twenty-something years of "what have you been up to?"

Month: June 2008

  • Memory cells

    Our last weekend was busy but enjoyable. Camille had horseback riding and then brought over 4 friends for a sleep-over until the next afternoon and the only reason her party ended was because they had – you got it- more horseback riding! Dina and I were invited to our Nigerien friends' house for lunch and then the DCM's for a very nice dinner with a few other embassy colleagues. The African food was so good, only to be followed by a sit down cous-cous. I discreetly loosened my belt to the last hole. We arranged for Stefan to be dropped off at the Marine House to watch, "Horton Hears A Who," so everyone was happy.

    On Saturday, Dina made blueberry pancakes for the slumbering slumber partiers who each kissed me on each cheek and loved the pancakes so much that they asked for more! Leopold came and made them burgers and fries plus a mango fruit salad for a late lunch. Dina and I touted around Niamey running a few errands and enjoying the sights as we found them. Then dropping the girls off back at the equestrian club and checking our emails before going to another dinner party to welcome the new School Director of the American International School. It was very nice. The host made escargot and everyone brought a variety of dishes to share; none the least was true romance.

    Sunday was down time. A day of liesure. But we did manage to get do visit the people we sponsored who took two of our kittens so we could see them one last time. They are more bulk than Mignon (their brother). Maybe it's that American Fancy Feast they feed them? As opposed to our Nigerien Lizard Gizzard. But they were fun to watch and we all went to watch the sun go down and have brochettes one last time at the Grande Hotel.

    Monday escaped me. Dina closed down her office only after firing off her final Sahel-O newsletter. Tuesday was also a blurr. We made a trip to Wadatta to shop for Toureg jewelry. I took Camille and her friend Marielle to the equestrian club one last time to say goodbye to her favorite horses. She fed them carrots and I watched her pet them and whisper, "remember me" in their ears. On the drive back she said, "I didn't realize I would miss Niger so much!" But that is what this place does to you: it attaches itself to your back where it seeps into your soul so that you don't see it. But you feel it and it becomes a part of you.

    I watched them walk away as they entered the airport. I called Murielle who manages the restaurant upstairs to let her know they were departing. She came down and somehow got me in. More hugs with tears in our eyes. Once they got through the x-ray Murielle invited me upstairs to the restaurant where we could see the entire plane sitting on the tarmak. She made me a gin & tonic (a double) and I watched them board the aircraft. Once it started scooting towards the runway, we left. And as I drove out onto the road towards Niamey, it took off and flew right over us. Goodbye my dear family. Be safe.

  • time of our lives

    Had Camille's slumber party on Friday, kind of hard to have a party when you don't have any of your stuff. We are camping in our own house, using the Embassy welcome kit, with the sheets made of sandpaper. We fly on Tuesday at midnight. Camille has already arranged playdates on the plane, we are flying to France with about half her class.

    I will miss shaking hands one hundred times a day. I love the soft handshake of Niger. If someone is too far away to shake your hand, the shake their own hands over their head. If they are on their moto, they clasp an invisible hand overhead, the black power salute. Try it, it's fun. If they are feelin' it, the men touch their chest when they shake hands, . Peter does this and it cracks me up, it's almost as good as everyone calling him "Patron." Some people snap fingers after shaking hands, or bump their fists together in a super cool secret handshake, but I am not cool enough for someone to do this with me. I make the kids do it with me though.

  • homing from work

    In a week and a half, I leave Niger as I found it: without internet access.

    Unable to even get a call through to our internet non-provider, I finally sent our gardener, Pierre, out with the car to go ask, WTH? He came back with news that last Friday's huge storm had knocked down their tower, and with an uber-Niamey kind of repair schedule: it won't be fixed tomorrow, maybe the next day, which is a polite way to say maybe never. Or maybe really the day after tomorrow!

    Meanwhile the number of admin details overwhelms.

    The kids and I leave for Paris on June 24th. Stay two nights, land in Sacramento June 27th. Which confuses me, because I only have two nights of hotel reserved. Another thing to look into. Spend until the 10th in Sacramento-Donner Lake area, depending totally upon the kindness of my sister and brother-in-law. Drive to Portland with my parents. Peter arrives in Portland the 8th. Peter plans to drive back down to Northern California to do the Mt Shasta-San Francisco-Disneyland?-Davis circuit. I don't know that I will go. Right now I'd rather just sit by myself in Portland, although I do want to see everyone, I remember how awful I felt last year after doing that same grand tour. Everyone was mad at us, I felt we slighted everyone, we'd lived out of suitcases and were exhausted when we left. I'm thinking of just staying in Portand and riding my bike around, seeing friends there and wandering the aisles of Powells, stocking up on little things to send to Moscow. Peter will drive up to Portland around the 28th and we are there until the 10th of August, when we go to DC for a week. We leave for Moscow the 16th, arrive the 17th.

    I was going to get off the plane in Sacramento and buy an iPhone, but I guess now I'll wait until the 11th. Arrrggg.

    What are your summer plans?

  • frumpy attempt at an old-fashioned floral

    Q: How many notes can you shoehorn into the drydown of Allure? A: One to many.

    Good-bye brunch today for Emily at Richard's, otherwise known as St. Richard. (Say Ree-shar, in French.) Emily is our lovely, lovely National Hospital Fistual Clinic worker–I've been trying to post my Embassy newsletter article with pix on the Niger photo-a-day site for days, but I'm having issues. Richard is full of hilarious stories, remind to tell you the one about him being robbed in Brazil on Christmas Eve. 

    I was feeling completly out of my league story-wise and perused his bookshelves and ran across Perfumes, the Guide. They describe perfumes with all these fabulous metaphors, like, "as shocking as Dylan going electric." They review maybe a thousand perfumes in the book, and the long detailed love letters are wonderful, but the disses are probably better.

    Kenzo pour Homme Fresh: I'm not saying there's nothing charming about the orange-spice oriental lurking in the this fresh woody flanker…I'm just saying that's it's basically soap that doesn't get you clean.

    And this about Kouros, (Peter won a bottle as a door prize and we gave it, without opening, to Leopold, our cook): It smells like the tanned skin of a guy stepping out of a shower wearing a pre-WWI British dandified fragrance: citrus, flowers, musk. It has that faintly repellent clean-dirty feel of other people's bathrooms, and it manages to smell at once scrubbed and promissory of an unmade bed.

    And about Creed's (Creed! I thought they could do no wrong!) Vetiver: Deserves some sort of prize for managing to make whatever vetiver it contains mostly imperceptable.

    They give five stars to only twenty perfumes, one of them being 100% Love, which I have never heard of, and Timbuktu, of which I am going to start ordering a case, based on the discription.

    One of the delightful properties of intelliegence is its ability to counter dumb questions with smart anwers. This is how they describe a perfume! Yeah, this book is cheering me up. 

  • award winner

    Peter_award

    While Peter was in Ouaga, the U.S. Ambassador to Bukina Faso, Ambassador Jackson, gave him an award for outstanding service.