Settling in to Zimbabwe

It's now been three weeks since we arrived in Harare and we're starting to feel more comfortable in our new home. Nikki has been working hard and is already taking trips outside of the city for her job. Jacqui and I have been busy taking care of Ryo and getting the house in order. Ryo is totally comfortable in her new home, and has been focused on eating, sleeping, growing, holding her head up, and avoiding slobber from Hina (who is also loving her new home). We have been lucky enough to have help from Chipo, who will be taking care of the house and looking after Ryo when I am at work and Jacqui is back in the States. Chipo has also been teaching us about the local culture, helping me with Shona (the local language) and introducing us to sadza (a corn-based thick porridge) and rugare (a leafy green veggie – one of many things you can each with sadza). I've also been soaking up local customs from the "Obama Boys" (one of two soccer teams I'm playing on).

We have already received two shipments of things from the US – one of consumables (paper towels, juice, flour, etc.) and one of household items (clothes, baby toys, my bike, etc). We are still waiting on the bulk of our household items, but things are slowly tricking in. We are still without a car, which makes running errands somewhat problematic. I walked several miles through downtown Harare in a quest to bring Internet to our home (after a few bureaucratic hurdles, I was successful – now we can skype!). We have purchased one car from Japan, which is now sitting in Durban, awaiting shipment to Zimbabwe. We have a second car (a Toyota "Funcargo") in Harare already, which is on hold until we are cleared by the local government. Luckily, several of our friends have been kind enough to let us borrow their wheels in the interim, which has allowed us to take a few trips out of town.

Last weekend, we visited a game park outside of town called "Imire," which has been focused on rhino conservation. Jacqui, Ryo, Nikki, and I all piled into a Disneyland-style trailer and fully enjoyed cruising through grassy plains dotted with acacia trees, checking out their semi-wild populations of elephants, giraffes, impala, warthogs, baboons, zebra, lions and of course, black and white rhinoceros. Lunch was an additional highlight, where we enjoyed curry, sadza, and homemade brownies while perched on granite boulders overlooking a waterhole complete with elephants.

On president's day, we hit the road again for a slightly different wildlife experience. At "Wild is Life" just outside of Harare, a friendly woman named Roxy has been accumulating various incredible animals for some time. In the past couple years, she has opened up her home to private tours, where one can meet and interact with cheetahs, lions, and a variety of other animals. Many of the animals were hand-raised in her home. My personal favorites were the African pangolins, which are apparently rare in captivity. The tour has a certain elegance to it, where your wanderings with wild animals are punctuated with breaks for tea and scones and later champagne and brandy. As the day came to a close, we enjoyed our sundowners from the comfort of a lavish outdoor patio, looking out over the kudu, sable antelope, and giraffes, and thought – wow, so this is Africa.

Home Sweet Home Harare

Africa! It's hard to believe that we are finally here. It's only been a week since we arrived in Zimbabwe, but first impressions are of beautiful landscapes and friendly people. The journey was long – 27 hours of total flight time over a period of 4 days, travelling from Maui, to Los Angeles, to Frankfurt, to Addis Ababa, to Lusaka, to Harare. Luckily, Nikki's mom Jacqui came with us to help schlep our 8 checked bags, 8 carry-ons, bulldog, and baby exactly halfway around the world. Needless to say, we weren't travelling light! Incredibly, we experienced few problems – save our stroller being lost in Addis and arriving a few days late.

We already have a number of friends living in Harare, which has made settling in much easier! It was wonderful to reconnect with David and Jillian (our friends from Vietnam), Jean and Ed (from Nikki's foreign service cohort), and Gil and Monica (family friends from Maui). They have been kind enough to show us around town and introduce us to their friends – our first weekend was fully booked with social brunches and barbecues ("braiis"). David has already signed me up for a couple of local soccer teams (we unfortunately lost our first game on Tuesday) and sports seem to be huge here. There are clubs for running, biking, triathlons, tennis, rugby, cricket, golf, hiking, and everything in between. Cultural events also abound. Last night we went to see a concert featuring our friend Comrade Fatso and an absolutely fantastic local group called Mokoomba. It seems our social calendar will be quite full here!

The house we have been assigned is definitely the nicest place that we have ever lived. There is plenty of room to spread out, a pool, and a yard where Hina can run to her heart's content (being a bulldog, she is content with a somewhat limited amount). We are in an upscale, centrally located neighborhood near the botanical gardens and relatively close to the Embassy – which makes our commute to work very easy. We don't have our own car yet, but have been able to borrow one and explore the city a bit. Driving took a little getting used to – hundreds of potholes, lack of streetlights, and of course that whole driving on the left-hand side of the road thing – but we were able to navigate to a few local stores with surprisingly well-stocked shelves. Some items (like cheese) are exorbitantly priced, but we did not encounter the Soviet-style empty supermarkets we had anticipated. The city seems to be generally safe, although our house has a number of security measures and we have been advised against driving at night. On the whole, Harare looks to be a great place to live for two years!

So now we are settling in. Nikki has jumped right into work and I start in a couple of weeks. Jacqui is helping to take care of Ryo while our nanny (Chipo) gets to know her. In the meantime, we are waiting for shipments of all of our possessions to arrive, setting up internet, buying a car, and generally getting acquainted with our new home. Hopefully it won't be long before we have the opportunity to begin exploring this amazing country!

Home Leave in the US

In August, we said goodbye to our friends in Vietnam and headed home for a five month stint in the US. We are dividing the time between a couple months of training in Washington, DC and a few months of home leave in San Diego and Maui. In January, we will pack up our things and fly to Zimbabwe. We’re currently about halfway through our time in the US and enjoying ourselves tremendously.

But before I get too far into various updates about what we’ve been up to, we’ve got some very big news to share. Next month, Nikki and I will welcome into the world a baby girl. Nikki is 8 months along and handling pregnancy like a champ. And that’s no small feat, given the difficulties of transferring between five different doctors, moving halfway around the world, and enduring the general high-pace tempo of our chosen lifestyle. Somehow, due to Nikki’s uncanny organizational skills, we are feeling moderately on top of things and ready to get on with the helicopter parenting (kidding…sort of).

So besides stockpiling baby wipes and cloth diapers, what have we been up to? Well, a couple months back in DC afforded us the opportunity to reacquaint ourselves with the nation’s capital and visit all of our favorite restaurants. In between trips to Spike’s Good Stuff Eatery and A&J’s noodles in Annandale, we saw a few concerts (Ben Harper, Madonna), checked out our favorite museums, and went canoeing on the Potomac. I ran a couple of races, including a triathlon at National Harbor and a fun mud run in Maryland (made possible by training with my buddy Virgile!). We made our way to the Chesapeake eastern shore for our wedding anniversary, where we enjoyed some of the tastiest crab cakes ever and relaxed on the Atlantic shore (we also stayed in a cute, but probably haunted bed and breakfast). And of course, we studied at the Foreign Service Institute where Nikki learned how to do Public Diplomacy and I studied current and historical events in Sub-Saharan Africa. We had a great time (even with the daily classes) and enjoyed catching up with our friends working and studying in the area.

We packed up enough sunblock, paper towels, beer, and other essentials to last us two years in Africa, and shipped it off to Harare along with coats, sweaters, and pants that we haven’t seen since we moved to Vietnam 2 years ago. We piled the rest of our meager possessions and our bulldog Hina into the car, and I took off for San Diego. Nikki wasn’t about to miss out on the epicurean opportunities a cross-country drive offers, so she met me in Albuquerque where we feasted on enchiladas with green chilies, blue corn pancakes, and sopapillas. We snacked our way through Arizona and California before arriving on my parents’ doorstep in San Diego.

Our days in San Diego are filled with a mix of baby classes, great meals, doctor appointments, and relaxation. A typical morning might include a walk to the coffee shop with Hina (decaf for Nikki!), followed by brunch at Snooze or Hash House A Go Go (delicious!), an OB appointment, and an afternoon at the beach where Nikki reads and I surf. It’s wonderful to have time to hang out with my family, and we’re enjoying Sunday family dinners, beer-making with my brother, and of course my sister’s wedding October 6! (congrats to Mike and Darcy!!). Of course, we are also hitting the major San Diego tourist activities, like a duck tour of the bay, the Miramar airshow, or just chillin out in Ocean Beach, Little Italy, Old Town, and other fun parts of the city. And then there are the more off the beaten path attractions of a zombie 5k and hip cooking classes… We’re soaking it all up as much as possible, as we’re expecting life to get very busy in about a month!

 

Farewell Vietnam!

Whew – I have clearly been neglecting my blogging duties, but not without good reason! We had a whirlwind last couple months in Ho Chi Minh City before departing on August 2. Our timetable was moved up so that Nikki could complete some training in DC, which means all the preparations, packing, and last minute trips had to be crammed into a shorter timeframe. Vietnam was an absolutely fantastic first post with friendly people, beautiful sights, and delicious food. Nikki and I will dearly miss our friends there and hope we can return to visit them one day.

Here are a couple of highlights from the past few months:

• Although broke and busy, we managed to squeeze in a couple last trips. One was to Sapa in Northwest Vietnam, home to hill tribes and beautiful scenery, which we accessed by the swanky Victoria overnight train. Another was to Ayutthaya outside of Bangkok, completing our tour of ancient Southeast Asian capitals. Finally, we hit up Singapore one last time for some shopping, meeting up with our friend Andrew, and of course delicious char siu bao from Da Dong and dim sum at Din Tai Fung.
• We were excited to have some last minute family and friends visit in May – great to see you Darcy, Mike, Madhu, Amanda, Jeff, and Todd!
• The Tiger Team traveled to Hanoi for the annual mission cup. Sadly, we were defeated in a close, muddy game. Despite the loss, we had a great time on a subsequent 2 day team trip to Ninh Binh province, where we visited Vietnam's first national park (Cuc Phuong), a saw a huge temple, and boated through picturesque karst formations.
• We went to Phuc Quoc island with a bunch of friends to run a half marathon – I won in 1:19:06.
• I got a job in the HCMC Consulate as the Community Liaison Officer for a couple months. It was really fun and my office was right next door to Nikki's.
• I finally tested in Vietnamese and got a 2+ (speaking), 2 (reading). Not too shabby I guess, although I have to admit I was hoping for a little higher. After two years of studying almost every day, I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of the language and can communicate in most scenarios, so it was definitely worth it!
• We sold Mr. Mustard – our 1979 yellow Honda Cub. He was an awesome machine and we were sad to part with him, but we couldn't take him to Africa.
• We organized and ran a soccer clinic for kids at the US consulate called Tiger Tots. State magazine will be publishing a short article on it in October.
• We had a ton of goodbye parties – live band karaoke at the Hard Rock Café with Anh Joe and friends, Tiger Team and cheerleaders farewell, and an official goodbye party at the Consulate (where we drank the last of my latest beer brewing effort). Thank you to everyone and we'll miss you!!

As you can see, plenty of things going on! We returned to our sparse apartment after the last goodbye party, packed up 4 fifty-pound bags, and headed to the airport for a midnight flight out of Tan Son Nhat.

On the way home, we took a rest stop in Tokyo, and in classic Nikki/Evan style, crammed in as much sightseeing as possible - we visited Meiji shrine, strolled through Harajuku, dodged pedestrians at Shibuya, ate yakitori in a back alley of Ebisu, ate musubi at 7-11, gorged ourselves at the food show, and of course visited Tsukiji fish market. Tsukiji was my favorite – we arrived at 5AM to see the tuna auction, where a single fish goes for as much as $80k USD. On the outskirts of the market, we sampled some of the freshest sashimi in the world, before wandering the narrow alleys of the market crowded with purveyors of every kind of seafood imaginable.

So our Southeast Asian adventure is over and we are back in Falls Church, VA for a couple of months. It's a nice feeling to be home, and there are definitely things we've been missing – places to run outside, American chains, craft brews, and the ease of communication in a common language (my head nearly exploded today when I went to a nearby store where people were speaking Spanish, Vietnamese, and English). We're soaking it all up, since in a few more months it will be off to our next adventure – Africa.