being american abroad

by Alex Posted on November 28, 2011

A few weekends ago an American working at a nonprofit here in Cotonou joined the usual Embassy crowd for dinner.  Each week we meet at the same restaurant, which caters to the expat demographic. Not only do they serve things like pizza and hamburgers and French fries, but more importantly, the food has never made anyone I know sick.

After a while conversation drifted to online shopping.

“Where do you get the best price on multi-grain Cheerios? Netgrocer?”

“Has anyone found a site that sells double-stuffed Oreos? Amazon only has regular ones now.”

“You know what you should really get for lunches? Annie Chun’s noodles. They’re so much better than that Ramen crap.”

One of the privileges we enjoy as diplomats is access to the diplomatic pouch. We can ship online purchases to a warehouse in Dulles, Virginia, and then the government transports it across the Atlantic for us for free. There are a few restrictions – no liquids, nothing huge or excessively heavy – but it’s still an extremely useful service. In addition to buying our favorite non-perishable food item we can keep up on American culture through magazine subscriptions and Netflix rentals.

As we Embassy workers exchanged online shopping tips, the nonprofit employee – who doesn’t of course have diplomatic pouch privileges — couldn’t help but shake her head and laugh. “Really? You guys can’t live without multi-grain Cheerios? You know they sell cereal at grocery stores here, right?”

“Yes but those cereals and bad, and so expensive too,” someone retorted.

“And noodle soups? Seriously? You know, you can just walk outside and order some Beninese stuff on the street.”

Of course she was absolutely right, and as I saw her reaction to our lifestyle I couldn’t help but think back to my experience as an exchange student in Niamey, Niger. I’d crossed paths with the Embassy crowd back then and had looked down at them for just the sort of conversations I was now engaging in. They seemed to be living in an American bubble, completely uninterested in local culture. I remember thinking: what was the point of living abroad if you were just going to recreate your life in America?

And now here I was, doing exactly that. That double-stuffed Oreos question? That one came from me. I watch American TV on the American Forces Network stations the government set up in my house.  I take my People magazines with me to the beach. I teach my cook to make tacos and lasagna.

Before I committed to being a Foreign Service Officer, I asked a friend from that semester in Niger who was now a diplomat himself whether it was possible to approach oversees life just like we had as students. Could I eat local foods? Could I spend my free time with local people? Could I entertain myself however the locals did? “Of course,” he assured me. “There are people who build American bubbles around themselves, and there are people who don’t. It’s really your choice.”

Today is the fourth-month anniversary of our arrival in Benin. It’s an interesting time marker for me, because it’s the exact same amount of time I spent in Niger. Yet after four months in Niger I was fully integrated into the community. I felt so at ease that even now, 11 years later, I look back on those four months as some of the best in my life.

And after four months in Benin? Well, I still think of myself as a newcomer.

I’m fully aware that it’s my own fault. Do I eat local foods? Not very often, because they sometimes make me sick, and I can’t deal with being sick when I have 12-hour workdays to get through. Do I spend my free time with local people? Well, no. I have a kid – I’d rather spend my free time with him. Do I entertain myself as locals do? No, I don’t do that either. It’s exhausting to navigate traffic and crowds to get to the non-expat side of town. I can’t spent my free time doing things that are exhausting; I need to build back my energy to return to work.

Being abroad as an employee and a parent is a different beast than being abroad as a student. I can’t sit around all did drinking tea under a baobab tree; I have a job to do. I can’t venture off to a giant labyrinthian market on a whim; I have a baby’s safety to consider. Still, those things don’t explain everything. That America nonprofit worker has a demanding job too, and some of her colleagues with similarly demanding jobs have kids on top of that. Yet they are still better integrated into Beninese culture than most of my Embassy colleagues. Why?

The reason, I think, is because we don’t just have any job; our job is to serve the interests of the United States of America. That’s why we get paid to spend time between tours just hanging out in the U.S. If we forget what it’s like to be an American, then we have no business being American diplomats.

At the same, I think it’s important for American diplomats to show a willingness to embrace our host cultures. There was a big uproar a few weeks ago surrounding the U.S. Ambassador to Laos who made a bit of a fool of herself by rapping in Laotian. Yes, she looked silly. But I maintain she did more for Laotian-American relations by joining in than she would have sitting stiffly in the audience in a freshly pressed suit. I was surprised not to see a single blogger or editorialist come to her defense.

All that is just to say that I still do hope to bust out of my self-created American bubble more when Flynn’s a bit older and I’m a bit less tired, because I do think it’s important. But at the same time, I’m also not going to let myself feel guilty about my People magazines or double-stuffed Oreos. I’m an American, after all, and it’s even more important that I don’t forget that.

And as for that nonprofit worker who didn’t understand the Embassy crowd’s preoccupation with 0nline shopping, well, she gladly accepted my invitation to watch her favorite NFL team on my American TV channel. We all have our guilty pleasures.

Posted in Benin, FS Life | Tagged , , , , , , | 7 Comments

recent happenings

by Alex Posted on November 26, 2011

Here’s some stuff that’s happened recently that we’ve been too busy to tell you about:

1. I took my first work trip outside of Cotonou, about a six-hour drive north to a city called Parakou. I spent four days telling thousands of high school and college students about study opportunities for them in the United States. The days were very fun and rewarding, but in the evenings I missed my little guy a ton. I also missed warm showers.

No, this is not my attempt at an artsy photo; it’s just the best my Blackberry camera could do with movement.

2. The Pope came and went. We saw neither him nor the Popemobile, so the visit was pretty uneventful for us besides how it impacted our day when he arrived on Friday. On Tuesday his arrival date was declared a holiday. At about 10 p.m. Thursday evening, however, it become not a holiday, so we spent an hour notifying the people who work in our section and trying to get a hold of our nanny to ask her if she could pretty please come to work after all. Then, about 15 minutes after we arrived at work Friday morning, it became a holiday again. Go figure.

Even though we didn’t see the Pope himself, it kind of seems like we did — his face is plastered all over town.

3. The new consular officer finally arrived, which means Andy is no longer heading up the consular section by default. Boy is he happy! He’s worked very hard the last few months, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed. The Ambassador gave him the highest award one can receive in the State Department; he also mentioned that he can’t think of anyone he knows who has won such an award so early in their State Department career. First ConGen valedictorian, now this. It’s like Andy’s trying to make the rest of us look bad. 🙂

4. Flynn spent his first Turkey Day with about 60 other Americans at the Ambassador’s residence. He mostly slept through it, until he woke up and somehow climbed out of his car seat and knocked his noodle on the ground. Parenting fail.


Us, pre-“the great Thanksgiving head bump.”

Posted in Baby, Benin, Holiday | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

no longer the newest

by Alex Posted on November 19, 2011

We reached a big milestone of our tour here in Cotonou — we’re no longer the newest people at post!

Not only did we get a new embassy couple three weeks ago, but they happened to be assigned to a house just down the street from us, so we finally know some neighbors. And as if two new faces weren’t enough, another new officer arrived just this past week too.

The guy that just arrived is in the shell-shocked “it’s so cool to finally be here and see all this new stuff, and I have so much adrenaline to keep me running” phase. I remember that phase fondly — it’s what allowed us to cram our first weekend full of more activities than we managed in the subsequent month. It was before we realized how overwhelming our jobs would be, how overwhelming combining them with a newborn would be, and how overwhelming mixing all that with navigating a new culture would be. The others, the couple who have been here three weeks now, are likely in the “what in the world have we gotten ourselves into” phase. I hope for their sake they don’t linger in that phase as long as we did.

In other news, related only in so much as it also pertains to something else that’s new:

Flynn can crawl! Well, “crawl” might be a bit generous. Andy prefers the word “creep” to describe his sometimes up on all fours but sometimes snakelike slithering movement across the room. But still, if he sees something he wants, he no longer needs our help to get to it. For better (toys) or worse (remote controls, cell phones, power cords, Abbey’s tail…).

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after these messages

by Andy Posted on November 12, 2011

Did anyone watch The Good Wife last week? The one that ended with a cheesy, fake public service announcement about sexual harassment, complete with 90’s style sound effects? Well despite the intentionally low production values, it took Alex and me a few moments to figure out if this was part of the show, or real. And anyone who has ever watched any programming on AFN knows the reason why – the constant barrage of public service announcements.

The American Forces Network, or AFN, gives us access to American programming while we’re overseas. This is particularly nice since we live in a country where streaming anything over the internet is almost impossible. Even though we only get 3 channels (and our jealous of certain co-workers who get 10), we appreciate that we get some prime time programming and can count on having access to major sporting events.

Sometimes we question AFN’s programming choices (Big Brother three times per week? The Buffalo Bills every Sunday?) but ask anyone what they think about AFN and the first thing they’ll mention will be the PSA’s. You see, instead of commercials, we get PSA’s, mostly produced by the military, but sometimes by other groups.

So far we’ve learned:

  • Shaking your baby is bad.
  • You should never post personal information on the internet.
  • Applying for citizenship for your baby is a long and complicated process.
  • You should dress nicely when overseas so you make a good impression.
  • Traffic and recycling laws are different all over the world.
  • If you only have a limited about of time to use the internet at a library, write down all the things you want to do in advance so make the most of your time.
  • Gary Sinise believes people might know him primarily from his musical endeavor, The Lt. Dan Band.

Because we get PSA’s instead of commercials, we’ve certainly learned a lot, but unfortunately, we have no idea what movies are playing.

Posted in FS Life | Tagged , | 3 Comments

funny haircut

by Alex Posted on November 11, 2011

One thing someone should warn you about when you’re gearing up to have a kid is that you’ll never blow dry your hair again. I mean, if you even find time to wash your hair, that’s something to be proud of. But blow drying it too? Ha. Maybe when the kid starts school.

I like my hair long, but only when I can blow dry it. Since Flynn arrived that hasn’t happened. In the first few months I was just too busy. Who has time for that when there’s a baby crying to be fed or burped or held? By the time I started work, skipping the hair drying became more of a choice than a necessity. Flynn no longer needs constant attention, but since I’m away from him for at least 11 hours a day already, I want to give him attention whenever I possibly can. Our morning play time is probably the best part of my day, so I’m not going to sacrifice even five or ten minutes of it just so my hair looks better. Hello, ponytail.

So, my hair’s been kind of a mess lately. Today, driving past a salon, I made an impulsive decision to just cut it all off. Had I made this decision in advice I could have brought along some pictures or looked up some haircutting vocabulary, but with none of that at my disposal I went with a simple straight across cut, at a hopefully very fast air drying shoulder cut length.

How does it look?

Well, according to at least one person, hilarious:

Click here.

Imagine this continuing for fifteen minutes, because it did.

Posted in Baby, Benin | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

shopping

by Alex Posted on November 6, 2011

One of the “must see” sites in Cotonou is a giant open air market called Dantokpa. It seems like the sort of place I’d love — huge, overwhelmingly crowded, packed full neat things like African cloths but also strange stuff like hippo heads — but I can’t tell you for sure because I haven’t been. Not for lack of trying. I set out to go last weekend, but after an unfortunate hour circling the market area trying to find a parking lot we saw on a map, and then me snapping at Andy for not better helping me navigate the crazy traffic (see here), and Andy snapping back at me for snapping at him, and then Flynn screaming at us both, well, we decided a market visit wasn’t in the cards for the day.

Sometimes simple things here, like trying to get to a market, can be inordinately stressful. Which is why we are ever so grateful to have one shopping option that is largely stress-free: Erevan.

Walking distance from our house, Erevan is a European- or American-style mega store, like Target or Wal-mart. It feels so out of place here.

There is even an orderly, sensical parking lot! No circling for hours in traffic! No parking in medians or on sidewalks!

And shopping carts too! No carrying anything on your head, here.

Erevan is giant. And it has just about everything you could ever want, from lox to frozen pizzas to baby carriers to electric grills. The problem is the prices. While some things are reasonable (a few bucks for a giant thing of flour, sure), most things aren’t. $160 for an Oral B toothbrush? Um, I can live without. But still, it’s good to know that things you can’t live without can probably be found at Erevan.

The only reason I say Erevan is largely stress-free — and not entirely stress-free — is that we still have to use our French to get by. Once at the meat section I saw something that looked like bacon and had the word pig in it. Seemed like a sure bet. Well, not so much. I’m not sure what it was, but it turned out not to be bacon and to have big thick hairs in it. For the most part, though, it’s the pound to kilogram conversation that gives us trouble. Let’s just say it’s not entirely on purpose that we have tons of ground beef in the freezer.

Within the Erevan complex there’s also a Samsung store, a home decor store, a bookstore and a Mango clothing store. A number of other stores are also in a strip mall sort of thing outside: a bakery, a salon, a cafe, etc.

Yep, Erevan is kind of a big deal. It could just be in my head, but I feel like people even dress up to shop there because it’s such a big deal. But then again, that could be just because everyone’s always more dressed up than me, as it’s hard to be less dressed up than the person wearing cut-off jean shorts and a baby spit-up stained t-shirt.

Posted in Benin | 4 Comments

driving

by Andy Posted on November 1, 2011

It’s no secret to people who know me well that I do not like driving. I don’t like any of it. Not the traffic, not the parking, not the car maintenance. In fact, one of the reasons I moved to New York City was to avoid driving. And even though we bought a car in DC, I still preferred to take the bus or metro if possible.

So naturally one of my biggest concerns about moving to Africa was the driving experience. If I got irritated by driving around the US, where traffic laws were familiar (and exist), how would I feel about Cotonou, where people compare motorcycles to mosquitoes in the way they swarm?

The answer is…it’s not that bad.

We’re actually pretty lucky. We live on a paved road. In fact, our entire commute is on paved roads. We rarely run into much traffic on our daily commute. Parking is ample at the embassy and at the local grocery store. Even the torrential rains that turn some roads into large puddles don’t affect us too much.

But like I said, we’re pretty lucky. Not all driving in Cotonou is so easy. There are a few things that we’ve noticed that make us scratch our heads:

  • Cars and motos parking in the middle of the street for no reason, as though no one thought another car might come down that road any time soon.
  • Motos driving on the sidewalks, or the wrong way down a street.
  • Traffic lights that are either broken or turned off, except when they’re not.
  • Police checkpoints everywhere.
  • Sidewalks are perfectly acceptable places to park.
  • Turning right is always tricky because you never know when a moto will try to zip past you on the right, even if you have your turn signal on and are approaching a turn.
  • Unlike in the US, traffic lights are not in places where one can actually see the light if one is the first car to stop. The standard procedure is to see a red light, pull up directly next to it so you can no longer see it, stop and finally go when the light turns green (which you only know about because everyone behind you is honking).
  • Some big intersections just don’t have traffic lights. It’s every man for himself.
  • The preferred method for turning out into traffic is to simply inch your way out until traffic stops for you. Then you may go.
Just another day in Cotonou.

All in all, though, we don’t have it so bad. I don’t have any terrible horror stories. The parts of town that have truly bad traffic are parts that we don’t have to go to very often. There are enough signs that we can usually figure out what we’re supposed to do. Still, as someone who never liked driving to begin with, “mass transit” might just find its way into the criteria for our next bid list.

Posted in Benin, FS Life, Transportation | 2 Comments

safari

by Alex Posted on October 31, 2011

Judging by how difficult it is to pull ourselves together for an afternoon at the pool just down the street, I’m thinking the full day drive up north for a safari may just not happen during our time in Benin. Luckily, we spotted one of the big five a little closer to home.

We even saw this other strange creature.

Posted in Baby, Holiday | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

rain

by Alex Posted on October 27, 2011

Cotonou has two rainy seasons — a small one and a big one. We have apparently survived the small one.

I say “apparently” because we barely saw any rain. People at work would be talking about massive storms, and we would be like, “Um, what? We had no idea.” That’s because most of them happened in the evenings, and our bedtime lately has been embarassingly early. Hey, don’t judge. We’re on baby time.

We’re also lucky that all roads between our house and the Embassy happen to be paved, so rain doesn’t impact our commute as much as it does some people.

After a rain, much of the rest of Cotonou looks a little something like this:

Or worse.

Bring on the big rainy season. We can take it.

Posted in Benin | 1 Comment

balance

by Alex Posted on October 26, 2011

In my first few months at post I felt like I needed to work a lot. It wasn’t necessarily that there was an excessive amount to be done, or that my supervisor demanded I work a lot. Keep in mind that my position was a new one, so anything I did was pretty much bonus compared with before.

Sure, I had much learn, a great deal of catching up to do, but my working a lot wasn’t about that either; it was more about me wanting to show that I’m the sort of person who’s willing to work a lot. I’m willing to get to work almost an hour early, to work through lunch, to stay – well, not as late as some people, but to not skip out the minute I officially could. And when I wasn’t at work, I checked my Blackberry.

In State Department culture, working a lot is expected. I wouldn’t necessarily say that it’s rewarded, but it’s noticed. And not working a lot, I’ve deduced, is noticed even more.

I was catching up on back issues of the Foreign Service Journal recently, and I stumbled across one article that cited all these studies showing just how great everyone thinks the State Department is. How it’s where all the college graduates want to work. How so many people are turned away in the application process. How those who make it through are so thankful to have this cool job. How very few people leave the Department after joining. How job satisfaction is sky high. There were only two categories in which the Department didn’t get rave reviews in any of the studies: family friendliness and work-life balance.

And now we circle back to the expectation of working a lot.

To be sure, this expectation varies from post to post, from job to job, from boss to boss. We actually don’t have it bad at all here; it’s the larger State Department culture I’m more worried about.

There are, however, crusaders for a more manageable work-life balance within the State Department. I’m inspired by the example of one particular ambassador, who in that same issue of the Foreign Service Journal wrote about his efforts to improve things at a particularly low-morale previous post. One action he took was let everyone know that he would be leaving the office every day at 3 p.m. to finish up with a few hours of non-classified work from home. He hoped that not being in the office at the end of the day would keep people from feeling like they needed to stick around late for show. It worked, and he noticed an uptick in morale almost immediately.

But the fact that he had to institute such a change shows how pervasive the mindset in State Department culture – exactly why in the beginning I felt like I needed to be willing to work a lot.

On Skype one day I was venting to my mom about how tired I was, about how I hadn’t even explored much of Cotonou yet, about how I didn’t get to see Flynn nearly enough.

“Work less,” she said.

“No, you don’t understand,” I countered. “I already work less than a lot of people.”

“So. You’ll still do your work well, right?”

“Of course.”

“So what’s the worst that could happen?”

“I don’t know. People wouldn’t respect me, I guess.”

She paused for a moment before wisely concluding, “You never know where respect comes from.”

That sentence has been swirling around in my mind since I first heard it, because it’s totally true. You never do know where respect comes from.

I thought about the State Department colleagues who I respect most. Does the number of hours they work have anything to do with it? Absolutely not. I respect them because they do solid work. Because they make smart decisions. Because they treat people kindly and fairly. In fact, being able to do all of that efficiently is necessary to earn my respect.

I also couldn’t help but think of a young female coworker who’s commented several times that she can’t believe I’m able to work fulltime with a new baby at home. You can see the wheels churning in her mind, wondering how she’ll juggle things when her time comes. I bet for her at least, respect would come from witnessing me carving out adequate time for my family, all the while still doing a good job at work.

But the person who’s respect I’m most concerned with is my own, and so last week I made a decision: I’m no longer going to just work for the sake of working. I can’t be concerned with what others think. I need to do what’s best for me, because ultimately that will make be a better employee too. As a first step, I resolved to no longer eat lunch at my desk. Instead, I decided to have a daily lunchtime play date with my son.

During the five-minute drive home on Monday, I set some ground rules. I’m going to stay home for the full hour I’m allowed. I’m not going to check my Blackberry. I’m not going to feel guilty about being gone. A full one-hour lunch is a scheduled part of our workday, after all.

Pleeeeeeeeease come home and play with me during lunchtime, Mom.

And so last Monday I fed Flynn his baby oatmeal, which he’s still learning to eat. He discovered how to blow bubbles with it, and I was there to see. I was there to see how he interacts with his nanny. I was there to see him play and sit and even scream. I was there. And when I returned to work, I was more there because of my break.

Of course there will be times when it will be necessary for me to stay at the office through lunch. And to come in very early. And to stay very late. Being willing to do that is part of being a responsible employee. But so too, I think, is realizing that it’s okay to not always do that. I’ll respect myself more that way. And as for everyone else — well, you never know where respect comes from anyway.

(Unfortunately the rest of the week didn’t go as well as Monday. I did come home Tuesday, but not for a full hour. Every other day I had stuff going on and had to eat from my desk. Well, it’s a start. Maybe this week will be better…)

Posted in Baby, FS Life | Tagged , , | 7 Comments