B.L.O.G.

I announced to my husband that I was going to join the Peace Corps, because there is nothing better than a Peace Corps Volunteer with an annuity. My husband said, “Oh great, you can teach them how to cook.” I was livid. With all of my skills, experience, intensive career in Environment, Security, Communications and Records for USAID, GSO Officer, and I was one of the four who closed the Mission in Chad which became a Model Closeout; all he can think about is my cooking. Yep, I am remembered only for my cooking skill. Not fair!!!! Anyway, I received an email from my friend Robin in Haiti and the subject said, “I hope it’s not too late.” Intriguing!!! Well, what she meant was that she was trying to introduce Patrick Moore to my cooking in Antananarivo from Port-au-Prince. And it dawned on me that unless you have created electricity, or are the guys who invented Google, or was Elvis Presley, no one is going to remember about the average guy when he croaks, even if he is good. I sh...

Life in the Foreign Service is not effortless. While it may sound glamorous, living abroad in places such as Casablanca or Cairo; or living in a place with an exotic name such as Nouakchott, life can be harsh, especially for a “spouse.” You leave your home, your job, everything you know and are comfortable with following your spouse into the unknown. You arrive at a post with nothing but a cruddy hospitality kit waiting for you in an unfamiliar house with generic furniture. It is cold, it is sad, it is depressing. You keep on saying to yourself that tomorrow it will be better. But tomorrow is not better, sometimes it is even worse. If you are in a small post, it can be nice and you can find that the community is warm, tight and helpful. But if you are in a big developed post, then you are practically on your own. If you are in Paris, you’d better start learning French, and fast. If you are in Beijing, you’d better learn Chinese and fast, and so on. If you are lucky, you will...

Well, here we are now members of the blogger universe. Laure has already started pumping things out for the B.L.O.G. So, I suppose that even this first small step for me is an important one. After all the years I have spent threatening to write something, and even the occasional fits and starts in that direction; I have finally decided to write things down, if only to see if something can be saved for the grandkids. Given that semi-New Year’s resolution, I also thought that I might as well put thoughts out into the open air, whatever subject seems to strike my fancy at the moment. What do I intend to write about? As much as anything, I’ll write about “us,” and our life and times. Then, from time to time, we’ll comment on what we like and dislike currently (politics, manners, people, and the world we all live in). “Oh God, another one of those blogs.” Yup. I had better clarify the “we” thing. It will be more historical, reflecting the world Laure and I grew up in, people who...

Getting old is not the problem, it is part of life; and it is not what scares me the most. What scares me about getting old is not being able to protect the people I love because I am too weak, I am too tired, or in one short sentence, I am too old and slow. You guys are probably wondering why I am writing about getting old all of a sudden! Wonder no more and read my tale... Valentine weekend, my husband and I decided to take a trip to ile Sainte-Marie, a little island located off the east coast of Madagascar, just to get away from Antananarivo, and to take my husband out of the office before the big move to the NEC (New Embassy Compound). We arrived early morning and decided to tour the tiny island. The hotel manager said that we could rent scooters. Great, we had not done this in ages. So, before we got on the road, we tested the scooters around the hotel yard Barnett decided that he is so out of practice that he was going to ride with me instead. You might not understand this, but...