criplomats

We’ve had a few storms come through lately – it seems early for the rainy season, but maybe not!

We had a nice dinner out at Mamba Point with a German diplomat, Peter, and his wife Lia who was visiting from DC. They were lots of fun – and we discovered they had gone to Sabi Sabi for a safari many years ago – small world! Later in the week we went back to the hotel for dinner with Mike and Carolyn to talk about their bidding – another nice evening. Friday night, I went with John to his book club (despite not having read the book). I had fun listening to them discuss “Lincoln in the Bardo” and enjoyed the hospitality of Sonya and Jeff.

We’re still organizing for pack-out, but made time last night to watch Kenneth Branagh’s “Murder on the NIle” – it was fun and had some actors we like. I finished reading “Nives,” a fun work of fiction by Sasha Naspini – I kept thinking of what a good stage play it would make, or even just a reading. It’s primarily a telephone conversation between two people but with lots of twists and turns.

This was a pretty low-key week. I chatted with Ann, Pamela, and Jackie last Sunday. The rest of the week was regular work for the most part. I have managed to get three new positions approved here, so we did some interviews this week. Otherwise it was business as usual!

I finished Daniel Kahneman’s “Noise,” which was very interesting – especially thinking about visa adjudications. John and I are watching “Arctic Circle” and “Star Trek Discovery.” Oh, and a great Korean show, “Pachinko.”

We wrapped up our wonderful South African vacation last Sunday and made the 24+ trip back to West Africa (geez Africa is huge!). Flavia was very happy we were home again. It really was an incredible trip – and we were so lucky that the day after we arrived back in Liberia was a local holiday, so we had a day to unpack and recover from the long series of plane rides.

We jumped back into work, then celebrated St. Patrick’s Day at a party last night at the palava hut with friends. We are truly in the moving countdown now and have to get serious about organizing for packout and finalizing our work duties. Exciting!

Click to see a few more photos from Sabi Sabi.

John and I are wrapping up a week in South Africa at a private game reserve – it’s been an amazing week filled with wonderful animal viewing. We stayed at Sabi Sabi Bush Camp Lodge, a beautiful oasis where we were pampered beyond belief. In addition to wonderful food and wine, we had two game drives daily – one in early morning and the other in late afternoon/evening. On the drives with our wonderful guide Coenraad and incredible tracker Mandla, we saw everything I came to see and more: leopards, lions, rhinos, hippos, giraffe, zebra, elephants, buffalo, honey badger, wild dogs, hyena, jackal, impala, kudu, bushbucks, waterbucks, warthogs, wildebeast, mongeese, squirrels, tortoises, and incredible birding, including some amazing owls — and I’m sure I’m leaving off a lot!

More photos to come!

John hosted a fun game day last Sunday – they started at 8:30 AM and went till 6 PM or so! It was fun to have people in the house.

I’m trying to get ahead at work writing employee evaluations, awards, etc. I had a high-level meeting early in the week and was also busy trying to get things in shape for my successor.

We met our downstairs neighbor for a glass of wine mid-week – his husband was visiting and we had never met him before. He was very nice, and lo and behold, he works with a gentleman I talked to on the phone last week about visas – small world!

John and I are off on a big adventure but more on that next week!