as a place of assignment such as I did for Ciudad Juarez, Shanghai, and Lilongwe. (Sadly, we were not in Guinea long enough for me to experience many of the “pros.”)

The Pros

1. Greater Autonomy.  Living overseas as part of a diplomatic mission comes with a few extra rules, requirements, and restrictions.  There are the mandatory radio checks – call ins to the Marines Post using the Embassy-issued radios to make sure they are in working order in the event of an emergency.  These could be weekly or monthly depending on the Post.  We also must submit an “out of town locator” every time we travel, domestically or internationally, for security and accountability. 

In some of my posts, like Ciudad Juarez, Malawi, and Guinea, mission personnel were prohibited from taking public transport.  In Malawi and Guinea, one could not drive outside the city limits between sunset and sunrise, which within 15 degrees of the equator means half the day.  When I was in Ciudad Juarez, we were unable to drive beyond the city limits further into Mexico and even some parts of the city were off-limits to us. 

At each of my posts, due to either high visa numbers (Shanghai and Ciudad Juarez) or a small staff (Malawi and Guinea), scheduling vacation has been quite the production.  Taking a big chunk of time off during the busy summer transfer season, like this past summer, was very unlikely.  Even during my previous stints in the U.S. with the State Department I could not as the Foreign Service Institute allows for little leave during training. 

But now?  No radio checks, no phone trees, no out-of-town locators, no special travel restrictions.  And vacationing is a whole lot easier!  While not all D.C. offices might be so accommodating, I am very glad for mine.  It is nice to have, at least for a little while, far fewer persons from work involved in my free time. 

2. Mail That Arrives Fast. Gone are the days of waiting weeks and weeks for our mail to arrive. In Ciudad Juarez, we had a post address in El Paso, Texas, just across the border, and mail staff would pick it up every few days, so it might take only a week to receive our mail. In Shanghai, we had the Diplomatic Post Office (DPO) but our post was routed through Hong Kong, so the delivery times were closer to 10 days to two weeks. Yet, in Malawi and Guinea, mail took quite a bit longer; on average it would take 3-4 weeks, though sometimes longer.  For Halloween, I would ask C what she wanted to be in August so we would be sure to have a costume. I would place orders in early November for Christmas and her birthday or risk them not arriving in time. But now? I can now place an order online with a retailer and have it within a few days, if not sooner. It seems quite miraculous. 

3. Public Services and Spaces. While some Foreign Service Officers may spend their careers wholly or in part in developed countries, I have leaned toward the less developed, more off-the-beaten-track locales. There have been positive aspects to every place I have lived and served, but one category of things, which are often taken for granted when one has them and greatly missed when one does not are public goods. For example, sidewalks. One of my favorite activities is a nice long walk. Shanghai had many great sidewalks. Ciudad Juarez had a limited number. But they were nearly non-existent in Malawi and Guinea. While I do enjoy walking in an urban environment, there are also many public walking and hiking trails. Or biking, if I ever get around to buying myself a bicycle again. I also rather like public transit and although the U.S., with Americans’ love of the automobile, isn’t exactly a mecca of such, in Washington, D.C. and the cities immediately surrounding it, the bus and metro system is pretty good. Then there are the public libraries (oh, be still my voracious reader heart), public parks, and playgrounds. And museums! The Smithsonian museums of Washington are amazing and free. And schools: my daughter attends a wonderful public school she loves and is thriving in. Even consider emergency services. While the somewhat regular sounds of firetrucks and ambulances (my apartment building is within a mile of two fire stations) might sometimes be annoying, I recall how limited fire, rescue, and police vehicles were in Malawi and Guinea, and I am grateful we have these services. 

4. Activities Galore. I have tended toward serving in more “make your own fun” kind of posts where there are often fewer locally organized activities and places to visit. One of the (quite a few) reasons we left Guinea were the few activities for my daughter. There were no summer camps or community centers or parks. While the school offered a limited number of after school activities, there was no late school bus for those who participated in them. I worried my daughter was missing out. Now that we are in Northern Virginia, she is spoiled for choice! The school offers many after school clubs and sports activities and that very important (especially for a working single mom) late school bus. C is participating in chorus and technical theater at school as well as math tutoring, guitar, and Scouts in the community. This past summer she attended summer camps focusing on space, tennis, and writing code. She has expressed interest in getting involved in some of the school sport teams and also maybe taking skateboarding, ice skating, or Irish dancing in the community. All of that and so much more is available!

There is also just more for C and I to do in and around town. In the year we have been back we have visited the Museum of Illusion, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Museum of Asian Art, the National Natural History Museum, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Planet Word Museum, the National Zoo, and the U.S. Botanical Garden. We also attended two Washington Nationals baseball games, and saw Cirque du Soleil, the musical Evita, and a traditional concert of the Christmas Revels. There are just endless opportunities for recreation here.

5. Friends and Family. Living the nomadic life we do with so much time far from the U.S., we often miss out on seeing our family; and with so many friends also in the Foreign Service (FS) it is often difficult to catch up with them as they are scattered around the world. But an upside of now living in Washington, D.C. is my family is from the area and live not too far, there are friends from different parts of my life living here, and every FS family has to cycle through Washington at some point. In the past year, C and I have twice been able to see my sister perform on stage with her community theater group. We also attended my brother-in-law’s birthday party. My aunt came up to stay with us for a few days and we traveled down to her in Jacksonville for the Labor Day weekend. In March, we went roller skating with a group of people we served together with in Malawi; in June we met up with a FS friend and her kids at the Natural History Museum for a “Night at the Museum” family event. When friends from Guinea spent a few days of home leave in D.C., we got together with them and another family who had served in Guinea for a day of food and conversation. When other friends from our Malawi days visited D.C. in October, we headed out to Cox Farms for some traditional American fall festival fun. C was able to spend several days in New York with her paternal grandparents during the summer and Thanksgiving at her dad’s in Kentucky. There has been so much more, but the point is that being in the U.S., and especially in D.C., has given us the opportunity to spend more time with friends and family than we have in the past few years combined. 

The Cons

#1 Cost of Living. Moving to Washington, D.C. has meant an adjustment in the personal finance department. Depending on which index you look at, D.C. may be listed as the fifth, seventh, or tenth most expensive city in the U.S., but it all points to shelling out more bucks to live here. Rents are particularly high and as a single mom, I am feeling the pinch. When overseas, our housing is part of our benefit package and when I have been in the U.S. on training between assignments, the Department has paid for my housing as part of per diem. This might sound a bit crazy (and I know after I say this I may lose quite a bit of sympathy points from non-Foreign Service readers), but this is the first time I am paying rent and electricity in over a decade. I do get the full Washington, D.C. locality pay, a bump in pay based on the cost of living in certain locales, but I, of course, am no longer receiving the plus up in pay from post differential (added compensation for service in foreign areas that differ substantially from the U.S.) or the cost of living adjustment (COLA; a bump in pay to counteract higher costs in another location). I am also just paying more in activity costs for all those great things we can do. But, I will say, with our wonderful library, my book costs have gone way down. 

Ramen surveys the chaos of the living room after delivery of our HHE

#2 Smaller Housing and ALL Our Stuff. As previously mentioned, when foreign service officers work overseas our housing is provided as part of our benefits. With the exception of Guinea, I have been provided a lovely (sometimes quirky) three bedroom house or apartment; though our Guinea apartment was a two bedroom, it was very roomy. In D.C., I was lucky to find a nice two-bedroom just outside the city right by a metro (subway) station. It is an older build, so more roomy than many of the newer apartments, but it is still smaller than every one of my Embassy/Consulate homes. When we are in training in the U.S. between overseas positions, the majority of our things are kept in storage. This time though, every one of the 100 plus boxes of our household goods would be delivered to us. I have not had all of my things in the U.S. with me since I first went overseas to work for the government in early 2009. And I have bought quite a few more knick- knacks since then. And acquired a daughter with her own accoutrements. But with the help of a storage room in our building and giving away items in our local Buy Nothing group, we have made it work. 

#3. Doing all the chores. I know this one, too, will not make me popular among the non-expat readers, but I keenly feel the lack of household support. As a single working parent, I have chosen posts overseas where I have been able to hire staff to help with the chores. I have had a housekeeper/nanny the previous four postings. In Malawi, I also had an amazing gardener who worked wonders with our yard. C has basically outgrown the nanny and we have no yard to garden, but the chores – the dishes, laundry, vacuuming, taking the garbage out, and more – are all now for me. Well, C is certainly old enough to help, so there is that. And, shhhhh, its a bit of a secret, but sometimes I find I even like to do some of it. There is also the lack of support from the Embassy on household repairs. When something needs fixing in our housing overseas you submit a work order and the facilities staff will take care of it. It isn’t always as fast as one would hope, but they get it done. Here, even though I am renting, I do have to manage the apartment more. When we first moved in, a handle broke off the closet door, the fridge water filter needed replacing, the oven started to smoke upon first heating, and the shower curtain bar fell (on top of me). It’s fine. It is just adulting without Embassy support – what the majority of people deal with. But it is something different. 

#4. Winter. I am not a fan of the cold. For years now, I have tried my best to implement a winter avoidance strategy. Having lived in Hawaii, California, Florida, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Malawi, and Guinea, I think I can say that I have done a fairly good job. Even Ciudad Juarez and Shanghai were rarely very cold and the snow that came once or twice a year was light and short lived. Returning to middle of winter Northern Virginia from always tropical Guinea had been a shock to my well-laid plans. Having culled many of our winter clothes for a multi-year tour in West Africa, we were somewhat unprepared. Though 2023 was fairly mild, the winter of 2024 is predicted to be snowy. I missed D.C.’s major snow storms of the past few years like Snowmaggedon in 2010 and Snowzilla in 2016, but it is possible with several planned years in Washington, that my luck will run out. 

#5. Fear of Missing Out (FOMO). I love living overseas and have done so for nearly 19 years in the past 30 in nine different countries. Though we have been back in the States for vacation and training, the longest stint, since January 2009, was the year I joined the State Department. I am a Foreign Service Officer, with the key word being “foreign.” In the past year, we have seen friends move to new countries like Ghana, Turkmenistan, Nicaragua, Kazakhstan, Cameroon, and Nigeria and others announce their next move to locations such as China, Mongolia, Germany, and Laos. I feel a twinge of envy reading every one of these, knowing the mix of excitement and trepidation when one gets a new assignment and then starts it. I know though that staying here in Washington a bit longer was the right thing to do for myself, my daughter, and the cats. Believe you me, the cats really would like to prolong the time before I next shove them into a carrier for another 30-hour journey. 

All-in-all, although I do miss the good things we experience overseas, every place comes with the good and the bad, and the positives far outweigh the negatives here in D.C.

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Foreign Service: Domestic Bidding for a Change

How Did I Get Here?

This is not where I expected to be: neither in Washington, D.C. nor bidding for my next job. I expected to still be working in Guinea and to have another year before my next bidding cycle. But, here I am.

It was in 2020 that I last went through the U.S. Foreign Service bidding cycle, when those whose tours are coming to an end apply, or rather “bid,” for their next assignment. With nine months of training and then a planned three-year tour, I expected to work in Guinea until the summer of 2025, with bidding then landing in the fall of 2024. Unfortunately, for a host of reasons, I curtailed from my assignment in Conakry after only six months, and returned to Washington in January 2023.

I landed a great assignment in the Afghanistan Special Immigrant Visa Unit reviewing application documentation from Afghans who were employed by or on behalf of the U.S.. When Kabul fell and the U.S. made its final withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, I was on my Home Leave between my assignment in Malawi and starting my training for Guinea. As many of my colleagues assisted with the final evacuation or with Afghans resettling in the U.S., I felt useless watching it unfold and not being in a position to assist. With my current posting, I am now able to help in a small way.

Conventional wisdom in the Foreign Service says that an officer should spend the first two tours overseas and the third in D.C. And plenty of people follow this playbook. The thing is everyone knows an exception to the rule, including quite a few high level officers. For me, I figured A. I spent several years working for the federal government in Washington before joining the State Department and B. The high cost of living in and around the nation’s capital is not at all single-parent friendly.

Yet at the beginning of 2023, counter to all my best-laid plans, I found us in Washington. A condition of my curtailment was to work here at least one year, and I was lucky to secure a position for a year and a half. Though a part of me would like to be abroad again, another, much stronger, part could not fathom moving again so soon. We had moved three times in nine months. To Guinea in June 2022, to temporary housing in the States in January 2023, and then into more permanent housing in March 2023. Throw in the second half of our between tours Home Leave with a trip to Grand Teton and Yellowstone and then nearly two weeks in a hotel and it’s more upheaval. Add in our departure from Malawi and then Home Leave in Florida in August 2021 and then the move to Virginia in September 2021 for nine months, and the tally is five or six moves in a 20-month period. Guinea was supposed to have been for three years. My daughter, my cats, and me, well, we deserve to settle in for a spell.

And so this is where I found myself: bidding earlier than expected, bidding from a different place than expected, and bidding on different jobs than expected.

On the Auction Block

It is not easy to explain the whack-a-doodle (why yes, this is a diplomatic term) process the Foreign Service has its mid-level diplomats go through to procure their next assignment. Here we are, having already passed a multi-step rigorous entrance exam to join the ranks of the diplomatic corps, every two to four years in a stressful and time consuming competition for our next assignment.

I have bid mid-level twice before. The first time was in 2016, when I tried to compare it to how teenagers might finagle a date to the homecoming dance. My second mid-level bidding session occurred in 2020, smack in the middle of all the weirdness of the first six to eight months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when I attempted to equate bidding to buying a house in a very competitive market. This year though, the whole thing felt more like an auction.

It is not a perfect analogy. Though I have not been to a live auction, I have seen them portrayed in movies and television, and they move with lightning speed. You have an item up for bid, the auctioneer gives a little introduction and then a starting price, and then away it goes. Within minutes the item is sold and the next item is up for bid. The government, however, does not do anything quite that fast. Our bidding is a slow burn that takes place over weeks. We have our catalog of open positions with written descriptions and we set up calls with the incumbent to gather more information. We can see in the system how many people are bidding our target jobs, but we are not in the room with them. We do not know how serious their bids may be, we do not know what they are bringing to the table. They might raise their paddle to express interest, but they can later decide not to make a final offer. We are hoping that our bid package–a combination of our past assignments, references, and interview responses–will make us the highest bidder on at least one of our preferred jobs.

In the early days of the bid season, I felt very much like a competitive bidder. With multiple tours under my belt at different posts (some Consulates, some Embassies, and now a DC job) and in different career tracks (some consular, some political, and now a management designated one), I felt fairly confident as I strode into the virtual auction houses. During interviews I felt like a bidder on the edge of her seat, straining to hold my bid paddle higher than any others, basically yelling “pick-me!” with every response.

However, as the day approached to lock in bids, I felt less like a bidder and more like the auctioneer trying desperately to sell myself, the “as-is” vase sitting alone on the pedestal in the glaring spotlight. “The next item up for bid is this capable mid-level officer with twelve years in the Department. She has both consular and political positions under her belt. She is about as handy as a pocket on your shirt. Let’s start the bidding at….” The power had shifted to the offices, who were now the buyers. Would any one of them bid on me?

Joining the Club of the Unassigned

The bid season lasts approximately eight weeks. For the first five weeks, bidding officers and offices with open positions prepare their respective bid cards, with bidders figuring out which positions will make their official bid list and offices ranking those they interview. At the end of the five weeks, bidders lock in their final five to ten bids in the system and hit submit. During the last three weeks, offices work out who they want. Shortlists of the top three to five candidates are made. Those who make the shortlists are informed. Top candidates will be sent a “Bureau Leading Candidate” (BLC) email about five days before the last day of the official bid season. Offers, called “handshakes,” are sent out on the last day.

I did not receive one.

While many may receive one or more offers on Handshake Day, a good many will not. This year I noticed several emails touting the statistic that 30-50% of positions remained unfilled a month after Handshake Day. Still, though we are told this and we tell one another its normal and not to put too much stock into it, when you see many friends and colleagues posting about their next assignment on the day, it does not feel all that great to be without.

And this was the first time I had not received a handshake on the day. During my first go-round my offer arrived two days late though it was dated handshake day (the bureau, it seemed, had forgotten to send it). In my second mid-level bid season, I received two BLC emails (not really a humble brag — my strategy? Bid jobs with few to no other bidders!), and once I made my preference known, the official offer came on Handshake Day. Nonetheless, this time, I had become an “unassigned bidder.” The auction had closed, and I had been swept off the display table to be stored in a back room until I found an office to proffer me the coveted handshake.

Success at Last!

Luckily, though Handshake Day might be the end of bidding for some, for others this is when things just get going. In this auction, an individual can only be the successful bidder on one item; any unfilled positions are then back in play. A week after Handshake Day, I was back searching the available jobs and found not only a few new-to-me unfilled positions, but also positions still open among my top four choices! Two weeks after the official Handshake Day, I received an offer for one of my original top desired jobs and I readily accepted. The day after I received another and had to turn that one down. All’s well that ends well, I suppose, but I am glad to be done with it, at least for (fingers crossed) two more years.

Our next assignment: Another domestic job in Washington. (I know, the whole title was a spoil alert!) I will be a Career Development Officer, like an assignment counselor, for first and second-tour officers. And for the first time in my Foreign Service career, I will not have to move when I change jobs.

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A Weekend Getaway in Lancaster, PA

Amish carriages parked in the early morning in Ronks, PA

One of the good things about being in the U.S. now are the many opportunities for wonderful weekend getaways. And though my 11-year old is extremely well traveled internationally, she has far less experience in our home country. It is important to me that she has the opportunity to see sights around the U.S. that also introduce her to the variety of cultures, history, people and places that our nation offers.

For the Veteran’s Day weekend, I decided C and I would visit Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I have vague memories of visiting the area when I was a child, perhaps 8 or 9 years old, with a friend and her mom, also a single mother. But other than having spent a day there, I had no other recollections. With good weather and a fair amount of trees still in their autumnal leaf glory, Lancaster seemed a great place to get away from our every day.

A delicious assortment of macarons at Bistro Barberet

Our first stop in Lancaster was the Bistro Barberet, an authentic French restaurant and bakery owned and operated by an award winning French chef located in the historic downtown area. C loves French pastries and desserts and insisted she needed some bona fide macarons a.s.a.p. She left with the macarons, which must have passed muster as she ate every one of them (I got none).

Next we headed to the Lancaster Central Market. Founded in 1730 as part of the town’s original design, the market is the longest continuously operating public market in the country. It’s 60-some vendors offer a little bit of the old – from fresh local produce, homemade canned and dried goods, and family-owned meat, seafood, and poultry options – to the new, including Puerto Rican, Thai, and West African foods. Once inside, C immediately made a beeline for the West African stall as she identified the flags of Guinea and Liberia on the stall at once. Though we had not really immersed ourselves into the local food scene in Conakry, the flag was a pleasant reminder of both our personal journey and the international connections around us. C really loved the market. She tried the local favorites like soft pretzels and whoopie pies, and declared the market a wonder that she wished were closer to us.

Hankering for something a bit more substantial for lunch, we headed up the street to Brooklyn Pizza Grill & Pasta. It was a little chilly and overcast with a slight drizzle outside, but the wafting smell of fresh baked pizza, the heat from the ovens, and the cheery greetings from the staff were very welcoming. There are only a few tables, so we perched on bar stools at the small table in the window as we chowed down on delicious hot and greasy New York style pizza as upbeat salsa tunes encircled us. Fantastic!

That afternoon we had bookings for the Amish House & Farm tour. For some reason, I thought the tour meeting spot would be just nearby, and when I learned I had a 25-minute drive we made a hasty retreat over. I was a little surprised to find an 1805 farmhouse in a Target-anchored shopping center, but we ended up having a wonderful tour. We started with a 90-minute bus tour through the surrounding countryside accompanied by commentary from the guide on the history and culture of the Amish. We made three stops at Amish businesses along the way. At the first we never even got inside the store as the small petting zoo with adorable goats, the soft pretzel stand, and the large bin of free pumpkins kept C and I plenty busy during the 15-minute break. The second stop was a small single-family run housefront store with handmade goods, many made by the family’s children. At the third, we spent nearly the entire time in the barn as C and several other children from the tour oohed, aahed, and cooed over a little of adorable havapoo puppies for sale. Back at the farmhouse, we had the opportunity for a further 30 minute tour of a mostly typical Amish home. Though I think the puppies were C’s favorite (ok, maybe mine too), the tour was very educational for us both.

Our “room” at the Red Caboose Motel at Paradise Station in Ronks, PA

We were to also have a self-guided tour of the adjacent farm, but with the recent time with daylight savings, the farm was far too dark to check out when we finished the house tour. We drove on to our hotel–the delightful Red Caboose Motel in Ronks, PA, where we would spend the next two nights in a renovated train caboose. We loved our room at once – it was cleverly converted and very cosy. C had her choice of 4 bunk beds but chose instead to squeeze in with me in the double; though she often asserts her independence, I think she might have been intimidated by her first stay in what essentially looked like a train yard. Dinner (and the following morning’s breakfast) was hearty portions of Americana in the Casey Jones’ restaurant where patrons sit in two train dining cars.

It is perhaps impossible to capture the pure joy of experiencing this view first hand – the crunch of frost covered grass beneath one’s feet, the evaporating chill still tingling the nose, and the calls of the boys to their horses in the fields

When we woke up the next morning there was frost and a fine mist hovering over the ground. Though chilly and in the upper 30s (Fahrenheit), the sun and sky were bright and clear. Before breakfast, I grabbed my good camera and did a perambulation around the property. The view across the fields was absolutely stunning. I do love our neighborhood in northern Virginia, but though the residential streets are tree-lined and there are plenty of parks, it cannot compare to the beauty of open land. I do not think I am designed for country living, but I sure do enjoy taking time to drink it in.

Wheatland on a lovely autumn day

After breakfast, C and I headed to Wheatland, the preserved home of the 15th President of the U.S. James Buchanan. Buchanan, thus far the only bachelor president and the only one from Pennsylvania (though some are now divided on that President Joseph Biden was born and lived the first decade of his life in the state before his family relocated to Delaware), was a controversial figure who, though an accomplished statesman, is probably most remembered (when he is remembered) for presiding over the succession of the southern states and the start of the Civil War, which began just six weeks after he left office.

It was a very good tour. C, who has often seemed bored by house tours, was well-engaged by the former 5th grade art teacher turned tour guide. We were also a small group of six; in addition to C and I there were two 20-something male history buffs and, as luck would have it, a just-retired Foreign Service couple. What are the odds? There were a few things that struck me as rather extraordinary about the tour: 1. the 20-minute introductory film makes no bones about the controversy surrounding the man and 2. that so much of the furniture and decor were not only original to the house and family but that we were free to move around (though not touch) the rooms. In nearly every home of a person of such historic value, the rooms are cordoned off in some way, with either carpet runners you must stay on or by stanchions or plastic barriers that allow guests only too close.

We crisscrossed the county again, grabbed lunch at a small mom & pop taqueria, and then headed to the Strasburg railroad where we boarded a luxury lounge car for a leisurely 45-minute out-and-back ride on the country’s oldest continuously operating steam train. C’s pre-teen tendencies were beginning to show as she grumpily dropped into her velvet armchair; though the fun of an historic train ride did not perk her up, an iced tea and a M&M brownie did the trick and soon enough she conceded it was sort of interesting. I enjoyed the ride, though would have liked it more had it been a wee bit longer. It felt that as soon as we got going it was time to turn back and then it was over.

After the train ride, we drove along the back country roads visiting a few of Lancaster’s covered bridges. I had not realized at first that there would be so many such bridges as they are often more associated with New England, but there are at least 20 of them in the county. We passed by four of them, but it was the Kurtz Mill Bridge, dating from 1876, that provided the best opportunity to really see a covered bridge due to its location in the county’s central park.

C leaps at the Kurtz Mill Covered Bridge

On Sunday morning, I took one last stroll around the Red Caboose Motel grounds, listening for the clip-clopping of the Amish carriages on their way to a friend’s or neighbor’s home. C and I then packed up and made one final stop in Lancaster, so I could take a photo of the Lancaster County Prison, which the mid-18th century town leaders decided should be built like an English castle. Just another unique feature of Lancaster, I suppose.

I was reluctant to depart and head home; it was a great weekend away.

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The Amazing Summer 2023 European Vacay, Part Six: Strasbourg on My Own

The six installment of our summer 2023 European adventures.

The stunning beauty of Strasbourg, including the beautiful Alsatian buildings

After I made sure that my daughter C was settled into her dormitory at the Euro Space Center summer camp in Libin, Belgium, I set off on my solo journey; I had a four hour drive ahead of me.

I drove west from Libin back to through Luxembourg once again, my third time that day, skirting the capital and heading south. Then I drove into Germany, my second time that day, though further south than Trier. With little to mark European borders these days, it was the switch from a speed limit marking on my GPS to none, signaling I had arrived on the speed limitless autobahn. Then past passing north of Saarbrucken I turned south and crossed into France. I had no plans for the rest of the day other than arriving at my hotel; only I wanted to do it before dark. But it was northern Europe in midsummer and the sun would set close to 9:30 PM, so I had time.

Alsatian buildings are often adorned like this one in the Strasbourg city center

I love the late nights of summer. I have spent a lot of time in countries and locations within 15 degrees of the equator – Hawaii, Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, Malawi, Guinea – where the length of the day remains fairly constant throughout the year. Behind the wheel I drank in the soft golden glow of the sinking sun of early evening on the green fields and large barrel rolls of hay set at intervals alongside the highway. And then on the rooftops of small villages as I approached my destination on smaller roads.

My destination: Strasbourg, the capital of the historical and cultural Alsatian region of France. I have long wanted to visit Alsace; I am a big fan of history and the political battles over Alsace figure prominently in European history. The back and forth between France and Germany has created a unique blend of the two countries’ influences.

I arrived just in time to check in to my hotel and to watch the tendrils of sunlight disappear over the cathedral. And then the rains started.

I waited patiently for the crowds to disperse to get this evocative shot of the Strasbourg Cathedral

On Monday morning, I woke early to grab food and get a head start on my sightseeing but found that it was pouring rain. We had had good weather for just about every day of our trip thus far so it was bound to happen, but I was disappointed nonetheless. Slowly eating breakfast with an eye on the weather paid off as the rain slowed enough to allow for a walk. I grabbed my umbrella and walked the 15 minutes to the city center. Even under grey skies, the old town is stunningly beautiful. The largely late-Middle Ages built, half-timbered homes with their steeply pitched roofs and dormer windows, decorative and decorated facades, and creative old-fashioned business signs standing alongside canals or huddled together tightly on cobblestone streets were delightful. I tried to make the most of walking along the streets, but there were a lot of tourists and it was not easy to manage crowded, narrow medieval streets with umbrellas. And honestly, the architecture begs one to look up, which even the light rain made difficult.

I joined the long line to enter the imposing Strasbourg Cathedral, a masterpiece of gothic art that is also a centerpiece of the city’s UNESCO World Heritage Site status. Construction began on the cathedral in 1015 and was completed in 1439. From 1647 to 1847, the cathedral held the title of the tallest building in the world. I have been to many of the world’s tallest buildings, but the Strasbourg Cathedral is still one of the most architecturally ingenious in its gothic beauty (and it remains the sixth-tallest church in the world and the tallest surviving structure built entirely during the Middle Ages).

The money shot – good luck coins tossed on the cap of one of the Cathedral statues as I descended

Once inside the church I realized the dim lighting, the more so for the grey skies, and the crowds of people driven to seek sightseeing out of the rain, was not something I wanted to deal with right then. Instead I wandered the quieter streets in the historic area for some time and then sought out a small Italian place where I nursed a delicious bowl of steaming pasta and a cup of tea for a little while. Then with it still drizzling, I headed back to my hotel room to sit by my balcony with a good book.

I, and every other tourist in Strasbourg, could not believe our good luck when that afternoon all of the rain clouds dispersed to be replaced by stunningly azure skies. Not wanting to miss any more time exploring the city, I set off, returning first to the cathedral. This time I opted to head for the side door where I could pay a small entrance fee to climb the 332 steps of a narrow, winding staircase to the viewing platform 216 feet above. The staircases (one for up, one for down) are on the exterior walls of the cathedral with lots of windows given the climber regular views, higher and higher, above the square, until the breathtaking panoramic view across the city at the top. The trip is not for the faint-hearted, especially those with a fear of heights, given the regular reminders of just how far up one is from the ground. I had to make way for one of those individuals, a pale and distressed young woman, clearly desiring to return to ground level as soon as possible, who was descending the up staircase.

Afterwards, I headed to the Petite-France, one of the most picturesque parts of the already picturesque Grande Ile of Strasbourg. Petite-France, once the home of the city’s tanners, millers, and fishermen, where channels and canals, fronted by some of the best of the city’s medieval Alsatian homes, are crossed by charming little bridges. I did not visit any museums; I just walked. By now it was 7 PM, so most places were closed, but with the long day, the early evening sun basked the city in a bright golden glow. I walked through the town sights for as long as I could with good sunlight.

Part of the astronomical clock, showing the day of the week

The following day, Tuesday, the morning was again overcast with light rain. I headed out early to the Cathedral once more. At the 8:30 AM opening there was no line and I was one of the first people inside. I took 30 minutes to peacefully explore, making sure to visit the extraordinary mid-19th century astronomical clock that tells the time, solar time, and date and features stationary and moving figures. Then it was time to leave. I made it back to the hotel to pack up though my departure was delayed due to a sudden strong downpour. Things were again looking poor on the weather front, but after 30 minutes, the skies cleared and I headed on to my next destination.

I had just an hour’s drive to the Chateau du Haut-Koenigsbourg, a medieval castle built on a strategic rocky promontory 2500 feet above the plains. The nearly 1,000-year-old castle is reportedly one of France’s finest examples of a mountain fortress and also one of Alsace’s most visited sites. Unfortunately for me, despite the dodgy weather report, no one seemed put off visiting. Near the top of the mountain, traffic slowed to a crawl as the cars ahead waited for a parking spot. I sat in my car, inching forward each minute, for at least an hour (!) before finally scoring a coveted spot, still a good 10-minute walk downhill from the castle. Inside the line for tickets was also long and it took at least half an hour for me to get mine. Then, just as I entered the castle, it began to rain.

A view of the Haut-Koenigsbourg Castle and the Alsatian plain

The first part of the visit involves some courtyards and drafty, covered areas open partially to the elements. For the first time during my trip, I felt chilled. It had always been a possibility in northern Europe, even in summer, to be cold. Years ago, when I first traveled to Amsterdam in a late 1990s July, I arrived with just shorts and T-shirts and was forced to buy some pants and a sweatshirt that I ended up wearing for three straight days to be warm. I had packed a pair of sweatpants, a sweater, a rain jacket, and a fleece to prepare for the possibility of cooler weather, especially in Norway, but had unfortunately left all these accoutrements in my car. I ducked into a covered corner for a good 20 minutes to wait out the worst of the rain.

Luckily, after running across an open and wet corridor, the next part of the castle was largely indoors. And by the time the tour spilled out into the open again the rain slowed and then stopped and the sun came out again. It was there to light my way down the mountain and on to the next destination.

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Time to Come Clean: Curtailing from Conakry

There is no one path in the Foreign Service. Generalists like myself and specialists, who may work as IT, office management, medical, or security experts, will naturally have different jobs and pathways (for example security personnel have more domestic assignments that are in more places around the U.S.) and there are differences between the generalist’s cones (Political, Economic, Management, Public Affairs, and Consular), yet even within a cone there is a wide difference from one person’s career to the next. There are those who may spend most of their career overseas, rarely spending time in Washington. I know at least one person that I can point to that in a 20+ year career has done only one two-year tour in Washington. Others may spend more time in DC. Some prefer hardship posts – going from Monrovia to Haiti to Caracas and Tegucigalpa. Others somehow end up in mostly “garden” posts: from Costa Rica to Taiwan to Iceland and Latvia. Still, others like to alternate their hardship and plum postings.

One of Conakry’s many, many billboards. This is reportedly part of the country’s rebranding as the government attempts to attract tourists and investment

I have mostly pursued postings in locations often considered more challenging (though any post, even in the most developed and beautiful of locations can have its challenges). I also wanted to experience different aspects of the Foreign Service life. I have been to both Embassies (Lilongwe and Conakry and even Jakarta in my Defense Department days) and Consulates (Ciudad Juarez and Shanghai). Also, large posts (Ciudad Juarez and Shanghai) and small (Lilongwe and Conakry). I went to a post with danger pay (Ciudad Juarez had 15% danger pay at the time). I went to posts with language requirements (Ciudad Juarez, Shanghai, and Conakry) and without (Lilongwe). I went to posts that allowed for a consumable allowance to bring in additional foodstuffs and other disposable goods (Lilongwe and Conakry). I went to posts with paid-for Rest & Relaxation tickets (Shanghai, Lilongwe, Conakry). I extended at one post (Lilongwe) which resulted in doing a mid-tour home leave. And now, I have added another foreign service experience: curtailing from a post.

A curtailment is the cutting short of a tour of duty. So, surprise! C and I have left Guinea.

I never thought I would curtail from a tour. I knew Guinea would not be a walk in the park, that it would have challenges, of course. Honestly, for me, that was part of the appeal. But Guinea proved much harder than I expected.

I will miss views like this from our 23rd floor Kakimbo Towers apartment. Sun near us as rain clouds gather over the mangrove forests to Conakry’s southeast. Also, the view into the Peul neighborhood behind Kakimbo, Rue de Prince, and the Bambeto traffic circle.

It is difficult to pinpoint any one thing that led to the decision as it was a combination of so many things. First and foremost: I did not arrive at this tough assignment 100%. Like many people, the COVID-19 pandemic wore me down. I pushed through the first 16 months of it in Lilongwe. Not that it was easy, but it started off novel, even oddly exciting, and we were in a country and me in a job where we had already been for over 2 1/2 years before the pandemic. Then it was back to the U.S. for Home Leave and 9 1/2 months of training on Zoom as the pandemic continued. The French language training had not been good for me. Perhaps it was the combination of online training, teachers whose style did not work for me, and pandemic fatigue, but when I headed to Conakry at the end of June 2022, I was mentally drained.

Timing is an important factor in life, and I now believe that arriving at the beginning of summer was an unfortunate one for us. After this experience, I do not think I would want to do that at any post, though in a hardship, difficult-to-staff post like Conakry, I think it was all the worse. I arrived at a gutted Embassy. The summer transfer season was already in full swing with many positions gapped as predecessors had departed and their successor not yet arrived. This included my own section. The previous Political/Economic Chief had departed in early April; her successor would not arrive until mid-August. The Economic Officer was on a two-week holiday for my first two weeks. One of our locally employed staff political assistants was in DC on training. Another was sick my first week. An eligible family member hire left a few days after my arrival with no replacement lined up. The locally employed economic assistant position was vacant for over six months. Basically, in my normally eight-person section there were two of us, and I was brand new.

I liked this painted advertisement mural and am a bit sad I never did get to try Guini Cola.

Other staff at the Embassy basically fell into three categories: short timers who had little time to talk with me as they were leaving post the next day, the next week, or two weeks later; those about to leave on long summer vacations; and those frazzled individuals covering two or more positions due to the vacancies. No one seemed to have time for us. Now for myself, I had my job. A job that I was struggling to work out as issues immediately cropped up and I had little or no information to go on and few people to ask, but still, I had something to focus on. My daughter, however, arrived at the beginning of a long summer holiday knowing no one. Twelve school-aged children in the Embassy community had just departed; only C had arrived. The remaining Embassy kids all departed on six-week holidays within two weeks of our arrival. Every last one of them. Other Guinean and expat kids in our building also took off on long holidays. I felt bad leaving my daughter at home with a brand-new nanny who spoke little English, while C spoke little French.

Once school began in late August and the vacationing kids returned, C quickly began to make friends, but that rough beginning had already colored our experience. But it was only some of the many issues.

There were also the protests. We had demonstrations in Malawi too. There were several marches against corruption starting in 2018 and then many protests against the flawed elections of May 2019. In my experience, though, there were two big differences between the Malawi protests and those we saw in Guinea: In Malawi, the demonstrations tended to occur in the old town area, on the other side of town, or in the newer part of the capital where Parliament and government ministries were located (as well as the U.S. Embassy), i.e. away from our residences; the ones in Guinea, however, were more violent and much closer to home.

Police set fire to makeshift shelters in the ravine in front of Kakimbo after forcibly removing the squatters. The acrid smoke lingered for hours.

Just a week after arriving, protests erupted around the Bambeto traffic circle over the sudden arrests of several opposition leaders. Bambeto is just a hop, skip, and a jump from the Embassy and Kakimbo Towers. From our apartment, we could watch the scenes unfold down below as young protestors played a game of cat and mouse with Guinean security forces. As we heard gunfire, we received Embassy notifications that Kakimbo residents should stay away from the windows. C’s bedroom, with its floor-to-ceiling windows, faced that direction.

One might think that on the 23rd floor we would be just fine, and maybe so, but four weeks after our arrival, there were more protests around Bambeto with bullets piercing windows on the 15th and 17th floors. All in all, in our first four months in Conakry there were 11 protests that left at least 11 dead, hundreds injured, and more arrested. There was a time when a protest began on a Friday afternoon, and I was downtown at a work event. Due to traffic avoiding the main thoroughfare Rue de Prince, auxiliary roads became parking lots. It took my colleague and I nearly 2.5 hours to travel the nine miles from the Justice Ministry to the Embassy. All the while I was wondering about my daughter and nanny and if I would be able to get home. One protest day we were asked to stay away from the windows on both sides of the apartment as on one side police action involved firearms against demonstrations and on the other side police were setting fire to squatter homes in the nearby ravine.

C and I were also twice nearly blocked from entering the Kakimbo compound gates when protests erupted while we were out at school functions. We could also look down into the neighborhood behind us and, on one particularly vivid occasion, we watched the security forces in riot gear methodically moving through the winding streets, searching homes, launching tear gas, occasionally shots to the air, while we could also see persons, including children, fleeing. While I found the protests both disturbing and politically fascinating, I grew concerned with how C had become inured to the sound of small arms fire.

There was also the traffic. Oh, the traffic. It affected everything. It made shopping and work meetings held outside the Embassy or travel anywhere in or out of the city all the longer. Nearly every blog post I have written about Guinea includes a traffic-induced delay anecdote. Sometimes I found it amusing, but always I found it exhausting.

C was also struggling with some aspects of school. I had hoped the small American international school would be able to give her the individual attention she needed, but her mathematics skills, not strong to begin with and only eroded during the pandemic, were apparently too far behind for her to catch up.

It was a privilege to work on the issues that allowed me to attend the opening of the historic September 28 Massacre trial and the opening of the country’s first official shelter for trafficking victims.

It was all of this and more – the lack of domestic travel opportunities and expense of international trips (i.e. the $1400 I had to pay to change our flights to Belgium in August due to protests potentially blocking access to the airport), the lack of families in the Embassy community and the isolation that brought in general and more so as a single parent, the difficulty in finding activities outside school for C, including facing the strong likelihood of her spending several long, lonely summers, and, let me be frank, difficulties I faced in trying to keep up with all the aspects of my own portfolio of human rights and politics during a particularly fraught political period in Guinea. I had the opportunity to work on some truly fascinating issues and my little political officer heart hummed happily, but my stress levels and mental exhaustion were high. I worked extra hours in the evenings and on weekends and had trouble sleeping. The situation was untenable.

Though it was a dark time for me when this came to a head, I am glad that I reached out to folks, and I found a lot of support. Although curtailment is not talked about often, and almost seems like a dirty word, it is not uncommon. Someone in a position to know told me that there is on average a curtailment by someone, somewhere every single week. And when I shared my news with friends, I found that I knew at least a dozen people who had also curtailed at some point in their careers. Every single one of them told me that it was the right decision for them.

I do not regret C and I going to Conakry. I was able to see some amazing progress on some key issues in a country that is on the cusp of great possibilities. It remains to be seen whether the government and the people can surmount the current problems and emerge better on the other side, but the opportunities are there. For years the country has promised but not delivered a trial to hold accountable those responsible for a September 28, 2009 stadium massacre and yet on the 13th anniversary of the event the government did just that. I spent a lot of time on this issue. Trafficking in persons is also a major issue for political officers and I was able to meet with many government officials and civil society working to counter this. I also worked with a great team on the professionalization and capacity building of the country’s police force. The Guinean staff in the Political/Economic section were absolutely amazing, though I found wonderful Guineans throughout our Embassy working alongside us to improve their country. We made some great friends and, despite the short time, got out to enjoy some of the culture and beauty of Guinea.

At the end of the year, C’s school held a “winter” concert and a craft fair. As I perused the craft tables, I came across this beautiful wood carving of the Nimba, the symbol of Guinea. Versions of this goddess can be found around the capital, from a roundabout in the old town to statues in lobbies of hotels or at the airport. The Nimba is a symbol of the Baga people of coastal West Africa, with a large concentration in present-day Guinea. The Nimba represents the mother of fertility, who is a protector of pregnant women and who presides over agricultural ceremonies. The Nimba represents the joy of living and the promise of an abundant harvest.

Knowing that we would soon leave Conakry, I bought it — my sole souvenir from Guinea. It is very fitting that I carry this symbol of Guinea with me. It is a symbol of joy and promise and new beginnings. I hope for both Guinea and for me and C.

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Conakry: Living the High Life

Conakry’s Kakimbo Towers stand out

Housing at overseas post is crucial. Where you live can really make or break an assignment. If one’s place is isolated from most or all of the Embassy/Consulate community, or makes for a long commute to the Embassy/Consulate or the school, or the place is especially dark or a myriad of repairs are necessary, these could all make one’s tour more challenging. I believe that at more difficult posts, the housing is even more important.

I have had pretty good luck with my housing. Though I have not always been assigned my first choice from the housing questionnaire and there were certainly times I experienced some housing envy (I am especially looking at you Jakarta), each of my government assigned homes have been very good. In Conakry, we hit the proverbial lottery and were placed in the capital’s most exclusive address: the Kakimbo Residences.

Also known as the les tours jumelles de Kakimbo or the Twin Towers of Kakimbo, the four-year old building stands 100 meters (328 feet) tall with 27 floors. It is the tallest building in Guinea by a long shot and is one of the tallest in West Africa. In my not very scientific online research I found only three other countries in the region with taller buildings – Nigeria, Togo, and Cote d’Ivoire – and only 20 countries on the African continent with a taller structure. Guinea may be one of the poorest countries in the world (despite its vast and mostly untapped natural resources), but it has put itself on the map with the Kakimbo Towers.

A bird’s eye view of the Bambeto area of Conarky; the green field just before the sea is the airport; mangroves to the back left

We do not live on the 27th floor, but we are close to the top. We have tremendous views across both sides of the peninsula. From one side we can see the runway of the Ahmed Sekou Toure International Airport, a mere three kilometers away, and watch the few planes take off and land. We can see the blue waters of the sea and the seemingly empty green mangroves that border the packed city.

Though Conakry is not known to have a lot of green space, from our height we can see a surprising amount of trees. In the neighborhood directly behind our building we watch life go on down below. We watch school kids in uniform walking down the dusty streets. We see games of soccer on those same roads — the players just pick up the ball when cars pass by and then resume the game as the vehicle passes. We see laundry being hung to dry.

The Bambeto traffic circle is often a bottleneck. The three kilometers to the airport can take an hour or more to drive. That was before the construction began to turn that traffic circle into an overpass; Now it is even worse. Before heading to the supermarket or the Embassy I can get an idea of how backed up the traffic is with a quick glance out the window.

On protest days, we watch as the crowds of youth surge from the side streets on to the main Rue Le Prince. There we can watch the demonstration play out in real time but in miniature. Youth advancing and throwing. Then the trucks of the police and gendarmerie advancing; tear gas canisters emitting smoke. The protestors running to the side streets. Then youth slinking back out to challenge the law enforcement again. Makeshift barriers of tires set alight. Back and forth.

It can feel odd observing all of these goings on from on high.

A 180 degree view from my balcony toward the northern part of the Kaloum peninsula

On the other side of the apartment the views are no less spectacular. My legs always feel a wee bit jelly-like as I step out on our balcony. It is a long way down! Looking out though one can see so much greenery – a massive, verdant ravine stands between the Kakimbo property and that of the U.S. Embassy and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. To our right we can watch dawn break over the distant hills where the peninsula broadens and meets Kindia prefecture and to the left see the setting sun swiftly sink into the sea in a bed of cotton candy pink clouds. From high above we can also see the deep red of Guinea’s soil that produces so much in the way of the fruits and vegetables we see in roadside markets. Much of the exposed earth near Kakimbo though is obviously being cleared for plots where government buildings will be moving from the crowded historic heart of downtown Conakry. In just four months I have watched two new roads through these areas be prepared, graded, paved, and opened.

From our apartment I feel I can see Conakry’s potential spread out before me. From that height, most everything looks beautiful, innocuous, possible.

View through the clouds – just some of the ravine, some shapes of buildings with early morning lights, and the tip of the radio tower are visible.

We are often in the clouds. I have looked out more than once and seen wet streets below but no precipitation, and assumed any rain had stopped, only to go downstairs and find it is pouring. As we were above the clouds, we didn’t see the rain.

Storms have a way of magnifying around Kakimbo. In Shanghai, we lived on the 19th floor of a 30 story building, but there were similarly tall buildings all around us. Here though, Kakimbo stands solitary. Nothing else is as tall for miles. When the wind really whips up, the clouds fly past the windows, and drafts send high pitched whistles through the apartment. The air pressure pops panels in the ceiling of the bathrooms. In our early months, in the height of the rainy season, I could not sleep through the night for all the odd creaks and groans and whistles.

Despite the height, it is not all that quiet. Sounds float up easily. Conakry is a real city. It is a busy, chaotic place. In Lilongwe, our single story ranch style home not far from the city center, was often quiet in the evenings. The noises were that of nature, of night birds singing, bats flying, the whirl of termites in the early months of the rainy season. Cars were rare in the evenings. Here, however, the traffic seems non-stop. Certainly weekdays and daytime hours are the busiest, but I can look out at any time of the night and find a steady stream of vehicles on the roads below. Their tinny, angry beeps reaching my ears at all hours.

Dawn sweeps across Conakry

There are pleasant sounds too. Roosters crowing, when far enough away, have a lovely ring. There must be many roosters in the neighborhood behind Kakimbo. Also goats, as I regularly hear their soft bleating, usually on weekends as I putter around my kitchen making breakfast. Guinea is a majority Muslim country and the competing calls to prayer of nearby mosques drift and linger in the air. I have not always had a warm relationship with the adhan. I recall in particular being brusquely woken at 4 am by a pre-recorded muezzin call broadcast loudly on a scratchy megaphone in the mosque next to my cheap accommodation in western Java. But here, with the height, it is euphonious.

There is also a commuter train, the “Conakry Express,” which transports folks from the Conakry suburbs to the tip of the Kaloum peninsula. There is a stop at the western end of the ravine and the train’s whistle as it approaches and leaves the station is audible from my apartment. I have lived near trains before – in Georgia and Japan – and just the right amount of distance can turn the drawn-out “toot-toot” into something soothing.

Our swimming pool with water features and the authentic Thai massage room

The amenities of the Kakimbo are without match in Conakry. There are two restaurants; one stand alone at the entrance to the grounds where weddings, happy hours, and other events are regularly held and another on the 27th floor of the East Tower. There is a large pool divided one part into swimming lanes and the other graced with water features – from submerged chaise lounges with massaging jets to power showers. Next to the pool is a sauna and a hammam. Below the pool are the tennis courts, basketball court, and sand volleyball court.

On the first basement floor there is a gym, squash court, karaoke room, and a yoga/dance room. For games there are pool tables, ping pong tables, foosball, and those basketball games you find in arcades where you have to sink as many baskets within a certain amount of time. But here the coins are included, thus unlimited games are free. I have spent quite a bit of time down there perfecting my arcade free throw. I plan to sweep the tickets next time I am at a Dave & Busters. There is also a Thai massage room with actual masseuses from Thailand here on one year working visas. And on the first floor there is a mini mart. Shopping is time consuming with the traffic and the need to go to two or three stores to get maybe half of what you need for at least three times the price it would be at home. To be able to get the basics from salt to soy sauce, bread to bottled water, or toilet paper and shampoo, milk and eggs just downstairs makes life in Conakry a wee bit easier.

Living in Kakimbo has many advantages, though disadvantages too. Not all is rosy here. The electricity goes out about once a day for example. Twice all the outlets on one side of the apartment stopped working. There are those wild winds whipping around the building during storms and sometimes stray bullets from police actions against protests. One is in Conakry and yet oddly removed. Though I freely acknowledge this I am also quite sure that living here was the best decision for C and I.

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A Big Birthday in Lisbon: Part Two

At Cabo de Roca, the end of Europe

This is the second of two posts about my birthday trip from Guinea to Portugal.

Thankfully, the day after my action-packed, wee bit frustrating birthday my daughter recovered from her stomach bug. We were leaving beach town Cascais for the heart of Lisbon. Before doing so, we caught another Uber (the message here is that Uber is very, very convenient in and around Lisbon) to Cabo de Roca, the windswept rocky coast that is the westernmost point of the European continent. A few years ago, C and I had visited the southern most point-ish place in Africa (because many brochures say the Cape of Good Hope is it, when its actually Cape Agulhas; we were close), so it seemed fitting. I was not quite prepared for the height of the cliffs and the cold air sweeping off the Atlantic, but the glimpses we were afforded when the clouds shifted were breathtaking.

We headed back to our hotel then to grab our luggage and then went straight to our central Lisbon hotel. I did not have big plans as I thought we should keep things more low key after all the sights from the day before. We simply walked from our hotel near the Edward VII Park to Commerce Square, about 30 minutes direct. But we meandered and took photos, passing Restauradores Square and Rossio Square, along the pedestrian shopping street through the Augusta Street archway, crossing Commerce Square, and ending at the Cais de Colonas, the stone pillars that mark a historic pier where arrivals on the Tagus River would alight in old Lisbon (Queen Elizabeth II arrived in Lisbon this way in 1957).

Fountain and theater on Rossio Square

We headed back to our hotel then to grab our luggage and then went straight to our central Lisbon hotel. I did not have big plans as I thought we should keep things more low key after all the sights from the day before. We simply walked from our hotel near the Edward VII Park to Commerce Square, about 30 minutes direct. But we meandered and took photos, passing Restauradores Square and Rossio Square, along the pedestrian shopping street through the Augusta Street archway, crossing Commerce Square, and ending at the Cais de Colonas, the stone pillars that mark a historic pier where arrivals on the Tagus River would alight in old Lisbon (Queen Elizabeth II arrived in Lisbon this way in 1957). We purchased a 48-hour Lisbon card at the Tourist Information center on Commerce Square and then retraced our steps back to the hotel for an early evening in.

Belem Tower

The next day we were to be up bright and early so we could use our Lisbon Card for free transportation to and included entry to the two UNESCO World Heritage Sites of Belem. Although both sites do not open until 10 AM, as many sites in Lisbon have a later start than most Americans are used to, I still was unsuccessful in my plan. We just got started a bit late, then got on the bus going in the wrong direction, and the bus took longer to wind its way to Belem. By the time we arrived it was 10:30 AM and there was already a significant line outside the Jeronimos Monastery. The Lisbon Card advertised a “fast track” entrance to the monastery but the two guys manning the ticket purchase area had themselves a hearty laugh at my expense when I asked about it. Thinking back to that line at Pena Palace, I just could not bring myself to join the queue.

Monument to the Discoveries

I made the executive decision to skip it for the day and instead head over to Belem Tower. I figured that there might be a similar line there as well, and then I would have to do some hard thinking about what we were going to do that day. Imagine my surprise when we approached the iconic 16th century fortification, that there was no line at all. None. I began to wonder if it were closed given it was a public holiday (Republic Day). But it was open. I could not believe out luck. Unfortunately, it didn’t exactly last as the stairwell to the tower’s top terrace, hailed online as the crown of any visit, was closed for no discernible reason. I found no explanation at the site itself or online. Still, it was another beautiful day and we were visiting one of Portugal’s most recognizable historic buildings.

As it was close by, we then walked over to the Monument to the Discoveries, a massive sculpture commemorating the Portuguese Age of Discovery with figures of Henry the Navigator and Vasca de Gama and 32 other Portuguese explorers along the river where many of their vessels set out on their journeys.

The Madre de Deus Convent at the National Tile Museum

We hopped on the 15E tram to head back down to Commerce Square where we did the 20-minute Virtual Reality experience at the Lisbon Story Center. With that it feels like you are flying over the key locations of Lisbon, Sintra, and Cascais, which was pretty fun since we had just visited nearly all of those sites recently. We got lunch and then rounded out our day with a visit to the National Tile Museum. The glazed ceramic tiles, or azulejos, can be found all over Portugal, in and on public buildings and private homes. The National Tile Museum incorporates the 16th century Madre de Deus Convent. It’s church is an extravagant display of carved exotic wood, golden framed paintings, and exquisite tile work. It is overwhelming and stunning. When we lucky the chapel was open during our visit.

The following day we headed first to the monastery. This time leaving earlier, on the correct bus, and arriving thirty minutes before the 10 AM opening. It was a completely different scene — we were one of the first in line and though there were a good number of people milling around, there was not the two long lines to get into the monastery’s cloister and the adjacent Church of Santa Maria. Instead of two guys laughing at my asking about the Lisbon Card’s “fast” line, we were actually let in to the cloisters at 9:45. I do not know if this happens regularly or not, but it wonderful to be some of the first people inside for the day.

The cloisters of the Jeronimos Monastery

The cloisters are breathtaking. There is zero doubt as to why UNESCO declared the monastery and the Tower of Belem as world heritage sites. The stone craftsmanship, the attention to detail, the architecture… I have run out of superlatives for this post. We saw so many beautiful sites on our trip but the cloisters were hands down my favorite. We also visited the Church of Santa Maria, which includes the tomb of the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama.

We once again headed back to Commerce Square, stopping briefly to check out the Pasteis de Belem, which has been making Lisbon’s famous pastel de nata, an egg custard tart, since 1837. I had planned for us to give this Portuguese dessert delicacy a try there at the shop, but the lines out the door and down the block had made me change my mind. The tart was ubiquitous in and around Lisbon. Each of our hotels had them out for breakfast. Many restaurants had them on the menu. Pastry shops around town sold them. So we did have one and it was flaky and creamy and so, so good. But it was probably not the original, and that’s okay.

Back at Commerce Square we went into the Lisbon Story Center, an interactive museum where visitors follow a set route through the museum with a headset that told the history of the city. Though some displays were a little campy, overall it was really well done.

Some views from our walks including the Santa Justa Lift (center)

Then we walked. And walked. And walked. Lisbon is a city built on hills and walking can be challenging but also rewarding with something beautiful on every block. We walked a lot during our trip in Portugal and it felt wonderful. I have always loved walking and it really hits me how much so when we are at a Post where we are unable to walk much. Conakry is one of those places. With few to no sidewalks, few shoulders and often deep ditches next to the road, and high vehicle traffic that will take as much road space as possible, we do not walk. I am grateful my 10-year old is usually up for walking during our holidays as I am.

Because of the hills, Lisbon has also built quite a few public transportation options to include the metro, trams (or trolleys), tram-like funiculars, and even one elevator – the Santa Justa Lift, inaugurated in 1901. With a strong desire to get around on our own two feet we did not use much of the transport — the bus and trolley a few times, and the lift, which is also a tourist attraction.

I had debated about taking a day trip from Lisbon to Obidos or Evora, both of which I had visited 20 years before and unlike Lisbon I actually remember some of. However, every time I looked at the train or tour options, I did not feel strongly about going. Honestly, the move and settling phase of Guinea has been challenging and tiring and I did not want my vacation to be more of the same. There was plenty to keep us happy and occupied right in Lisbon.

With that in mind I booked us a two hour tuk-tuk tour of the city’s street art. We had already seen (or planned to still see) most of the historic sights on foot or by Uber, so I wanted to do something a little different. And after we had seen the comic art murals of Brussels, I loved the idea of seeing something similar in Lisbon.

Some of my favorite Lisbon murals

It was a great tour on yet another beautiful, warm day. We saw mostly painted murals but there were also tiles, stenciled art, and stylized graffiti. The tour included getting us to some neighborhoods and viewpoints that we would not have likely gotten to on foot. I also loved that our guide was a former investment banker who after some 25 years of the grind retired and now motors tourists around in eco-friendly tuk-tuks. If it were not for Lisbon’s narrow streets and tricky parking situations, I might have put in an application.

After some lunch we then headed up to the Castelo de Sao Jorge, a mid-11th century Moorish fortification that overlooks Lisbon’s oldest neighborhoods. In the park, that affords gorgeous views toward the sea, peacocks roam. C and I were flagging some. We were gung-ho about walking, but we had done quite a lot and we might have also been getting a wee bit tired of castles (it is possible!). But we enjoyed the visit and the ice cream that helped give us strength to walk back down the hill and back to our hotel.

Our final day in Lisbon, we visited yet one more palace, the 18th century Queluz National Palace, which took us briefly back into the Sintra district. C and I had been looking online at the top castles and palaces in the world and one listed Queluz. It did not seem wrong to miss out it when it was so close. To my untrained eye it seemed similarly decorated as the Pena Palace but with larger rooms, less furnishings, and far fewer tourists. The highlights for me were the extraordinarily tiled canal, the Don Quixote room where a former Portuguese king had both been born and died, and the fountain of Neptune.

Queluz Palace

There was no use denying though that we had exceeded our palace viewing threshold. In fact, as incredulous as it seemed, I was beginning to miss our Conakry apartment, our cats, the joy of a quiet weekend with no pressure to get out and sightsee.

We made one last stop at the 18th century Aqueducto des Aguas Livres, part of the Museum of Water that showcases the fascinating efforts to bring drinking water to the city. We walked along the top of the aqueduct about a kilometer out and back and then once again walked back to our hotel with a stop for lunch.

C enjoyed seeing another part of Europe and declared that she liked Lisbon even more than Brussels. She even said that perhaps she would like to retire there. Though at 10, it might be a wee bit premature for her to be contemplating retirement. I am so glad I chose to spend my special birthday in and around Lisbon. As a backpacker 20 years ago I had not given nearly enough time to the city, and I feel this trip rectified that mistake.

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A Big Birthday in Lisbon: Part One

It isn’t every day one turns a certain venerable age. Months before arriving in Conakry, I thought I could maybe make do with a three-day weekend but I was not sure there would be a place in Guinea that could really fit the bill. When I saw my daughter’s school schedule for the year included two holidays that same week, meaning she would miss only three days of school, I knew I wanted to take a week off. I initially zeroed in on Senegal, as one of my goals was to visit a new country. But after our trip to Belgium in August I realized that travel from Guinea is tricker than from other places I have lived and I wanted a bit more of Europe to celebrate such an important milestone. Lisbon is the easiest from Conakry, a direct, four and a half hour flight. Though I had been to Portugal before, it was twenty years ago, and I hardly remember the Lisbon part at all.

It may be a short, direct flight, but the schedule, like most flights from Guinea, kind of sucks. The TAP Portugal flight takes off from Ahmed Sekou Toure International Airport at 11:45 PM and lands at Lisbon’s Herberto Delgado Airport at 5:15 AM. That does not give one a whole lot of time to sleep and be able to do much of anything the next day. With that in mind, I reserved us a hotel quite close to the airport. After we touched down on time, went through immigration, and found ourselves in arrivals, it was 7 AM. But the sun was not yet up. We grabbed some breakfast, took a little break, and then we decided to walk to the hotel. By the time we arrived it was 7:30 AM and they were nice enough to check us in. We took a long nap and by noon we could head out.

An unbelievably gorgeous day in Lisbon

My daughter and I jumped into an Uber to head down to the Parque das Nações for a quick lunch. We then visited the Oceanarium, Lisbon’s top-notch aquarium. I love aquariums; I have visited some thirty of them worldwide. We had a great visit except that one of its stars, Stella the Sunfish, had passed away just a few weeks before. And my daughter’s second favorite fish (yes, she has favorite fish) is the sunfish. (Her first is the pufferfish) Afterwards, we rode the cable car for a fantastic view. The weather was absolutely perfect. Then we had an early, low-key evening with Uber Eats back in our hotel. Delivery is few and far between in Conakry (at least to my knowledge) so something so simple can be a treat.

The following morning we took another Uber out to our hotel in Cascais, the once fishing village turned royal retreat and reportedly playground of the rich and beautiful. Someone told me that it was like the Portuguese Hamptons. I did not know this when I made the reservation. I also did not know when I booked my hotel, the Grande Real Villa Italia, that it had once been the home of Humberto II, the last king of Italy. I just wanted to be somewhere lovely by the water.

The chapel and initiation well at Quinta de Regaleira

The Grand Real Villa Italia Hotel (quite a name, don’t you think?) could not accommodate an early check-in, so we placed our luggage with the concierge and then took another Uber to the Quinta de Regaleira in Sintra. I had only just read about this destination the day before; it had, for some reason, not been on my radar. However, I am very glad we were able to visit this gorgeous estate. There is a 19th century Manueline villa (late Gothic) where guests can see some of the rooms, but the highlight of the visit are the extensive extraordinary gardens full of surprises like towers and grottoes, benches, underground passageways, and water features. The most popular is the Initiation Well, a 27-meter deep spiral passageway to subterranean tunnels that immediately reminded me of one of my favorite movies, Pan’s Labyrinth.

Like many pre-teens C had zero interest in the well when I explained it to her. I thought she might find it cool that there are few, if any, other places in the world where one can descend into a well. My enthusiastic description immediately had the opposite effect on C who declared she would not go down in the well. Until we got that there, that is. Funnily enough, once she saw it she suddenly became keen to give it a try. After our visit to the Quinta, we walked down to the historic center of Sintra town for a late lunch and then an Uber back to the hotel.

That evening we had the pleasure of visiting my friend SMK, who had been a coordinator for my entry level class for the Foreign Service 11 years before. SMK is currently at the Embassy in Lisbon and invited us for a casual dinner with her family. She surprised me with a cake, ice cream, and a card. It seemed so apropos the Foreign Service to meet after 11 years, multiple countries, and several children in a coastal Portuguese town on my birthday.

C leaps for joy in front of the Sintra National Palace with the Castle of the Moors overlooking the historic town

On our second day in Cascais, my birthday, I wanted us up and out early so we could arrive at the famous Pena Palace ahead of the crowds. Though in Portugal one never needs to get up too early to visit the sites as many of them open on the later side; Pena Palace opens at 9:30 AM. We arrived at the ticket area for Pena Palace later than I would have liked, at 10 AM, but I had thought things would not be so bad on a random Monday in October. I had thought very, very wrong.

After purchasing our tickets, that included a timed entry to the palace interior at 11 AM, we walked up the steep hill. According to the information provided, it would take as much as 30 minutes to walk from the ticket area to the palace entrance, so I figured we would have a little time to walk around the park, also included in our entry. Wrong again. It actually only took us 15 minutes to get to the palace, but when we did so, we then saw a really long line outside. What could that be for given the timed entries? I found out it was the line for the 10:30 entry and up ahead some 50 people were already in line for the 11 AM entry. There was nearly 45 minutes to go, but we got in line. And we waited. And waited. The 10:30 AM entry did not begin to move until 11; we did not begin to move until 11:30. The only positive part to waiting was the woman behind us had purchased the famous travesseiros pastry from Sintra’s popular bakery Piriquita, which has been making the puff pastry dusted with powdered sugar since the 1940s.

Tourists crawling all over the stunning Pena Palace; the ruins of the Castle of the Moors (not pictured: stony faced preteen and her sweaty, exasperated mother)

Those pastries and our one bottle of water between us could only get us so far though. Even after we were finally let through the castle gates, we only ended up in yet another line to get into the palace itself. That line moved only inches per minute. It took us nearly another hour. It is hard to say because it seemed time had stood still. At least we had. Once again I made the mistake of thinking THAT would finally get us moving. But no, once inside we continued to shuffle slowly room to room. It was maddening. While online I see it is recommended to take no less than 40 minutes for the palace, we did probably take that long but not because we were admiring the rooms, reading descriptions, soaking up the atmosphere. We took longer because we could not move. I, who normally love history and palace tours (you may recall I have willingly taken tours in languages I do not speak just to get into a palace), but I grew irritated. Imagine dragging along a 10 year old? Once we finally broke out from the glacial pace of the palace on to the terrace, I very much regretted getting in that line at all and I wanted to run from person to person still waiting to tell them to save themselves and not bother, especially when I saw families with small children.

We were a bit hungry but could not stand the sight of the line at the palace restaurant. I had bought a combined ticket to see the palace and grounds, but also a ticket to the nearby Castle of the Moors. What I had thought would be maybe a two hour visit to the palace and grounds had turned into a 3 hour palace crawl (except that sounds fun, and it wasn’t fun). I was hot and thirsty and annoyed. It was my birthday. The palace is beautiful but the experience was not. I had not wanted to miss out on the surrounding park but I wanted to get away.

View of the Grande Real Villa Italia Hotel

We grabbed some water and chugged it down and then bought some more for our walk over to the ruins of the Castle of the Moors, or what C dubbed “The Great Wall of Portugal.” Though there were a good many people there it was nothing like what we had seen at Pena. It was a relief to be in the open air and be able to move, unimpeded, at our own pace. The views down to Sintra town and across the valley, all the way to the coast and also over to Pena Palace on an adjacent hilltop, were amazing.

As we had already tasted Sintra’s most famous pastry, we opted to just Uber back to Cascais, stopping in the town for some lunch and then meandering our way through the historic area, the art district around the old fortress, and then back to our hotel.

Reinvorgated by lunch we decided to enjoy some time in the hotel pool. Though it was October, the temperatures had been in the lower 80s all day. This was our only hotel with a pool on the trip and we wanted to take advantage. The sun though had not warmed the pool which felt almost as cold as an ice bath. We slowly lowered ourselves in laughing at our faces as we braved the water then swam a few laps. We cut the swim short though because we could not get used to the chill.

Perhaps Cascais’ most famous view of the Santa Maria House Museum and Lighthouse

Unfortunately, soon after the pool C got sick. I do not know what was the cause, but the long wait in hot weather and then in the warm, confined rooms of the palace, with little water, then a late lunch and a dip in an icy pool certainly did not win me any Mom of the Year points. What it did get me was a birthday evening spent taking care of my sick girl. It wasn’t great, C was miserable, but honestly, I knew she would be okay and I welcomed a quiet evening in a nice place after an action-packed day. I was still glad to be in Portugal with my daughter on my birthday.

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Three Months in Conakry

Our nanny AD sitting with goats her family will donate to the needy for Tabaski

A friend of mine asked me just today how I was finding living in Conakry. I did not have a great answer. I said it has been ok. And it has been. Really. It has also been challenging. There have been days when I thought I would hit this milestone, three months here, and say “Three months down, only thirty-three to go!” The truth is I have not yet formed an opinion. I am only beginning to get into the swing of things.

It is no secret that Guinea can be a challenging place to live – for Guineans and expatriates alike. The State Department does struggle with getting personnel to serve here; it is what is called a “historically difficult to staff” (HDS) post. To recruit Foreign Service Officers to work in Guinea there are extra financial incentives. There is a high post differential (currently a 30% bump in pay) and also an additional 15% bonus if one agrees to stay a third year at this two-year posting. Even with these extra monetary inducements there are still vacant positions.

I do not know, however, what all has been difficult because it is Guinea or because it is hard to move and to start over in a new job in a new country. I have lived in challenging places before. Each of my tours with the Defense and State Departments has had some difficult aspects from Jakarta (25% post differential; terrible traffic, terrorist attacks, religious and ethnic divides) and Ciudad Juarez (10% post differential , 15% danger pay; gang and narco-trafficking violence, desert dryness, major visa post), to Shanghai (15% post differential; language/cultural differences, lots of crowds, major visa post) and Malawi (25% post differential when I arrived; one of the poorest countries in the world, limited flights in and out, limited entertainment venues in town). Now though I think of all of these places with great fondness. They were all good tours.

I arrived in Conakry at the tail end of June, part of the “summer transfer season” that sweeps embassies and consulates worldwide every year. This past summer seems to have particularly transitional for our embassy in Conakry. I think my experience of it was exacerbated by the timing of my arrival. Many staff were on their way out. I would meet someone and he or she would tell me, “I am leaving tomorrow/next week/next month.” In other cases, the person incumbering the position had already departed and the incoming officer had yet to arrive, leaving gaps. I struggled to complete the Embassy check-in procedures because there was either no one to check in with or the person was soon on their way out. This contributed to the isolating feeling I already had as a newly arrived employee.

At my previous tour, in Malawi, we arrived mid-August. At the end of that week, the CLO (Community Liaison Officer) organized a “sips and snacks” event at a colleague’s house where all Embassy staff and families could join. Just three weeks after arriving, our social sponsor and family took C and I on a weekend trip in the south of the country. Five weeks after arriving, the Ambassador held a welcome picnic at her residence for all the Embassy, new and old, to meet one another. Eight weeks after arriving, C and I joined a CLO-organized safari trip in Zambia over a long weekend. And around three months after arrival, C and I took our first trip to Lake Malawi.

Nothing remotely like any of this has happened yet in Guinea.

The weather forecast for the coming 11 days in Conakry and a photograph I took today when I stopped to buy fruit

Besides my early summer arrival date being likely at least party at fault for the rougher start, there is also the rain. Guinea has two seasons: hot and dry and hot and wet. The wet, rainy season is very, very wet. I recall reading somewhere that Conakry is the fourth rainiest capital in the world. The monsoonal season begins in late May/early June. For context, the annual rainfall for Washington, DC, is 43 inches; for Conakry it is 149 inches. Conakry may see as much rainfall in the month of July as DC gets all year.

That is not to say that there are not nice days. There have been some gloriously bright sunny days. In fact, our first week in country was deceptively rain-free. The accumulation of this amount of rain though also has its affects on soil and infrastructure. I do not know what the roads here might look like when its the dry season. In Malawi at least there were some attempts to fix roads and fill potholes that had eroded during the rains. That may or may not happen here. Right now though many of the capital’s roads are in poor shape and easily flood making the traffic situation and travel more challenging.

My HHE from Malawi (stored in Europe for the past year) arrives in Conakry; the 12 man team that delivered my goods

For me, it feels like it is taking longer to settle here. One reason may be the longer time it has taken to receive my effects. My Household Effects (HHE) arrived a little less than eight weeks after we arrived in Conakry. That is pretty good. However, the unaccompanied baggage (UAB), the smaller air shipment that is supposed to be items you want as soon as possible, that took 11 weeks to get to Conakry. At my other posts, UAB arrived pretty quickly: Ciudad Juarez (it was in my entry when I arrived at my new home!), Shanghai (2.5 weeks after arrival), and Malawi (12 days after arrival). Granted the pandemic and the residual staff shortages and global logistic and supply chain issues have led to longer shipping times. Still, I had not expected to wait so long.

No matter where one lives, having a place to come home to that is safe and comfortable and reflects your interests is key. In a tougher place like Guinea, that is arguably even more important. Now, though I am beginning to make this house more our home, there are also still quick a few boxes and piles of items around. We are still awaiting the supplemental HHE, the secondary shipment of items from the US. There will be more to unpack, sort through, and organize.

In the Foreign Service, the conventional wisdom is that it really takes six months before one can begin to truly feel at home in a new place. By that measure, I still have time to ease into the life here. Guinea and I are still trying to get to know one another.

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Guinea Or Bust

No matter how many times one moves in the Foreign Service, it is never quite the same.  As much as one tries to prepare and learn from previous moves, each one is its own beast.  It does not get any easier, it just becomes different. 

Unlike in moves past, where I was working or in training right up until our PCS (Permanent Change of Station, aka moving day, aka the actual day or days of travel from one location to another), this time I opted to take some leave between training and our departure.  I had had an inkling way back when I was organizing my PCS travel orders around April 2021, when I had to lay out a day by day plan my PCS from Malawi through to Guinea, that I might want some time off on the back end.  After nine months of training online, through Zoom, much of it trying to learn French, I did indeed need a break before heading to Conakry.

Wait, how does that work?  Well, between each overseas tour a U.S. Foreign Service Officer (FSO) has Congressionally mandated time off called Home Leave.  That time must be spent in the United States and is intended to reacclimate and re-expose the officer to their home country.  For each year in a post overseas, an officer earns 15 days of Home Leave.  An officer is expected to take at least the minimum of 20 days of Home Leave between overseas posts (which can be combined with training) with a maximum of 45 days of Home Leave.  And this does not include weekends or holidays! In my opinion, it is one of the best and most important benefits we have as FSOs. 

Over the course of my now 11-year career, I have taken several permeations of Home Leave.  Between Juarez and Shanghai, I took eight weeks as I had also earned Home Leave days while serving with the Department of Defense at our Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia.  Then between Shanghai and Malawi I took about seven weeks, using the last two to move into our training housing two weeks early (on my dime) to help us settle in a bit.  Well, as much as you can settle into a place you will only live in for three months.  In Malawi, we took a mid-tour home leave of 17 days when I extended for a fourth year, for which I had to seek a waiver to less than the 20 mandated days.  This time, I opted for the first time to split Home Leave, with some taken before training and the rest after.

At first it was a whirlwind few weeks.  I had my (very stressful) French exam, then final shopping and packing before the actual pack-out day (when the movers actually come and box everything up), then moving out of the State Department provided housing, and then our ten day trip out to Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks that ended in an unplanned early departure to escape the flooding.  Then we had 12 more days until wheels up. 

As we no longer had State Department housing, I moved us into a hotel room with kitchenette close to Dulles Airport, from which we would fly out. Myself, my daughter, our cat, and our four large, hastily packed suitcases. I had started off our pack-out preparations with some more thought-out suitcase arrangements but as the day grew closer, I just started tossing things haphazardly into them. I figured one project for our final 12 days would be trying to rearrange them into some semblance of order. I would say I half succeeded. At one point I simply gave up, realizing the suitcases looked the same from the outside whether they were packed neatly or chaotically inside.

Kucing the Diplocat gets a wee bit of air before we have to close the carrier for our long journey

It was a bit of a relief to only have the final PCS preparations on my to-do list for those last 12 days.  That is not to say they were stress-free (they were not), but they were less stressful and messy than in the past.  With COVID cases again rising and our departure looming, I tried to keep our interactions somewhat limited.  Although frankly it was more an issue of low energy on my part.  As a single FSO all of the PCS preparations fall to me and that combination coupled with all the energy I had needed for nine months of online training and the energy reserves I was trying to stockpile for the upcoming move and adjustment to a new job and new country, well I very much needed the down time. 

I did take C back to one final day of school.  For us to have the Grand Teton and Yellowstone trip at the beginning of Home Leave and not just before departure, I had pulled her out of school early.  In my mind it was education, once in a lifetime, and a chance for us to bond with each other and with my aunt.  Yet C had formed some strong bonds with her fourth-grade class and though she welcomed having less math, she lamented leaving her friends a bit early.  When her fabulous teacher suggested to me that C make one final guest appearance on the next to last day of school, for Field Day, I had to make it happen.  I also arranged for a play date with three of her best classmates the following week that started out with a few hours hanging out at a playground, then taking them all to see the new Jurassic Park movie, and then a final hour hanging out at one of the friends’ houses.  I really cannot thank those girls’ moms enough for letting their girls spend a day with us.  FSO kids live amazing lives, but they also move a lot, and that is really hard, too.

One of the biggest items on my PCS prep list was organizing the cat’s travel.  Moving abroad with a pet is never, ever, ever easy.  There are always last-minute documents needed that no amount of preparation can truly prepare one for.  Recent changes wrought by the pandemic and the US’ own Center for Disease Control ban on dogs entering the US without significant extra paperwork, had only made things more difficult.  Lord knows we have done this before.  My diplo-cat Kucing is very well traveled having been born in Indonesia and moving from there to the US, then Mexico, then back to the US, then China, then back to the US, then to Malawi, then back to the US.  This last move would prove no less stressful. 

Back in January I had learned that the EU had instituted new rules beginning this year that pets – dogs and cats – transiting the EU would be subject to the same rules as if they were entering the region.  And that animals from any country deemed at high risk for rabies would require a titer test to transit.  Initially the regulations were not well promulgated, and it was not clear if we would have to meet the latter requirement.  Therefore, I had Kucing’s rabies updated a few months early, back in February, in case the titer (which needs several months lead time) would be needed.  Thankfully, travel from the US did not trigger that rule.  Still, I would need an import certificate for both Guinea and the EU signed by a veterinarian and endorsed by USDA-APHIS.  Though Guinea would accept an electronically signed certificate, the EU would only accept an in-person signature. 

The certificate paperwork cannot be completed any earlier than 10 days before travel.  Many veterinarians, having just returned to pre-pandemic scheduling, were inundated with appointment requests.  I managed to get a “drop-in” appointment one week before departure and that afternoon the certificate paperwork was FedExed off to the USDA-APHIS office in Albany, NY.  Though there are USDA-APHIS offices in Richmond, Virginia and Harrisonburg, Pennsylvania, those offices were no longer accepting in-person appointments.  The only way to do it was to FedEx.  And I waited.  By Friday, the paperwork was still not back.  Long story short, the paperwork was completed late afternoon on Friday, but although I had paid for FedEx Priority Overnight, someone (not me!) had helpfully selected “weekday only” and thus the paperwork was returned on Monday morning to the vet’s office.  But by 10 AM I had the paperwork in hand and by 2:30 PM we (C, myself, and Kucing the Cat) were on our way to the airport.  (Fun fact: NO ONE looked at that paperwork at any part during our journey!!)

On approach to our new home in Guinea

Mostly for our last 12 days, C and I tried to get our fill of things we would miss.  Yes, we did both get our respective COVID boosters and we did some last-minute shopping. We visited two shopping malls – you know, the gigantic American kind.  We also had a dinner with our family, my parents, my sister and brother-in-law, and their kids, and aunt CW.  And we ate all the veggie sushi, string cheese, Domino’s pizza, Taco Bell, Subway, and chicken nuggets we could.  We also saw two movies.  Conakry reportedly has a movie theater (unlike Malawi, which had zero), but films will mostly be in French. 

Then suddenly it was time!  I grabbed the paperwork from the vet and raced back to the hotel.  I dropped off the car my father had loaned us for the duration of our time in the US; he drove me back to the hotel.  Final, FINAL packing.  The large van arrived to take us and all our luggage to the airport.  We were checking in.  Through security.  At the boarding lounge.  And then take off.  Transit through Brussels. And then about 21 hours later after taking off from Dulles Airport we landed in Conakry, Guinea. Our new home.

We touched ground in Conakry just as the sun was setting.