Back to Africa (and Asia and the Caribbean)

Today I took a trip around the world, all without leaving my city. If you consider that an embassy in a country is actually the territory of the other country, then I stepped on the foreign territories of Thailand, Indonesia, Botswana, Zambia and Haiti. Today was the annual open house at many of the embassies along Embassy Row, which goes up Massachusetts and Connecticut Avenues from Dupont Circle. It’s a chance for residents to see inside some of these buildings, some of which are historical houses, and for the countries to show themselves off, encourage awareness of their culture and tourists to visit, etc. I ended up visiting only embassies of countries that I had visited before, mostly to see how they promote places I’ve seen, but I was just as interested in the buildings and their interiors as I was about the countries themselves. It’s just interesting to see the spaces where diplomatic business is carried out. Unless you have an important reason to visit an embassy, one is unlikely to get inside one (and most of the time to get a visa to enter a country, it’s a different entrance or building all together).

I first visited Thailand’s embassy down in Georgetown because I just happened to have other business just a couple of blocks away in the morning. They had set up tables in several places that were selling all manner of things from Thai clothing and cloth (silk) to prepackaged food and leather handbags. In the back kitchen were several caterers selling food for lunch. It’s a new building that’s quite large.

Then I headed up to the area where most embassies are. The one I wanted to see the most because the building is an old, historical house was Indonesia’s. The line was long and stretched the entire width of the front of the building. It was because they were searching people’s bags, but it moved quite quickly. The embassy’s website gives a history about the house. An excerpt:

The building is listed in the National Register of Historic Places…

Thomas F. Walsh, the mansion's first owner, was born in County Tipperary, Ireland and immigrated to the United States at the age of nineteen. He made a fortune in Colorado's gold mining industry as the sole owner and developer of the Camp Bird mine at Ouray, Colorado…

Although Mrs. Walsh occupied the house until her death in 1932, the property's title had been earlier handed to her daughter Evalyn. As the daughter of a wealthy socialite couple and the wife of influential newspaper owner Edward B. McLean, Evalyn Walsh McLean was well-known in Washington . Evalyn inherited the house, but left it vacant for a time while she lived at "Friendship," the McLean family's estate in Washington , D.C.

Evalyn Walsh McLean is also distinguished as the last private owner of the fabulous 44 ½ carat Hope Diamond - the sale of which was negotiated at the Walsh Mansion by Pierre Cartier, the famous jeweler.

What an amazing house! Right inside the front door is an enormous staircase, and three stories above that is a stained-glass dome.



Off this central room is what was probably the dining room, which is huge. On one wall is a built-in Baroque pipe organ!


The house is in the French Beaux-arts style, but it’s a bit jarring and odd to see the structure and décor punctuated by very different Indonesian symbols – a coat of arms or statues of lions. As I was leaving, in the room adjacent to the dining room, there was a group of musicians playing traditional instruments. Some of these instruments are metallic xylophone-like plates that one has to hit hard with something that actually looks like your standard hammer. Yes, it makes a very loud and metallic sound, and the whole thing, with various drums, was just deafening and chaotic. Well, I’m sure to any Indonesian ears, it was normal, but I really would have rather heard the organ, thank you. It was enough to drive me outside, which one got to by going through a newer addition to the house, which is probably the main entrance and main business area of the embassy.


Then, as a side note, I walked around Dupont Circle to find a place to eat lunch. I found another restaurant in the Five Guys hamburger chain, which bills itself as the best hamburger in D.C. There was one in my former neighborhood, Columbia Heights, but I was waiting for a time when it was more necessary to eat out and when I could choose to try this chain. I saw Michelle Obama admit on TV the other day that she has snuck out of the White House several times and has gone to eat at some restaurants in town, and this is one of them (not this particular location, however). The hamburgers are good, but still not as good as my all-time favorite place – Dick’s in Seattle (a drive-in place from the 50s). The fries are good too – nice and salty.

Then I went to Haiti’s embassy. The line there was very long too – probably more than 100 feet out the door. But I think it was just the herd mentality – if there are a lot of people waiting outside, then there must be something good inside, and it just feeds on itself. But I can’t imagine why so many Americans are so interested in Haiti. After going inside, however, there almost was nothing to visit. I spent probably a half hour waiting in the line, which continued inside through the lobby and up the stairs to the second floor, around through one room and really only to get a third of a Styrofoam cup full of punch. Sure, it had Haitian rum in it, but it was so little, and they were being so inefficient about handing it out (a non-Haitian woman asking each person if they wanted alcohol in their punch or not). The only thing to look at were colorful Haitian paintings in each room, which I saw many of at the paintings markets in Port au Prince myself many years ago. There was a man, a painter, giving a lecture in French (translated) in one room, but only a few people were interested. The rest of us were just standing in the line that snaked through the room to get our free punch. Regarding the building itself, there was nothing noteworthy or impressive about it.

Up the road a few doors was the Zambian embassy. A much shorter line, but again, very little to look at – well, absolutely nothing new to me. At least they had made the effort to set up several tables in one room and were displaying handicrafts. People were so impressed by them and were taking pictures of the large carvings. To me, it was stuff I had seen a million times before all over Africa.

On to another street to visit the Botswana embassy. Their focus was more on tourism, and so they had booklets about all the wildlife parks you could visit. As with the carvings at the Zambian embassy, I had been there, done that. Both the Zambia and Botswana embassies were in buildings that had nothing noteworthy.

I had planned to go to a different area farther north in the city to see another cluster of embassies, but by this time it was 3:00, and the whole event was going to be over in an hour, and given the wait time in lines at each place, I decided not to visit any more. And besides, it would have taken me farther from home, which meant I would have had a longer bike ride home, and my legs were already tired of standing in the Haitian embassy line. So I called it quits. I’ll do the others next year. I heard somebody saying the Bangladesh embassy was the best (another country I’ve been to). But it was all worth it because I got inside Indonesia’s embassy!

Leaving Kenya

In less than a week, Lexi and I (and my mom who has been here for a week) will all leave together to the U.S. It has been a crazy couple of weeks. I have been working frantically trying to get things wrapped up at work so that I don’t leave much hanging for my colleagues. My replacement will not come until August so there will be a gap that they will try and fill as best they can.

In anticipation of us leaving, I wrote Jane a letter just to indicate when her actual last day of work would be as her contract with us goes until the end of May. I told her that I would pay her the full May salary anyway but that I could not guarantee her a job. I think this made her mad as two days later, she gave me a letter from the Ministry of Labour. I didn’t open it right then but did when I got to work. In this letter, I was accused of everything from not paying a fair wage, to calling her the wrong title in the reference letter I had given her, to cheating my employer (she thought my employer paid for my house help). I felt horrible and was sobbing at my desk when the person who brings the tea and coffee things came in to my office. I think he was quiet upset that I was so upset. After consultations with colleagues, we decided that we should get the lawyer involved. The letter indicated that it had been CCd to various officials like immigration and the port – in other words, to indicate that my leaving the country would be a problem.

After review, the lawyer advised that we terminate Jane that day. I felt uncomfortable with her continuing and didn’t have the guts to terminate her either. So the lawyer and one of my office colleagues went to my house to do it; Jane refused to sign the letter accepting the final payment and said we had to meet at the labour office as scheduled in the letter I had received. I did have to come home and tell her verbally that she was fired and she left after that. Mom and Lexi were there the whole time – Mom reported afterwards that it was pretty tense and there was some shouting and lots of negative body language. Lexi obviously knew that something bad was happening as she went to stand by my mom and was very quiet.

That was Thursday. Mom and Lexi managed together without extra help. I felt pretty awful the whole weekend and didn’t sleep well Monday morning. Monday afternoon, the LWF office administrator, the lawyer and I left in plenty of time to get to the meeting which was in an office building downtown that looked like it had been built in the 70s. Out of 7 elevators, only 2 worked and there were lines of people waiting to get on one. So we walked – up 16 flights of stairs. I was pretty out of breath by the time we got to the 16th floor. And we found the meeting room right at the scheduled time. There was a line of people waiting outside this door as well which made us think we should wait. But soon the door opened and the labour officer looked out looking for us. So in we went. Jane was already there.

The meeting lasted 2 and a half hours – much longer than it needed to, I thought. The labour officer felt she had to defend herself – so we heard a lot of stories about similar situations and she kept bringing up rules in the employment act that I had broken. In the end, we ended up agreeing to pay Jane about USD 65 more than I had originally calculated if the labour office would write a letter saying that the issues in the original letter were resolved. I do think Jane did understand that I was hurt – the couple of items I spoke in the meeting, I struggled to keep from crying. But I am not sure if she was really happy in the end or not – even though she was asked and agreed to it. So to finish the transaction, we had to go back on Wednesday to hand over the money and sign the agreements. (Jane had to give her left thumb print as well as sign.) Up and down another 16 flights of stairs for only 15 minutes this time. I am not sure if it was completely wise to get the lawyer involved as I think it made it a bit more complicated than maybe it needed to be. And not that I have paid many lawyers, but it cost about USD 250 for 6 billable hours which sounds cheap to me – though I wish I hadn’t needed a lawyer at all!

So besides those disasterous few days, the stuff we are shipping to the US went this week. Because of cost, it is going by sea and will take around 2 months. Lexi didn’t seem to mind too much that the majority of her toys were being packed up. She enjoyed watching the packers do their thing including building the crate for the items in the car port. We have sold almost everything on our ‘for sale’ list which is nice.

It’s not the White House...

...but now I can say I’ve lived on 16th in Washington, D.C., just like the Obamas (they live at the intersection of 16th and Pennsylvania), who also happen to be former residents of Chicago just like me.

Tonight is my last night in my first home in D.C. For the past six weeks, I have been living on my own as a temporary bachelor in a tiny, one-bedroom studio apartment. It has its own full bathroom (with a shower only) and a small kitchen area (with just a two-burner hotplate). It’s a room in a large, three-story house where several other people live in small rooms too, I’m sure (I’ve never seen the other ones), although I think they use the common kitchen on the first floor, which has a full stove with an oven.


This place is located in the Columbia Heights neighborhood, which is largely filled with immigrants from Central and South America. So I’ve heard a lot of Spanish spoken these last weeks. The way I like to describe my location is that if I get on my bike and ride directly south for exactly three miles, I run smack-dab into the White House! It’s so cool to live in a city and in a neighborhood where I can go just a few blocks and see the Washington Monument and have the White House come into view.

It was strange that I ended up on this very street as my first residence in this city because it’s where some other members of my family – three generations of them – have started out and/or lived. My great aunt (my grandfather’s sister), who lived in D.C. for decades (from the administrations of FDR to George W. Bush!), lived in a grand old apartment building called the Chastleton a couple miles south on 16th with her mother. When my own mother was young (younger than I am now), she moved with her sister from Seattle to D.C., and they moved in to this apartment with their aunt and grandmother. Later they would get their own apartment in this same building, and my mother would meet my father, and they would get their own apartment in this same building. I think this is the story of who lived where and with whom, but if I don’t have it all right, suffice it to say there was a lot happening in this one building with previous generations of my family, all on 16th, the same street where I happened to have ended up when I first landed in this city to start a new life.


Today this building has been renovated and is now all condos, with each selling for upwards of $176,000. It’s in the hottest part of town, mere blocks from Dupont Circle.

My parents were married at Grace Lutheran Church, several miles north, but also on 16th. This is the street where everything happened, and the same is true today. We have an active new president who is marking his first 100 days in office today, and from a busy White House down there on 16th, he and his family have established themselves in this city and have gotten down to business in these first 100 days, planting a new garden, modernizing the Easter Egg Roll and sneaking out from their home to try some of the restaurants in town.

Tomorrow I move to my second temporary residence, a larger place that can accommodate three of us, since Sarah and Lexi will join me here at the end of next week when they come from Nairobi. We’re renting the first floor of a house in the Brookland neighborhood in the northeastern section of the city. It’s in the shadow of The Catholic University. We’ll be there at least through the end of August.

I’m a bit sad to be moving away from my neighbors on 16th – the Obamas. But further adventures await in a new part of the city – parks to walk to on summer evenings, a Franciscan monastery to retreat to, and a college campus with a bizarre shrine to our country’s patron saint, Mary, Mother of our Lord. It’s all a testament to how interesting this city is.

What I did for Easter in New York City

This isn't a post about happenings with all of us in Nairobi/Kenya/Africa, since I, Stephen, am now living in Washington, D.C., while Sarah and Lexi stay behind in Nairobi until Sarah's work contract is finished in early May.

Since I am here alone, I went up to New York City for the Easter weekend to see some friends and family. For the last few years, my brother Andy has been making artistic costumes and hats for the various parades that NYC has throughout the year (for Halloween, Easter, etc.) from Metrocards, the fare cards that the city's subway system uses.

So on Sunday afternoon, I gathered with him and a group of friends to be in the Easter parade, which is actually just a big street party where people show off their creations, mostly around St. Patrick's Cathedral. The New York Post TV unit interviewed us. You can see me, my brother and a friend in this clip about three-quarters of the way through. My brother is talking, and I'm wearing a hat in the shape of the Brooklyn Bridge.

This is the story that goes with the video:

LOW 'COST'UME PARADE

By AMBER SUTHERLAND

In an Easter bonnet, with yesterday's frills upon it.

With the economy in the tank, recycling was on the minds of many who stepped out on Fifth Avenue yesterday for the Easter Parade.

For example, a Florida woman, Molly Churchill, 47, was dressed up as a giant Easter Cake, which was made by her husband, Mark, 48.

"We had this costume from another parade. It only cost $100 to redecorate it for Easter," Mark said. "We're recycling. It's very economical. It was a very small expense and the costume amazes people."

Kenya and the U.S.: The differences aren't paper-thin

This may seem odd, but one stark difference between the U.S. and Kenya/Africa that I noticed fairly soon after arriving in Washington, D.C., is how much paper is used in the U.S. in various parts of daily life. Of course, I had been part of this high paper consumption before myself, so it’s nothing really new to me, but it’s something that I noticed after living in Africa where not nearly as much paper passed through my hands on a daily basis.

• Much of what caused me to notice this in Washington, D.C., and not in Seattle, where I spent several days first, immediately after arriving in the U.S. from Kenya, is that I attended a conference for about three full days during my first days in D.C. Not that I attended many (or any) conferences in Nairobi, but I don’t think they would have distributed and used as much paper as they do in the U.S. Participants in this conference received a paper folder containing various papers at registration, and at each workshop, the leader and other speakers handed out papers. If you strolled through the exhibit areas, you could pick up more paper from various organizations. At every place at the tables in the rooms where workshops were held, the hotel provided a pad of paper to take notes on. It seemed normal to me at the time when I worked for the ELCA in Chicago and I would come home from a conference with a stack full of paper to sort through, but now that seems like a real task – and almost wasteful! - after this conference. Also, this conference was held at a big, fancy high-rise hotel (a Hilton). In the bathrooms, you could dry your hands on paper towels (the garbage can for this under the paper towel dispenser was always full), and near the entrance to the bathrooms, they had a box of Kleenex. When they provided a means to dry your hands in Kenya (which was rare to begin with anyway) at a public bathroom, it was often an air hand dryer, not necessarily because they wanted to save the environment, but purchasing a continuous supply of disposable paper towels is expensive.
• Also while living in Kenya, we took a hiatus of sorts from mail and specifically junk mail. Since there aren’t mail carriers in Kenya – mail is not delivered directly to residences (both people and businesses have to go to the post office to pick up their mail) – businesses couldn’t find us to send us ads and junk mail. We really received only what was essential to us. Junk mail is certainly a major way that a lot of paper passes through our hands every day. (As an aside, I did not really like this hiatus from mail, even if most mail these days is junk mail. I’ve always regarded mail as a gift that comes every day – I love being sent things that regularly without even asking for them!)
• I am reminded that in homes in the U.S., people use paper towels in the kitchen and paper napkins at meals. We certainly could and did do this in Kenya, but having disposable paper for this purpose isn’t something you see in a typical African household – a poor African can’t afford to buy disposable paper products. A speaker from Kenya at this conference also noted this – how American households have a roll of paper in the kitchen and bathroom and everywhere else and how badly it makes her feel that trees are being wasted.
• At the conference, the only meals that were provided in the conference costs were essentially lunches. And for those, we were given boxed lunches – that we ate at the hotel! So what a waste again by the hotel/the conference’s organizers. We each had a cardboard box that we threw away on-site where we got our lunch, and immediately after eating it – we didn’t really need to carry our lunches far in the box. At fast-food places, we do the same. There are boxes for Big Macs and fries that we throw away a few minutes after we’re given the food.
  

One bright spot in this often wasteful situation in the U.S. is that we recycle here. Thankfully, much of this paper that passes through our hands daily is recyclable, and people do recycle it in their homes.

From those still in Africa

It’s lonely here without Stephen though his sister comes for 2 weeks on Monday so that will be nice. Lexi and I have had several dinner engagements since Stephen has been gone so don’t think that we are just sitting here doing nothing. We have been going to bed early as we have both been tired.

This morning we went to church at our usual place. The African organist has actually been on time the last two Sundays; he handles the hymns well (even at a nice speed) but the liturgy just makes me cringe. He definitely isn’t playing all of the music but I can’t pinpoint exactly what he is leaving out – something in the melody, I am pretty sure. Stephen would be going nuts if he was here! They are having a church cleaning day next Saturday; I really wonder how many people will show up. Getting people to do anything besides come to church on Sunday morning seems to be a problem.

The weather is still very nice though it has been a little cooler in the mornings. It has only been overcast and will look like rain but it hasn’t been raining. People are getting concerned that if the rains don’t come at the right time, things will be even worse with the food crisis. The other major regional concern relates to Sudan; with the arrest warrant out for the President, things might get ugly.

Lexi and I have booked our tickets back to the U.S. My mom will come two weeks before and fly back with us so that I don’t have to handle Lexi alone. We are leaving on 6 May. I am SO excited about it. Lexi and I (and maybe Stephen, too) will get to see my entire immediate family – nieces and all! Yesterday, I went through my clothes and now, along with Stephen’s, we have a large box of things to give away. And on Friday at work I did all (or 95%) of the filing that had been piling up as well as threw some things away so I feel I have really accomplished something the last two days.

From the capital of Kenya to the capital of the U.S.

Time for an update on my/our relocation plans. The execution of the plan has begun!

I left Nairobi on the night of Sunday, March 1. It was a very long journey to Seattle that involved a very long flight that was extended unexpectedly. The Dubai-to-NYC leg of my flights was long anyway – normally 14 1/2 hours – but we circled over NYC because of the snow, which was preventing any planes from landing there. So add another hour on this plane. We finally started getting low on fuel (as if 14 1/2 hours in the air wouldn’t do that in the first place), so we landed in Philadelphia to refuel, which meant we sat on the plane for another hour. Then we went back to NYC. By the time we finally landed, I had missed my connection at JFK to Seattle. But I ended up spending the night in NYC at my brother’s place in Manhattan and having lunch the next day with a good college friend, so it wasn’t all bad. Plus I got to sleep in a horizontal position that night, since I was headed into my second straight night of sleeping on airplanes.

Once I arrived in Seattle, I stayed there for ten days. My main purposes in going there were to:

• see many friends and family (and I was crazy busy seeing everybody over lunches, dinners and coffees and the unexpected phone call with some)
• sort through and clean out my stuff that has been stored in my parents’ basement for the last 18 years and get it ready to ship to Washington, D.C. One of our reasons for moving back to the U.S. is because we now desire a house (i.e., a detached, single-family home) that has more living space so we can spread out, a place that includes a yard for our children (so far just Lexi) to play in. This is our chance to get everything we own in one place (stuff that has been scattered around the country for the last several years) and then enjoy many of the things we have collected on our travels around the world.
  

It is strange to be back in the U.S. Whenever I visited the U.S. while we were living abroad, and especially returning now after living abroad for 5 1/2 years, I feel like a foreigner in my own country. It’s strange because this environment and culture is familiar to me, but it’s not what I’ve been surrounded by for the past year or so. The culture of Europe was closer to that of the U.S., but the African culture was further removed from the American culture. It’s difficult to keep two cultures that are so far apart together in my mind. It was doubly strange being in Seattle as well. Even when I visited Seattle when I was living in Chicago, I never felt like I fit in anymore there. It is the place I lived as a child (until I was 18 and left for college on the East Coast). It is not a place I have spent much time in as an adult. Where I feel comfortable and where I fit in now is Chicago. That’s a city that suits me as an adult.

I have just arrived in Washington, D.C., and will begin the next – and main – phase of our relocation. What steps do I plan to take/what will happen now (the question I’ve been answering a lot since returning to the U.S.)?

• I made my travel plans to arrive in D.C. in time to attend Ecumenical Advocacy Days, an annual event put on by the D.C. advocacy offices of the mainline churches (including the ELCA) and their related advocacy agencies. This is a good chance for me to network with a crowd I would like to work with, although I have pretty much already exhausted all job possibilities with these offices for the time being.
• For the first several days after my arrival, I will be staying with a friend who lives in a central location in D.C. One of my first orders of business will be to find a longer-term place to live. I want to find a furnished apartment to lease/sublet for the short-term – for five or six weeks – until Sarah and Lexi join me. I may be able to find a place that’s big enough to add another adult and child later so I won’t have to move again, but I won’t know until I start looking at some places.
• Another task - my main one in the coming weeks – that I will start immediately is looking for a job. I believe that I need to acquire things in this order: a place to live (a place on my own – an apartment – see above), then a job, then I can get a mortgage to buy a house, and then (or maybe at the same time as the house), a car for our family. So this is my list of big tasks in order of priority. Then we will be able to execute the moving arrangements for our stuff to come from Seattle and Salt Lake City and have a house to receive it in. Can I even look for a job? Yes, I am finding plenty of openings on various websites that I am monitoring for my line of work (nonprofits). These are openings that I am qualified for, interested in (more or less), and at places (in addition to nonprofits, I am finding openings at universities, trade associations, foundations, etc.) where I could work.
• As I job hunt, I also have various other networking events I am scheduled or plan to attend and individuals I have planned or can contact with to meet for networking purposes. Friends and family have given me the contact information for many people who are working in D.C. whom I can contact with for job help or networking. But I am open to more contacts if you want to share them with me.
• In between all of this, after my “job” of job hunting, I hope to get out into D.C. and enjoy some events – concerts, festivals, etc. – that are offered and visit some of the great landmarks of the city.
  

As you can see, I have been and plan to be quite busy in the coming weeks and months executing my plans as I’ve described above. If you want more details or need to know more about why or how I’m doing something, unfortunately, I can’t respond to every inquiry. I hope I’ve provided enough details (about the how and why) on what I plan to do for the time being, and in several weeks, I will write another update on my progress. I’m hoping to satisfy the curiosity and interest that is coming from many of you with these written updates, and I’m sorry they have to be for a mass audience, but there are many of you out there, and I can’t take the time to repeat this information for everybody who asks.

In the meantime, I thank all of you who are supporting me in various ways – those who responded to my first update and who keep in touch through various means, those whom I saw recently, and the rest of you who read this and who silently offer your good thoughts for my well-being.