Larry's Elysian Fields

AFSA: Closing the Overseas Pay Gap

2009-06-20T15:14:00.002-04:00

1. We have a major success to report in the long-standing effort to close the overseas pay gap suffered by entry-level and mid-level Foreign Service members stationed abroad. Legislative language to begin to close the pay gap is contained in the 2009 Supplemental for Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Pandemic Flu that has now cleared the House and Senate and is headed for an expected Presidential signature in the coming days.

2. To recap how we got here: Funding to begin to close the pay gap was appropriated this spring in the FY09 omnibus appropriation bill. However, authorization legislation to permit the expenditure of those funds was still lacking. Late last year, AFSA and key allies convinced the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee -- on a unanimous, bipartisan basis -- to approve bills containing the needed authorization. While those bills never gained final passage, it is now clear that getting them through the two committees was a key development that set the stage for supporters to place funding in the FY09 omnibus appropriations and attach the
necessary authorization language to the must-pass war supplemental bill.

3. Once the President signs the bill into law, AFSA understands that State will move swiftly to close approximately one third of the current 23.1 percent gap. USAID, FAS, FCS, and IBB management will need to take similar steps. AFSA understands that USAID has sufficient funding for the remainder of FY09 to do so. While FY09 funding for FAS, FCS, and IBB is tight, implementing this for their relatively small number of
overseas non-senior Foreign Service members will have a modest budgetary impact. AFSA is asking State management to reach out to the other foreign affairs agencies to encourage consistency and uniformity in the implementation of this new Foreign Service-wide pay policy.

4. AFSA understands that the new pay will be treated as base pay so that, for example, the dollar value of hardship differentials based on the new higher base pay will themselves rise. We further understand that, during an anticipated three year phase-in period, current practices will not change for calculating virtual locality pay for annuity computation purposes.

5. One complication is that the legislation will apply only to FY09 and will thus expire this October 1. There is no way to avoid that since language in an appropriations bill is only valid for the year covered. Thus, new language will need to pass later this year to continue the three-year implementation. Several legislative vehicles exist that could accomplish that. AFSA and our allies will work to get that accomplished.

6. AFSA has many allies to thank for getting us to the brink of an important victory on this top priority goal: -- In the Senate, special thanks go to Senate Appropriations
Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and the Ranking Republican Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH). We are also grateful for the work of Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry (D-MA) and committee Ranking Republican Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN). Senate Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce, and the District of Columbia Chairman Daniel Akaka
(D-HI) and subcommittee Ranking Republican Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) deserve great credit for their ongoing support. In addition, we appreciate the support of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) for their support at key moments.

-- In the House of Representatives, we recognize the leadership of House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA) and committee Ranking Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL). We recognize HFAC members Rep. Don Payne (D-NJ), Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY), and Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY). And a special thanks to Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) who has been a long time advocate for a solution. We appreciate the support of Chairwoman Nita Lowey (D-NY) of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs and subcommittee Ranking Republican Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX). Also, Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL), Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), and House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) all made important contributions
at critical junctures.

-- In the Executive Branch, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton led the final successful push to secure legislation to close the overseas pay gap. During her tenure and also that of her predecessor, State’s senior management team worked actively behind the scenes to advance these efforts.

-- Last but not least, we thank those AFSA members (active duty and retired) who stepped up to the plate at various times in recent years to write to, or meet with, lawmakers to raise the pay gap issue. We thank the many members who provided vital support to AFSA’s lobbying efforts via their financial contributions to AFSA’s Legislative Action Fund. We thank those in the news media, the Government Accountability Office, and the Congressional Research Service who took the time to understand this issue and provide independent validation of the seriousness of the
pay gap problem. We give special thanks to AFSA Legislative Director Ian Houston (recently promoted to be AFSA Executive Director) whose persistence and persuasive abilities were vital to our success on Capitol Hill.

7. A final comment. On the eve of resigning the AFSA Presidency on June 12 to transfer overseas, John Naland left this note: “The effort to close the overseas pay gap began on February 16, 2001 when the Washington Post’s Federal Diary noted that CIA employees, but not Foreign Service members, receive Washington D.C.-based comparability pay when serving abroad. I, as then AFSA State Vice President, was the
source of that unclassified information which began the public discussion about pay equity for diplomats. Having been present at the start of this effort, I am delighted to see it headed to a successful, if long overdue, conclusion.”

No wheels blues

2008-08-31T06:30:00.003-04:00

Unlike Ethiopia, public transit in Buenos Aires is extensive, safe, and cheap. Nevertheless, we miss having our own car to run errands and drop/pick up various and sundry children at social occasions and activities. So far, our grand plan for getting a car here has been thwarted.

We sold our Nissan Patrol 4x4 in Ethiopia - for what we paid for it two years before :-) - because we didn't need such a huge gas-guzzler in Argentina. We wouldn't even be able to park it in the garage here, Argentina has good streets and roads and a European-style small-car culture.

Realizing that renting a car during our seven weeks of home leave and training would have cost us upwards of $1600, we decided instead to buy a 2006 Honda Accord, thinking we could then ship it to Argentina. We hadn't counted on the continuing effects of a scandal here, which broke in January. In short, with the illicit cooperation of some corrupt people in the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs, some diplomats imported some very pricey vehicles tax-free and sold them to locals for huge profits. The entire MFA section responsible for customs clearance of all diplomatic shipments was fired.

Since then, air freight and household shipments have been cleared fairly rapidly, but the Ministry has been denying many automobile import requests. There also doesn't seem to be any logic to why some cars are permitted and others aren't, despite multiple requests for guidance and information.

Thus our perfectly-good Honda is sitting at my uncle's house in Florida while we await MFA's ruminations of whether we can import it. If they deny entry to it, our alternatives are inconvenient or expensive.

We're waiting and seeing while we hail another cab.

Arrived and Highspeed in Buenos Aires

2008-08-20T20:01:00.005-04:00

Howdy folks. We arrived in Buenos Aires on July 31 and are settling in nicely. We moved right into our 5 BR, 4-1/2 BA mansion in the tony suburbs, about 10 mins. walk from school and the same distance from the train that takes me downtown to the Embassy. Clara and Gwendolyne started school and are enjoying it so far. Patricia plans to start Spanish classes at a private institute downtown on Monday, and I'll take classes twice a week at the Embassy starting Friday.

We still don't have our car - that's a whole other story I'll relate later - but our air shipment arrived and we have the first 700 lbs of our stuff.

We got high-speed Internet installed on Tuesday - 3 Mb down, 256 kb up, so we're able to use our Lingo VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol). This allows those of you who remember our telephone number from Arlington (and if you don't remember it, just e-mail us and we'll remind you) to call us - the phone rings right here in Buenos Aires. Ahhh, the wonders of modern infrastructure!

I reached an important milestone on July 28 - I received tenure! It doesn't come with a raise or anything, but now I can't be fired short of a criminal conviction. I'm in good company too, as all the IT guys I started with also received tenure, as did many of my colleagues in the other specialties.

Cool Simpsons Avatar

2008-06-18T18:20:00.004-04:00

Now that we're back in the States for a bit (in DC until July 2, then home leave) and we have a high-speed connection, I can do stupid random things such as create my very own Simpsons avatar and update the blog occasionally.

Just as a brief update, we loved our time in Ethiopia and were very sad to leave. Many of my colleagues cried at our departure, and I'll miss them too.

We made multiple trips around the country, went on safari in Tanzania and spent some time on the beach in Zanzibar, so we tried to take full advantage of the opportunity.

We're headed to Buenos Aires at the end of July for two years and are stoked about this next assignment!

Here's the avatar - does it look like me or does it need some work?

Bid List

2007-09-10T06:09:00.000-04:00

Lack of a fast Internet connection and busy times at work have meant no updates for a while. I do want to share more photos from our Northern Ethiopian trip later.

Our bid list for next summer came out, and we've been working on what and how we want to bid. There are 35 positions, of which two are in Beijing and one in Addis Ababa (my job), which I'm not allowed to bid. I have to list 20 jobs, in rank order, that I'd be willing to accept. Here's the list, in alpha order:

Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire (No children allowed here)
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Algiers, Algeria (No children allowed here)
Bangkok, Thailand
Beijing, China (two jobs here)
Beirut, Lebanon (No children allowed here)
Berlin, Germany
Bogota, Colombia
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Chengdu, China
Doha, Qatar
Frankfurt, Germany
Geneva, Switzerland
Hong Kong
Islamabad, Pakistan (unaccompanied)
Jakarta, Indonesia
Katmandu, Nepal
Kyiv, Ukraine
Lima, Peru
Lusaka, Zambia
Managua, Nicaragua
Maputo, Mozambique
Mexico City, Mexico
Mumbai, India
Nairobi, Kenya
New Delhi, India
Port Louis, Mauritius
Santiago, Chile
Taipei, Taiwan
The Hague, The Netherlands
Tirana, Albania
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Vienna, Austria
Zagreb, Croatia

As you might suspect, it's easy to choose where we really would like to go, and where we really don't want to go; it's numbers 17-23 that are the difficult ones, because we can be assigned any of the posts we bid on. I'm confident that we'll receive a good assignment, though, as my predecessor here in Addis got his first choice, and his predecessor got his second choice.

I have until September 21 to bid, so if you have comments on any of these, get them to me soon!

In other news, the Ethiopian New Year starts on September 12, and this year will be year 2000 in their Coptic calendar. There are many events planned here for the end of the current Millennium, and because of the influx of so many people, the Embassy is closing Tuesday through Thursday. Short week this week!

Bahir Dar, Blue Nile Falls & Lake Tana

2007-04-20T10:19:00.000-04:00

After a night at Debre Markos in the Shebel Hotel, we packed up and headed on to Bahir Dar, on the shores of Lake Tana, Ethiopia's largest lake and the source of the Blue Nile. After hanging out and resting in the Ghion Hotel - a garden paradise right on the lake - we drove the next morning to the Blue Nile falls...

That night we went out for Ethiopian food at Amanuel restaurant - veggies and fish since it was fasting time during Lent - and then to a traditional dance club right next door. Art & Mom especially liked the dancing and singing, but our girls were tired and we had to turn in early.
The following day we undertook an all-day boat-trip on Lake Tana, with an eye toward visiting some of the famous monasteries on the lake. Unfortunately, many of them refuse to admit women on their islands, let alone inside their churches, though some did...

Catching up

2007-04-20T09:40:00.000-04:00

There's no way I'll be able to catch everything up at once - too much happens in a month.

I mentioned the bar-coded pouch system a few posts back... everything went great, and I even received a kudos telegram and a Franklin Award (with a monetary award as well) for my efforts with it. What made it especially nice was that the telegram and award news arrived during employee evaluation season.

Clara turned eight last month..

.

She received (among other things) a makeup set

and, from Grandmama, a lovely blue bathrobe

When Mom and her gentleman-friend Art were here, we managed to get away to Lake Langano for a few days. Here we visited the hot spring across the lake:

A week later, we - all six of us, as the girls had spring break from school - embarked on a 2000 km road trip of the "northern historic route".

We left on Friday afternoon directly from the Embassy - I had to finish tipping a fiber connection before leaving - and drove north-west to Debre Markos, about 300 km from Addis Ababa. Along the way, we traversed rolling hills on perfect pavement until we approached the Blue Nile Gorge. It took about two hours to traverse the 40 km down to the "second Portuguese Bridge" - where Art almost had his camera confiscated for taking pictures - and back up the other side past a construction zone.

Mamie out, Grandmama in

2007-03-06T15:16:00.000-05:00

Patricia's Mom left on Friday, after making an exhausting but rewarding trip to the north of Ethiopia with a Frenchie tour group. No, she wasn't abducted, she returned safe and sound and is back in France.

Speaking of which, the media attention on the kidnapping of the British diplomats in the Afar region is, in my opinion, completely overblown. It's an area that is known for banditry and is very close to the disputed border with Eritrea. The Ethiopian government prefers that groups going there be protected with armed guards. There are parts of the US or Europe I would not feel safe going to, and Afar has a reputation. If you don't want trouble, don't go there (of course I make no excuses for the perpetrators of these abductions).

Anyway, as with other unfortunate events, the media paints Ethiopia as a dangerous place, though only a very small number of people are effected personally by the original event; because of the press's lack of perspective, the entire country will suffer a huge financial loss when other tourists stay away. It's too bad, because on the whole the people are friendly, honest, easygoing, and nonviolent. As usual, a few bad apples spoil the bunch.

Anyway, my Mom and her gentleman-friend flew in Sunday (a day late due to an ice storm in Syberacuse), and are here for 3-1/2 weeks.

Clara celebrated her eighth birthday on Sunday as well - photos to come. She was very happy to receive her makeup kit, new PJ's, toy car, and magnetic tinker-type toys, among other presents. Gwendolyne is still young enough, at not-quite-six, to be jealous of her sister's birthday falling two months prior to hers.

Work is fine. I hosted three people from DC here on a project to computerize our Diplomatic Pouch system. It was a success all around, so that was a feather in my cap. Unfortunately I'm working late right now, but I take the good with the bad. We're still very happy here in Ethiopia and are all doing well. Drop a note and let us know what's new in your world!

Out & About and visit from Mamie

2007-02-09T06:43:00.000-05:00

I'm still way behind on the blog and we've been away many a weekend, so I apologize for the lack of updates.

Some of our recent activities:
We had Ethiopian Christmas dinner at an Ethiopian friend's place on Jan. 7th;

Gwendolyne lost a tooth;

We went out to dinner at a traditional Ethiopian place, Fasika, and my girls got all dressed up for it;

We hiked to the top of an extinct volcano, Mt. Zuquala, and visited its crater lake and two churches;

We spent a weekend hiking and horseback riding in the Bale Mountains;

Patricia's mother arrived from France two Sundays ago, and we all visited Lake Langano again this past weekend.

Next week a group comes into town from Washington to help us implement the bar-coded pouch tracking system. I'm stressing a bit because I'm in charge of the whole project. I'll let you know how it goes!

Visit to the Vet's

2007-01-12T08:29:00.000-05:00

Our vet insisted we bring Clementine by for a checkup, and I managed to snag this photo of our girls with Sheba the Cheetah:

Sheba's a male who was rescued from the National Palace here in Addis Ababa. He's been in rehab at our vet's for several months now. Since Sheba couldn't survive on his own in the wild now, he's to be an ambassador at one of Ethiopia's national parks, to encourage people not to kill the wildlife. It was cool to see such a big, fast, purring machine.

While we were at work...

2007-01-12T08:23:00.000-05:00

Somebody stole the camera! Those little rascals! I guess they enjoyed playing in the tent, which is what camping parents like.

Festivus for the Rest of us

2007-01-12T07:49:00.000-05:00

Hmm, Santa brought us a ball of white fur...

It's a puppy! She's a street dog, so we've spent the last two weeks pumping her full of steroids, antibiotics, worm medicine, flagellate medicine, vitamins, and activated charcoal. She's much healthier now, though she still has a fairly distended belly. Her name is Clementine.

Oh and if you look out the window, you can see sunshine - it was about 25 C / 77 F that day. No snow in Ethiopia, I'm afraid.

I just wasn't in the mood to get dressed up for xmas, but the champagne was good.

One highlight was opening Patricia's grandfather's favorite wine, which we'd been hoarding for years. This one was a 1986 Chateau Haut-Marbuzet.

Gwendolyne got makeup for xmas, and did Patricia up right!

This is the kind of housing you have to look forward to when you join the Foreign Service.

Actually, Santa brought Clara a tent, so she had to set it up right away.

Santa visits the Embassy

2007-01-12T07:34:00.000-05:00

This was just before Christmas - you can see the two Tukuls (traditional Ethiopian houses) behind Santa and gang.

Next to Patricia, Clara, and Gwendolyne are our sponsor Vicky (who answered our questions before, met us at the airport during, and helped us settle in after our arrival) and her two children.

Clara doesn't look it, but she was pretty nervous to go talk to the man in red.

Happy Holidays!

2006-12-27T06:10:00.000-05:00

Has it really been a month since I posted? I'm way behind and can't take the time today to give the full update I'd like to...

As we were preparing to leave Addis for a weekend at Lake Langano on Dec. 1, walking between our house and the property wall, I found a small (two week-old) kitten. I thought perhaps someone had thrown him over the wall, but when I looked up, I saw several falcons circling. I presumed they'd stolen him from his mother and dropped him in an attempt to kill him.

We ended up taking him to Langano where we spent a lovely, relaxing weekend. We fed the kitten, who by now had acquired a name ("Samay" - Amharic for "sky", since that is whence he came), milk through an eyedropper. Unfortunately, though he did well for a while, he died a few days later.

We worked on unpacking our household effects the following weekend and week, in preparation for a holiday party we hosted on December 16.

Gotta run - more later?

Turkey, Boxes, 10k, and Car

2006-11-27T09:16:00.000-05:00

Our HHE (household effects - our stuff that was sent by ship) arrived Wednesday, so I took the afternoon off to watch eight men unload ten shipping crates full of our belongings. Needless to say, we spent much of the weekend unpacking. Clara & Gwendolyne were overjoyed to have their bicycles again finally.

Now that we've been living fine without all this stuff, we realize we have too much. For example, I sent sweaters that I'll never need in this fine weather, so will store most of them. We have more towels than we can ever use, and I have t-shirts out the wazoo. I'll be giving away a lot of stuff, I think, in addition to the bicycles and four boxes of baby clothes we already planned to give to a local orphanage.

Our sponsors invited us to their house for Thanksgiving but we had already started defrosting the (outrageously expensive) turkey, so I stuffed and roasted it anyway and we took it with us. The children all played together and we adults had a nice evening chatting.

Yesterday (Sunday) was the Great Ethiopian Run, and Patricia and I both ran all 10k, finishing in 64 minutes. We received a medal and (of course) another T-shirt. The group dynamic was great, and I felt fine even though I hadn't trained sufficiently. Patricia had been running quite a bit and so beat me by ten meters.

Our Nissan Patrol is finally in Addis. I paid for the registration last week and the insurance today, so we should have the car in the next few days. We have to have it by Friday, because we're getting away to Lake Langano for the weekend.

Sorry I don't have any photos but it's not always easy to connect my computer to the network.

Debre Zeit and the Car's on its way...

2006-11-17T07:44:00.000-05:00

Not having a reliable Internet connection has hindered my updates, for which I beg your forgiveness, dear reader. I'll be putting in a request with the telephone tech. to find out why our dial-up connection always drops after five minutes. Also, the broadband connection I was able to use has been in short supply lately. On the other hand, the school has a wireless connection, and since they're right next to our house, I might have more opportunities to hook in over there.

Two weekends ago, Seifu, his fiancée Hanna and her brother Jimmy (Girma) took us to Debre Zeit about 40 km south of Addis Ababa, where we spent the afternoon at a volcanic lake, Lake Hora. Emperor Haile Selassie used to have a weekend house there. We packed a picnic lunch. Patricia made all pork-product sandwiches until I reminded her that our Orthodox friends would have to go hungry, so she made some PB&J and some tuna fish as well.

We had a nice walk along the shores and then a lovely boat ride across the lake on a boat that clearly did NOT meet US Coast Guard safety standards. Coming back, we approached the tree where the Araicha have their October festival, there were quite a few of them dancing and celebrating as we passed. We felt a bit uncomfortable taking pictures though.

On the way back we bought a couple of kilos of fresh honey, still in the comb, for 95 birr. Yummy!

We finally have some good news on the car. There must be a chat shortage in Djibouti, because our Nissan Patrol left there on the truck on Monday, so it should be in Addis Ababa on this coming Monday. Once it arrives, we can go check it out and make sure it's in one piece, and start the clearance process. Then we need to pay for insurance - Ethiopia requires us to purchase comprehensive here - and registration. The whole thing should take another five days or so, with any luck we'll have use of it next weekend.

Last weekend was the Marine Corps Birthday Ball - the social event of the year at the Embassy - at the Addis Sheraton. Patricia had nothing to wear, so instead of going naked, she had a bespoke dress made. I'll post some sexy pics of her in it next time.

This evening I'm going to visit the Goethe Institut - Addis Ababa for the first time, to attend a screening of Berlin is in Germany. Next week Patricia plans a French version of the same thing, to see Le couperet at the Alliance Ethio-Française.

Today was International Day at school, and the girls were excited to be the French representatives. Over 80 nationalities are represented there, and they all paraded around today and brought food from their native countries. Patricia and the girls really enjoyed it - I missed it due to work.

The weather is still sunny and dry and in the 70s. Eat your heart out!

Halloweened out

2006-11-02T02:43:00.000-05:00

We had a busy weekend, with Halloween parties both Friday 27 October at ICS and Saturday 28 October at the embassy. Patricia dressed up as a witch at the latter party at the CLO's (Community Liaison Office) request, and provided lots of entertainment for young and old alike.

Needless to say, after another Halloween the previous weekend and two parties last weekend, we were all pretty tuckered out. We felt especially fatigued after spending Sunday 28 October at ICS: I played soccer with the Embassy team, Pat ran the track, and the girls played in the playground.

We're still frustrated about not having our car yet. It was supposed to arrive in Djibouti on the same day (4 October) that we arrived in Addis Ababa, but nobody bothered to contact us to handle the paperwork to have the car cleared and shipped up. The expediter and I both sent faxes and e-mails and made phone calls to the shipper, the agent in Djibouti, and the local Nissan dealer, all without success. Finally I lit a fire under the salesperson, who finally got things moving. Still, it should be another 15 days or so before our wheels show up.

Another point of frustration concerns Patricia's job - she should have started almost three weeks ago, but bureaucratic delays have kept her from working. All in good time...

We managed to catch The Birds on AFN with the girls, which I had never seen in its entirety, and About Last Night.

I also managed to read some literature, The Call of the Wild. Mrs. Neveras would be proud!

Eid Ul-Fitr

2006-10-23T01:14:00.000-04:00

For hundreds of years, Christians and Muslims have been living side-by-side in Ethiopia - about half the population adheres to one of these two religions.

Today is Eid Ul-Fitr in Ethiopia, so on my way to work this morning I saw thousands of Muslims up early and walking in the streets toward the stadium here in Addis Ababa. It brought a different sort of controlled chaos to the streets here, but without much traffic I made it to work in 15 minutes.

Yesterday morning we went to the school so the girls could play on the playground and Patricia and I could run the track. We need to get in shape for the Great Ethiopian Race, a 10k on November 26. The embassy soccer team was playing there as well, so I joined in for about 20 minutes. I think I'll let myself get roped into playing a bit more frequently.

I definitely noticed the difference in the air when I was running - I certainly don't have the same stamina I did at sea level.

Afterwards we met Seifu, the cousin of a friend of a friend back in Washington. He took us out to lunch at an Italian joint - I paid 145 birr (about $15) for the five of us - and then gave us a tour of Addis and Mount Entoto, one of the several peaks (3200 m) which overlook Addis. We went home and enjoyed the cake he had brought, decorated with "Welcome to Ethiopia" with coffee.

Then the girls decorated the house with our Halloween decorations, which arrived on Friday with our air shipment.

I found out the problem with our car shipment - I need to get the name of the agent in Djibouti to the customs clerk here. Since the embassy is closed today, I cannot get things moving until tomorrow. The agent's office in Djibouti is likely also celebrating Eid anyway.

Mengistu's Revenge

2006-10-18T10:01:00.000-04:00

Sadly, I became a victim of Mengistu's revenge on Monday afternoon. I'll spare you all the gruesome details of my upset GI tract, but I spent most of Tuesday in bed. At least I was awake to catch the wild fourth quarter of the Chicago-Arizona Monday Night game, which started at about 4:00 AM our time. Most mornings when I wake up I can catch the last few innings of the NLCS if the game's not rained out.

In any case I was back in action today, Wednesday.

Fortunately I had already swapped videos at the fairly well-stocked Mini-Merkato (the embassy commissary - named after Africa's largest open-air market, located here in Addis, the Merkato) and picked up a great one, What's Eating Gilbert Grape. I had always heard many good things about it, and I liked several of Lasse Hallström's other films, such as My Life as a Dog, The Cider House Rules, Chocolat, but Gilbert Grape is utterly fantastic. The lighting and music set the mood and make the silent and uncomfortable scenes pass quickly; the cast is well put-together and acts phenomenally; I identified with the story line (I grew up in a small town in the middle of nowhere); and I thought the emotions were well communicated.

Don't think that we spend all our time watching TV. I tried several times to get my dial-up connection to remain connected for longer than five minutes. I managed 10 minutes once, at 33.6 Kbps. Yeah, the infrastructure here sucks.

One thing I've neglected to mention is the wonderful melange of old and new vehicles that roam the streets here. Patricia was happy to see a few Renault 4Ls and 5s, as well as a whole bunch of Peugeots - 405s and 30somethings, old stock. Every day I see VW Beetles (I miss mine!), but the most common sight here are tiny blue-and-white Lada taxis. There are a few Fiats and Opels around too.

The Europeans and Americans are missing the market here, though - the Asians are selling both small sedans and the SUVs all Westerners seem to drive. Gasoline costs about 8.50 birr (~ $0.93 US) per liter, diesel's cheaper at 5 birr (~ $0.57 US), and everyone here complains about the high price, which is fixed by the government. Perhaps that's why efficient, reliable Asian models are selling well.

Of course, we can't wait for our Nissan Patrol to arrive - it's a bother being tied to the Embassy motor pool. Patience...

Details on house & home

2006-10-16T05:49:00.000-04:00

We’ve begun to settle in nicely in Addis Ababa. We live in a lovely three-bedroom house in the Old Airport section of the city, very close to the school Clara and Gwendolyne attend. The house has roundness and angles all over, with a spiral staircase in the center. Clara and we both have balconies opening from our bedrooms to the front of the house, overlooking a large terrace. The interior sports plenty of wood and marble.

Out back we have a guest house that counts a laundry room, storage room / pantry, and salon downstairs; upstairs the guest bedroom has its own bath, small storage closet, and study.

We have an enormous garden out front, so we won’t lack space to plant our vegetables once the seeds arrive. It seems that gardeners come with the houses here; ours showed up the day after our arrival. He has finished digging up one huge plot where we plan to seed our vegetables. He speaks very little English, though, so I spend lots of time looking up Amharic words in the dictionary to attempt to communicate with him.

Through a friend of a friend we also managed to hire a highly-recommended “mamita” Saturday. She’ll help us with the cooking, cleaning, shopping, and babysitting.

I’m sure our garden will do great, as we have fantastic weather here. Nearly every day we experience sunny skies until about two in the afternoon, when clouds roll in and it threatens to rain. Sometimes it does rain, but then it usually clears up by sundown.

Since we’re so close to the Equator (8 degrees North latitude), our days and nights are almost of equal length. This also implies no need for daylight savings time! Addis is in a GMT+3 time zone, while the east coast of the US is on GMT-4, seven hours behind. Once the US switches back to standard time, the east coast will be GMT-5, eight hours behind us.

The girls love their school so far, and we find the facilities and the personnel very impressive. We have access to the track, playground, and soccer pitch after hours and on weekends, a great fringe benefit.

As for the city itself, we’ve definitely arrived in the third world. Addis Ababa is a densely-populated city in the midst of a building boom that is being held back by a cement shortage. Traffic during rush hour can be very thick, and the diesel exhaust from the cars and buses can be even thicker. My work commute can take anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes, depending on traffic flow and the number of people in my shuttle.

The poverty of the country is quite evident. At some traffic lights, children or mothers with babies strapped to their backs come up to the car and ask for food or money. There always seem to be people walking or standing around on the major streets with nothing to do. Some of the streets are in well-paved and in fine shape, others are marked with potholes. In our neighborhood, there are plenty of unpaved streets marked with ruts and bumps, validating our decision to buy an SUV. The city water at our house has been out of service since we arrived, so fortunately we receive regular water deliveries into our cistern.

We are able to dial up to the Internet from home, but only for a few minutes at a time – the connection keeps dropping. Our backup power generator also comes on frequently, usually at least once a day when commercial power drops off. On Saturday we heard it come on thrice.

Ethiopians are fairly friendly, though reserved, so we’ve been made to feel welcome. Most folks seem to get by somehow with very little. In short, the country seems to be on the right path, but the infrastructure is still fairly primitive by Western standards. But we wanted to come here to experience life outside the US consumer culture.

Our air shipment beat us here, and our car has arrived in Djibouti; we’re just waiting for the bureaucratic procedures to complete so that we can receive them. Our sea shipment was supposed to arrive in Europe in the last few days; it should be flown out from there soon, so we should receive it in about two or three weeks.

Safely Arrived in Addis Ababa

2006-10-12T04:36:00.000-04:00

We arrived the evening of October 4 and all is well.

I hope to have some time tomorrow to write something more extensive and to post some photos, but I did want to let everyone know we were fine.

The embassy grounds do have a few turtles, but no leopards that I'm aware of.

Wheel-less

2006-09-27T08:45:00.000-04:00

We gave Big Blue away to friends of ours last night, and for the first time in 15 years, I'm wheel-less.

This week marks my final training class (Meridian Mail) before leaving for post, and senioritis has completely set in. The upside is that the class is self-paced, so I should be dismissed early on Friday, which would leave me time to "check out" from the State Department and retrieve my absentee ballot for November's elections.

The travel agent issued our tickets last week, so we're about ready to go. Mom also e-mailed yesterday to say she had reserved flights for her and her S.O. in March - I'm glad they're going to take part in our adventure.

I've started letting my goatee grow again with the arrival of autumn. Patricia loves it.

Progress on several fronts

2006-09-19T08:47:00.000-04:00

We had many reasons to open a bottle of champagne last night:

* We sold our 2005 Toyota Prius for our asking price to a former member of our babysitting co-op - we hand the car over on Saturday;
* We found a home for Big Blue, our 1986 Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser with the 5 liters of V8 power, and the rear-facing third row that our girls will surely miss. A friend in the rug business could use a station wagon, even if it needs a new water pump;
* Patricia received a job offer to work part-time at the embassy when we arrive;
* I passed the Microsoft 70-290 exam, "Managing and Maintaining a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Environment" - one step closer to the MCSA & MCSE;
* We now have our visas for Ethiopia - Patricia picked them up on Friday - and just need our airline tickets;
* We bought two new suitcases which arrived yesterday.

To quote a recent Volkswagen commercial, sometimes it all seems to come together.

Ethiopia Opens its Doors, Slowly

2006-09-17T07:56:00.000-04:00

The New York Times has an article in the Travel section today on the Orthodox Churches of Lalibela and Gonder.

The article also mentions that Ethiopian Airlines offers direct flights (with a short stop in Rome) from Washington-Dulles to Addis Ababa.

Great Falls

2006-09-14T05:15:00.000-04:00

Last Sunday we attended a picnic at Great Falls with some of our friends from the now-defunct Franco-American theatre group. We had lovely weather, great conversation, and by the end of the day, very tired girls.