The DipNotes

This week, we’ve been learning our way to/from the Embassy and just settling into the new environment. This is one of the most interesting aspects of this career, always learning new cultures and new ways of doing things. While they do speak English down here – it’s going to take a while to figure this place out! For example, the following is a legitimate sentence down here: “You can find some Monkey Gland Sauce at the market, just past the third robot. It will work well on the braa.”

Translation: You can get some sweet and sour steak sauce at the market just past the 3rd traffic light. It works well on the BBQ grill. Yes, a robot is a traffic light. In the supermarkets they even call those packaged sweet bell peppers (the one with a red, yellow and green one) a robot.

The security guy just came over to the house, and walked me through the alarm system. There are outside perimeter motion sensors, glass breakage, door, gate, grill alarms etc… The house is a virtual Fort Knox. The wires on the walls are not barbed, but they are high voltage! High walls cover 3 sides of the home, and then surround the 3 other diplomatic homes in the compound! I hear there are many other similar compounds being built to eventually move all US personnel into them.

I went to bed last night, and used the dishwasher for the first time. Woke up this morning to an inch of water all over the utility room, and out into the kitchen! I called the Embassy’s plumber, and he discovered that the drain pipe outside was crushed when they built the sidewalk. They’ll be digging that up tomorrow.

I couldn’t sleep last night – jet lag sucks! I think I finally fell asleep at 3:30 and woke up at 6:30. I’m dragg’n now (11:30) but I know I must stay awake to help adjust. I finally identified the large bird that wakes me up in the morning – it’s the Hadeda Ibis. Not too attractive, and very noisy!

This afternoon I ventured out to a nearby grocery store shopping for a few odds and ends, and it’s always a little hard at first to compensate for the exchange rate difference. It is 7 South African Rand to 1 US dollar so you simply divide the prices by 7 to get the US price. Even though I am paying in Rands, it’s wise to know if something is cheap or not, especially when you see the sticker price of a 12oz bottle of Cola for 4.20. I was able to find everything I needed with no problems.. lots of European and American foods.

I’ll head downtown this weekend and start to explore Pretoria, and check out the malls. I hear they are quite nice. We’re also shopping for a car this week. I want something I can use to go on off-road safaris with. I hear South Africa has hundreds of excellent 4×4 trails and wild safaris would be a weekend option with the right vehicle.

Went to the mall today. It’s not everyday you are in a modern western style shopping mall, and see women carrying their shopping bags on their heads.

We stopped by the theater and was impressed with the prices. First run movies from the USA were the majority of films, a few British and some home-grown African fliks made up the rest. Price for an adult, unrestricted ticket was $3. Large popcorn, large Cola and candy came to $5. They even have a special deal, 4 adult tickets, 4 lg popcorn and 4 lg drinks for $21.

Gasoline is about the same as Poland (our last post), about $5 a gallon.
Internet is expensive too. It’s going to run about $150 – $200 a month for DSL. And that’s with a 10 gig download cap per month! Yikes!!!

The grocery stores here continue to impress me. In Poland, 90% of the store’s products catered to an Eastern European palette. Here, 90% were a wide mix from all over the world, with lots of Oriental, Indian, Arabic, and French influences. Since I love to cook – this is a very good thing! They even have the equivalent of a Whole Foods – something I never saw in Poland. Regular groceries were about 1/2 to 2/3 the cost compared to American stores, while the exotic and organic foods were about the same.

They do have UHT (Ultra High Temperature) milk, which is very cheap and has a 6 month shelf-life. I got used to this in Europe, and have no problems with it. Many Americans shy away from it – often just because of the foreign aspect of buying room temperature milk with such a long life span. But once you open the box it has to be refrigerated as “fresh” milk does, and the benefit of having smaller 1 liter boxes, stored in the cupboard makes for a whole less waste – both in the home and in the stores. The amount of “fresh” milk thrown away in the USA is staggering.

Poland did have more cheese varieties, and of course far more sausage choices. But also fruit and vegetable choices were impressive. Having a fresh vegetable stand just down the street is wonderful!

Oh yeh – we stopped by a restaurant in the mall and they had several sandwiches that included bananas as a main ingredient. Like bacon, cheese and banana, or ham, tomato and banana. I’ll have to try that sometime.

After spending 3 weeks on Home Leave, and a 5 days of consultations in Washington D.C., we finally boarded our long flight from Dulles Airport (D.C.) for a non-stop flight to South Africa. Fortunately we were still entitled to business class, something that has since been stopped.

After a 15 hour flight, we landed at the Johannesburg International Airport, half way between Johannesburg and Pretoria. Our three kitties were placed in quarantine, which upset Megan quite a bit. Apparently, I need to get some additional paperwork (red tape) before they will release them. At least they are being cared for quite nicely.

I’m typing this at the Embassy, as we have no Internet at the house yet. As soon as my home stuff arrives from Poland (next week?), I will order internet service and also have my AFN dish installed (Armed Forces network – American TV shows broadcast to US Military personnel). In a few weeks I’ll start shopping for a car – right hand drive naturally.

While Megan is settling in to her new office in the Political Section, I’m filling out job applications at the Embassy. I’m applying for one at the Office of Security Technology that just opened this week.

Our street

Our house is in a small neighborhood, lined with colorful flowers and trees, all blossomed out for spring. I awoke this morning to the sounds of bird calls I have never heard before. I need a good bird book!

The home is brand new, with all new appliances and furniture. The kitchen is rather small, but there’s tons of cabinets and shelves. They even gave us a new upright freezer in the garage. We have three bedrooms, living room, dinning room, study, three toilets, two showers, garage, and a separate building with a small servants quarters and separate bathroom that you enter from outdoors, I guess for a gardener.

Took me 20 minutes to figure out the washing machine just now. All the icons are greek to me, and the monster has about 20 settings. It’s kind of small though, which means more loads per week. This also means I can’t horde my dirty clothes, so Megan will be happier.

Oh yah, I discovered a cool wine rack on the backside of the kitchen island, so I stopped by the local wine shop near the house. Talk about cheap! A bottle of nice South African wine is $3 a bottle! Woohoo!

Embassy home in Pretoria

The most unusual thing about the house, apart from the external bathroom, is that our master bedroom has a large, deep bathtub in the middle of the room. Not in the bathroom – in the bedroom. And the shower can fit nine people! Now that’s a fun place!

But all this fun comes at a price. The home is surrounded by walls, topped with barbed wire, and with a 24 hour guard at my gate. There are bars on all the windows, bright spot-lights outside, and sensor alarms throughout the home.

The blue sign on the garage states that armed security guard patrol the area, and will respond with deadly force. This is one of four identical homes in this compound.

By the way… We sleep in a jail

Jail-like safe-haven in our home

The top of the stairs to the bedrooms has a thick iron gate, much like a jail, making the entire upstairs area a safe-room, complete with security alarm button that go direct to armed Diplomatic Security roving patrols. I’ll be sure to post any interesting events that I encounter here!

The crime here is not political, it is pure greed and poverty. The average laborer in Pretoria earns less than $500 a month. It’s the simple fact that the very high and violent crime of Johannesburg is spreading to Pretoria due to our proximity. We are only an hour from Jo-Burg and urban sprawl is bringing us closer together. During the past year there has been an average of two break-ins in US Government housing per month. While only a small portion of those are State Department, many are USAID, UN, and a whole host of other US government employees. So to combat this, the Embassy is bringing all the outlying personnel, and those in non-compound homes into new housing areas like this one. The security may be overkill at the moment (indeed, the security guy told me that in the last six months since these new compounds have been developed, there have been no incidents so far), but they are going to be prepared as the crime rate increases. As our American employees leave this post, and vacate their existing homes, they are being sold (or leases terminated) and newcomers will be given homes in the new compounds.

Tonight my only concern is the loud, obnoxious CRICKET that is making a great deal of noise in my living room. I have already found and removed three since I moved in (one was in the master bedroom) but I can’t locate this one. I will order the cats to attack.