Forward, forward, forward and forward-back

1982-3

First trip abroad: Phones in the post office and travelers checks and stamped mail

1986-1994

Phones in a home or hotel and a credit card and travelers checks and stamped mail

1997

Phones in a home or hotel or calling cards for pay phones and a credit card and stamped mail

2000

Phones in a home or hotel or calling cards for pay phones and internet access at a friend’s house and a credit card and an ATM card that works for local currency and stamped mail and email

2007

Cell phone with a local SIM card and internet access at a friend’s house and a credit card and an ATM card that works for local currency and and email

2011

Cell phone with a local SIM card and wireless access at cafes and at my neighbor’s house (and eventually at mine) and writing checks(!) for local currency at the cashier at work and email (and stamped mail if ever I get to Timbuktu). (Too much fraud for ATM and credit cards to be safe and most of what you buy is from small vendors). Sometimes the old becomes new.

Nomadic necessity

Since the day my bed was packed out of Chicago not even four months ago, I have lodged/lived in seven places, and I am not yet in my “permanent” home. That will hopefully happen in mid-July. Of those four months, about a month of that, some solid and some sprinkled, has been living out of suitcases. I guess it is good practice for a peripatetic lifestyle, but right now I just want to re-setup a home, even if it is just for a couple of years.

I did quite a lot of purging before I moved; several people figured I could purge more but by the end I just didn’t have the energy. When all of my stuff gets here I will probably realize there are things I don’t need. When my “consumables” shipment gets here, I will probably realize I bought too much of some things and not enough of others. I will try not to acquire too much more. The short time period bodes well for managed acquisition; being in a three-bedroom house, though, may just cancel that out. Time will tell. One thing is for sure—I must figure out how to keep my checked baggage under weight and my carry-ons to to something carry-able. I’m still recovering from the plane trips.

Checking in

As I learned when I was first hired (and even earlier when I was hired to work the Census), government jobs have a love affair with paperwork—on paper. This week I dutifully and diligently attacked the task of getting all the boxes of a page-long-two-column-small-print checklist which was as much a scavenger hunt as anything. Every time I went to be briefed and hand in some form, I was presented with more forms to fill out. It appears paperwork breeds paperwork. The salutary aspect of the task is that I now know where many of the different offices are, to whom I need to speak if I need certain information or services, and how (now that I have been e-connected enough) to do most of what I need electronically from now on. I finished my checkin within my first week, only to learn that most people take much longer and some people never finish “checking in.” I guess as a teacher I find it hard not to finish my classwork or homework. At least the management folks like me . . . this week.

Top-off

I decided to go the pay-as-you-go route for a Ghanaian cell phone. That’s what everyone does. First after finding every store closed last Saturday I ended up at a Vodaphone place and asked for a SIM card with some amount of time on it. I learned they call it a chip here, and then you buy little scratch of cards with certain denominations to add money or “Top off” your card. You can top off your card in the store or buy the scratch-off cards from little kiosks of even guys sitting on a chair under a big umbrella (red for Vodaphone) like the guy a half a block from my house. My friend Nana’s sister told me most people have chips from all of the companies and top off according to which company has the best deal at the time. Vodaphone now has a bonus 2 for 1 credit going for the next couple of months. Buy 10 cedis worth of time which expires in about a 3 months, and get 10 cedis worth of time which expires in a week. (I’m finding 10 cedis is a little over an hour of calling to the US, which, at the current conversion rate is about $6.67, so it’s about 10 cents/minute.) At another time MTN will have a deal where it’s unlimited calling to another MTN phone, and some other company will come up with another deal. I’m glad I have an unlocked phone. Meanwhile, someone should design a little SIM card/chip wallet so I’d be able to keep all my chips straight (including my USA T-mo one).

Traffic

When my un-air-conditioned car gets here I am not looking forward to driving certain places and certain times of the day. I have never seen traffic jams like this—it’s worse than the north side of Chicago. In comparison Chicago traffic actually moves. It’s also more like Rio, where there are four lanes of traffic in a two lane road. Yesterday we were on a two-lane street with three lanes going north and one going south. (And the outer “lanes” are scary given that the edge of the road is a two foot wide by five-foot deep trench for water run-off that sometimes doubles as a urinal.) I suspect I’ll be living in first gear and melting in the car and will have to freeze gallon jugs of water for the 45 minute 2-mile trip to the grocery store. Or maybe I’ll tag along with someone who does have air conditioning. Or maybe I’ll just start walking with my little red wagon until I get hailed by a purple and yellow taxi.

Star-spangled countryside

Looking out of the window of the plane as we flew over Côte d’Ivoire at midday, I noticed the towns and cities sparkled—like the lights were on in the middle of the day. I’d never seen that before, and knew it couldn’t be lights, but I wondered what the sun could be reflecting off of: windshields? I was stumped until our descent over Ghana, where I noticed that many of the houses were covered with corrugated metal roofs. Eureka—my stars! I am now living in one of those midday stars, and last night I was treated to quite a symphony by one of our tropical torrents. Considering I love sitting in my truck during storms, I enjoyed this rhapsody in rain.

Why the beep can’t I walk in peace?

Here in Accra, you don’t hail taxis. Taxis hail you. I noticed that whenever I was walking on the street cars kept beeping their horns at me. I asked the guards at the embassy if I was walking wrong on the street and they just laughed and told me it was just the taxis trying to get a fare (silly naïve foreigner). Today as I was walking one block and then waiting for a friend for about five minutes, I was constantly shaking my head “no” – I probably turned down at least 25 taxis.

The taxis are all two-toned. Their front and rear fenders on both sides are a yellow or an orange, and the doors and hood and trunk are all another color—any other color. Of all the combinations I’ve seen, my favorite so far was a purple and yellow one. I’ve yet to take a taxi. I have been lucky to have embassy transportation and very warm and welcoming co-workers and neighbors. When I do take a taxi, I’ll probably choose by color. I’ll have to bargain with the driver beforehand for a price, preferably not too exorbitant of an obruni price (obruni are we foreigners), and I hate bargaining, but I guess I’ll get over it faster if I get to ride in a purple and yellow taxi.

Welcome to Accrabatics

In January of 2010 amidst a “mid-course correction” (my friend Carl’s positive spin off of the usual “crisis”) I learned that a long-held dream to join the Foreign Service was still and option, and I decided to put feet on the dream.  I studied for the exam for two months, took it and passed it in March, wrote a series of essays (relying on some pretty tight editor friends) in April, received an invitation to the Oral Assessments (OAs–very involved interview/evaluation) in June, worked with some great fellow candidates to prepare for the OAs throughout the summer, took and passed the OA on September 7th (with several great folks that have either finished training or will soon start), uncharacteristically flew through medical and security clearances (not without thinking I had had or was having a heart attack in the process), had an offer on November 10th, sorted and weeded and packed out my worldly possessions acquired over several decades, and started training on Valentine’s day 2011 with the 159th A-100 class of Foreign Service Generalists (FSO — O meaning Officer) for the United States Department of State.  Many weeks of training later, I landed in Accra, Ghana for my first posting as a consular officer–almost a year to the day that I learned I’d been invited to the OA.  I’m still reeling.

Accrabatics are my impressions of being a new FSO in Accra, Ghana.

Christmas moment

Cap’n Jack on Christmas morning, thanks to Santa Paws.

The slideshare embed isn’t working, so for the series of pictures go to . . .

http://www.slideshare.net/guestfa2d43/capnjackxmastreat

Lessons and carols

Years ago I started listening to the live BBC broadcast of the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols at Kings College Chapel Cambridge via my public radio station. A couple of years ago I tuned it to find my station wasn’t picking up the feed and I was devastated . . . until I realized I could listen to the live stream on the internet. So here I am, in Chicago on Christmas Eve, and thanks to BBC4, I am also present in the worldwide audience for Lessons and Carols yet again, and all is as it should be.

I always get choked up thinking about the boy sopranos as they wait for the nod from the conductor, all (hopefully) prepared for the Once in Royal David’s City opening solo. I wonder though, are they all nervous, or are any of them thinking “There are x sopranos so I have a 1 in x chance of being chosen so I won’t worry about it.” Is it better not knowing, or better knowing it’s not you, or, even better knowing it is you?

I went caroling myself yesterday afternoon for the first time in years. It was a perfect day. Cold enough to be winter (it had been almost 50 degrees the day before), snowing, and intermittently sunny. We had glögwein beforehand and practiced “Baby it’s Cold Outside” and “Christmas time is here” and “Jingle Bell Rock” and other songs that I’m not sure could actually be called carols. I think the only carols we actually sang were “Silent Night” and “Adeste Fideles.”

We sang “O Christmas Tree” to the lonely Christmas trees yet to be adopted from the Christmas tree lot. We sang in the hardware store and the shoe store and the toy store. We caroled for an expat Welshman, and his daughter came out in stocking feet holding a large plate of cookies, shivering but refusing to budge from her hospitable duty until we had all taken one. We got a kick out of singing “Here we come a wassailing” for someone who actually know what wassail was. At another house a Japanese woman giggled with delight and grabbed her camera, having been told people come to your door and sing but never having seen it. She requested “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer” and brought us chocolate. We returned cold in body and warm in spirit and celebrated with more glögwein and rum cake.

It’s been a wonderful, creative advent, and I’ve felt the Christmas spirit for the first time in years. I had a run of life trauma around Christmastime for a few years, and, combined with being single without kids, Christmas left me. Well, not Christmas itself, but the trappings of the Christmas that had been traditional in my life left me, and it’s taken awhile for it to come back.

This evening I go to my mom’s house. Tonight I carol and worship at church. Tomorrow I go to my mom’s house, and for one of very few times in life my brother and I won’t see each other on Christmas day. I always woke him up, in person at 4am in childhood, so we could meander past the booby traps to the tree as soon as possible, and later over the phone, telling him to get over to my mom’s place so we could open presents as soon as possible. Last year we got in a big fight and this year my mom figured we should just stay apart. That’s been fine with me up until now, but for some reason, as emotionally distant as we are, Christmas is the one day it feels like he’s supposed to be there. The Christmas spirit must definitely be back.

Visit my Christmas greeting here