criplomats

Jimmy and LJ

We received the sad news this week that Mom’s younger brother Jimmy passed away. I’m very thankful to Julie for calling Mom and having her and Aunt Bonnie come to the hospital to see him before they disconnected life support after his heart attack. And, I’m thankful to David and Alison for taking Mom to the services in Mt. Tabor. He was a nice man and will be missed.

On top of a particularly hard week on the visa front, I’ve also been working on an issue near to my heart, the cats that reside on the Embassy compound. The Embassy management team has been getting complaints about all of the cats on the compound. We had a couple of litters of kittens born over the summer and they were really becoming a nuisance, along with all of the already-existing cats. People feed them (including me), several of them are spayed or neutered already, but the kittens were bothering people trying to eat outside on the patio.

There’s a loose-knit group of cat-lovers, so we mobilized to see if we could do something. Management was threatening to do a “round up” which just means round them up and either kill or dump them. They have done it in years past, but luckily it seems that this Management team understands that if you do that, more cats just come onto the compound. So we are working to stabilize the population and keeping a healthy, spay/neutered population there. Our little team dubbed the C’attachés quickly raised money, and yesterday Mike and I got four of the naughty kittens and one pregnant female and took them to the vet to be spay/neutered. We’re are also going to establish formal feeding stations around the compound to draw them away from the restaurant and cafeteria, and we are embarking on an educational campaign to get people to stop feeding them at the tables. These are all measures that have been established at other Embassies, and we’re excited to get a good program going here.

Pakistan is extremely primitive when it comes to animals and pets. For one thing, in general Muslims think dogs are unholy. Their animal control consists of having the city periodically go out and shoot stray dogs. The senior local staff member who works for me, who is so smart and has worked with Westerners for years, heard me talking about spaying cats and asked me what that was. When I explained it, he just shook his head and said he had never heard of such a thing. There are no shelters here, of course. It’s very depressing – but, I think we are on the right track with the cats on the compound.

It occurs to me that I don’t think I have announced in this blog that John and I are slated to go to Guadalajara in Fall 2014 after we leave Pakistan. We had to wait a while before we got “paneled” into the job, but everything looks good at this point. The sticking point was our Spanish. Our official scores had expired last spring, so we had to take an informal phone test before DC would agree to put us in the jobs. But we still have to pass a formal test before we go to Post, so we are studying as much as possible. We are very excited about Guadalajara! If all goes as planned, we’ll be there for three years.

Some friends here put me in touch with a lovely Honduran woman. We met for coffee after work on Thursday so I could practice Spanish with her. She was so nice and helpful, and we plan to meet again. It was a boost to my confidence to be able to carry on a conversation for an hour and a half without too much trouble. That said, my real work is still ahead of me in terms of preparing for the actual test.

John and I have laughed and laughed at this cartoon this week – it pretty much sums up our relationship:

We are dogless now after two months of having a puppy around the house. Flavia is happy! She can finally eat on the floor again and not in her cat tree. She’s back to sleeping in her favorite spot, and has come downstairs to sit with me on the sofa again. She was a real sport! We were really sad to see Coco go – her mom came to pick her up Monday night – I missed meeting her, which was a shame. I was staying late to try to get an emergency visa out for a medical case.

Thursday after work we went to the Club for a going-away party for our A-100 classmate and friend Joe. Hard to believe he’s been here for a year. We had another going-away party last night for Tom – a nice night for a party under the stars with good friends. The weather here is fabulous now, although we awoke to lots of rain and thunder this morning, but it turned into a beautiful day.

We continue to study Spanish in our free time – which for me wasn’t much until today. We went for massages early in the day, then have spent most of the day studying. John is especially doing well, of course, and is reading books in Spanish in addition to his lessons. I’ll be glad when this is over!

John with Coco

In a perfect storm of holidays, Monday was a U.S. holiday, and the remaining four days were Eid holidays – so the Embassy was closed all week. It’s the Muslim holiday that is known for animal sacrifice. In the days leading up to it, you’ll see goats, sheep, cows and camels for sale on the side of the road. Then on Eid day, the animal is slaughtered by the family. I just try not to go where I am apt to see any of it – call me a hypocrite!

Lots of folks took advantage of the time off and left for the week. John and I had a stay-cation of sorts, although we both worked some each day. The Pakistani Prime Minister is heading to the U.S. to meet with President Obama, so I went in most days to work on visas for his entourage. I also went to the gym each morning. And we spent a lot of time loving on Coco, as you can see

Most afternoons we studied Spanish, and worked in several episodes of “The Bridge.”

We were also invited to a lot of dinner parties – we really ate well the entire week!

Tuesday night we went to Barb and Edward’s. Turns out that one of the young couples at the table had previously dog-sat for Coco, our current charge – small world!

Thursday night we went to Konstantin and Carolyn’s – Konstantin made some excellent ribs!

And then last night we went to Joseph and Sunera’s. We enjoyed a nice evening with them, Konstantin and Carolyn, and Debbie. Lots of laughing.

On a sad note, I met a man last Friday through work, a politician in KP, sort of the wild west part of Pakistan near the Afghan border. He was very nice, quiet, dignified, about my age and seen to be an “up and comer” in Imran Khan’s political party. Married, with two kids, ages one and six. We chatted and I teased him some, which he took good-naturedly. I was shocked to read only five days later that he had been blown up in a suicide blast on Eid as he greeted well-wishers outside his home. It sent chills down my spine. Here in Islamabad, we are pretty insulated and it’s easy to forget how dangerous it gets, but this incident brought it home for me.

Coco

Honey and Coco

We were very sad to say goodbye to Honey Friday night! Her mom was in Bangkok on a work trip, so some friends took her to meet up with her so she can go back to America. She made the trip to Bangkok fine, and will be heading home later this week. We so enjoyed having her, and John is convinced now that we need a dog!

About an hour before Honey left, our new charge arrived – Coco. We’ll have her for a week or so. She is a Pekingese mix, I think. She’s also very sweet, but different from Honey. It’s funny how they each have their personalities. Flavia continues to look down from her cat tree with disdain for this spate of dog-sitting at Casa Crippen!

It was a very busy week! Tuesday evening I took Honey to the vet for her travel papers. I wish I had had my camera – four young Pakistani vet techs were just loving all over her and vying to hold her.

Wednesday, computer problems at work plagued us in the afternoon and evening, so I was trying to deal with that around a two-hour school board meeting at the Superintendent’s house. It continued up until 11PM or so when I finally just went to bed. Thanks to our hard-working IT department, everything was back to normal the next day – good thing, since we had a lot of VVIP travelers who needed visas.

Thursday we had a mini-Juarez reunion to say goodbye to our friend Jason, along with Howie and Petit. With the exception of Howie, we all worked together in Juarez in 2008-10. We went to a neat outdoor restaurant that had a big aviary and enjoyed some good Pakistani food.

Petit, Howie, Jason, John

Yesterday I worked most of the day just getting caught up after a busy week, then John and I started watching “The Bridge,” a detective show that is set on the border of Juarez and El Paso. The premise is that a dead body is found cut in two…placed exactly on the US-Mexican border on the bridge. It’s fun to see familiar places, and since some of it is in Spanish, it counts as studying…right?

Last Sunday we were still in Doha. We went to the airport that morning to sign up for Global Entry. With it, we can simply swipe our passports at most airports in the U.S. rather than waiting in the immigration line. We can also use it to sign up for a TSA program that will allow us to keep our shoes on and laptops in our carry-on bags when we go through security. A nice guy from Houston did our paperwork in a small office at the airport in Doha.

Afterward, we took a taxi to the Islamic Museum of Art. It was very lovely, and I particularly liked the carpets they had on display. It’s a very pretty building that sits on the bay looking out over the water. Quite nice.

We went back to our hotel and spent the rest of the afternoon reading in the lounge, then back to the airport that evening to catch our flight back to Pakistan, again via Oman. We arrived home around 7AM. I slept for a few hours, then went to work at noon. After work, we went to pick up Honey the Chihuahua who had stayed with friends while we were gone. She was very happy to see us!

I had a few meetings this week, including finance committee for the school. Spanish lesson via telephone Monday night, which is always humbling!

Last night we went to a nice dinner party at Pam and Ron’s. Their good friend Julie was in town, so we got to meet her – she’s super nice and was fun to talk to.

All in all, a pretty good week!