The DipNotes

About 3 hours northeast of our home lies the Marakele National Park, a wonderful little campground that is not very-popular, so you can enjoy the park without seeing too many tourists. The park is situated in the middle of the Waterburg Mountain range, near the boarder with Botswana. The 4×4 trails are virtually empty and it makes an ideal place for astronomy (I am an avid astrophotographer). The park costs about $12 a night to camp with your own equipment (Bontle Bush Camp) and $80 a night for a Luxury Safari Tent (Tlopi Site) with fully equipped kitchen and private shower. Megan and I stayed one night at each camp and enjoyed two very different experiences all in the same park.

The Bontle Bush camp is situated near a watering hole, and you get to camp out in the open, with nothing between you and the wildlife. The park is fenced however, and predators are kept away from this part of the park. It is, however quite a shock to wake up and find rhinos grazing about 20 feet from your tent!   The next day, I drove around and found the Rhinos that had kept me awake at night, and found them about 1/4 mile away – still gazing.

Through the weekend, we drove around and kept a sharp eye out for wildlife. This part of the park is very fun to drive around as you can spot wildlife in the most unexpected place. Like these Giraffe that decided to use the road for a few minutes rather than the thick brush.

The park makes great hiding for the beautiful Kudu, one of my favorite animals in South Africa. This lovely animal is called the “Grey Ghost” as it seems to disappear without a sound, even though it’s quite large.

Perched atop a rocky hill, I found 3 Mountain Zebra staring me down. I quickly took this shot before they bolted off.

We drove around for several hours and then headed to our next campsite, the luxury tented site called Tlopi Site.  This site is located within the fenced predator area with lions and other carnivorous animals.  As you approach the Predator area, there is a push-button that opens an electric gate, that then closes just after you enter. This part of the park is the most scenic, but also a big more rough in places. There are 4×4 trails and a narrow one-lane road that climbs up atop one of the mountains, where the largest number of Cape Vultures in the word live.

As we drove towards the Tlopi tented site, we came across a large group of Baboons. At first, I only saw one run across the road, causing the guy in front of me to stop suddenly.

Then, I found them in the trees just a few feet in front of me.

We finally got to the campsite, and found the facilities very cozy! The tent is situated on a small pond at the base of a rocky hill.

As the sun started go down, Megan wanted to drive up to the top of the hill and watch it. We headed up, and got there just as the sun started to set. In the distance you can see the flat plains heading West towards Botswana, and in the middle the tiny pond we were camping at. The sounds of the night life had just begun, which I can not begin to describe!

I set my telescope up on the deck overlook the pond and enjoyed the incredible dark South African skies.  As an astrophotographer South Africa is one of the best places on Earth to capture stunning photos of the Cosmos.  Here’s a photo of my equipment, with a friendly monkey who was looking for food.  Perhaps the bright yellow end-caps on my scope made him think I had bananas!

Here’s two photos I took while in South Africa.  The Omega Centauri globular cluster on the left and the Eta Carinae nebula on the right. The globular was a single 10 minute exposure and the nebula was 15 minutes on 35mm Fuji 400F Provia slide film.  You can find more of my astrophotography at www.CosmicColor.com.

On May 11^th,  I drove 14 hours deep into the South African Karoo, a region similar to western New Mexico to visit the largest astronomical observatory in the Southern hemisphere.  The whole area is very remote, and there are only a few places to stay.  The Karoo is semi-desert, with low rainfall, and the darkest skies in the country, easily ranking in at number one on the Bortle sky brightness scale (with #1 is the darkest skies on earth).  In the photo below, I drove our Land Rover high up on a hill to overlook the Karoo landscape.

After driving over 20 km from the small town of Sutherland, we were in the middle of no-where, and had another 8 km to go.  This is where we stayed for 3 days, at a the Blesfontein Guest Farm, a delightful cozy, yet isolated place which contained over 1,000 sheep on a 28,000 acre farm.  Talk about isolation.. and dark!  This is an astronomer’s paradise.

We stayed in a guest cottage near the main farmhouse, which included an indoor braai (grill), and a sunken tub!  The cottage, called the “Cow Shed”, also had a full kitchen and the beds were lined with electric blankets as the temperature approached freezing this weekend.  In winter (June-August) they get snow, one of the few places in South Africa to do so.  Being an isolated sheep farm, you can probably guess what our meals consisted of – lots of mutton and good ol’ South African wine.  The price was about $22 a night.

The town of Sutherland was built in the mid 1800’s and has one stop-sign on it’s main street, and about 10 Bed & Breakfasts with names like ‘Galileo”, “Galaxy”, “Andromeda”, “Kosmos”, “Jupiter” and others so you can tell who they cater to!  Most places even have telescopes for guests to use.  Our farmhouse had two, mounted in a roll-off roof observatory.

Southerland is home to the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO), situated high atop a hill about 15 kilometers from town.  The SAAO is now home to the largest single telescope in the Southern Hemisphere, the Southern African Large Telescope (S.A.L.T.).  The telescope was completed in 2005 and first light obtained in November of that year.  Although completed, the scope is now being used mainly for on-going testing, calibration, and fixing numerous mechanical and optical problems that are not unusual for a telescope of this size and complexity.

While daytime public tours are available, I was granted special permission to spend a night working with the SALT astronomers and engineers and have access to the whole telescope and control rooms.  This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity was the main reason I drove the 16 hour distance to get here.  Upon arrival I was met by Russian astronomer Alexei Kniazev who gave me a brief tour of the living quarters and then invited me to dine with him and all the other staff astronomers and engineers before heading up to the observatory. 

During dinner Mr. Kniazev gave me an briefing on the overall history and function of the S.A.L.T. obsevatory, followed by an indepth tour of the complete facilities.

The S.A.L.T. primary mirror measures in at 11 meters across, and is composed of 91 individual hexagonal mirrors.  Each mirror weighs 500 kilograms and were made in Russia from a material called Astrosital, a glass-ceramic material with very low thermal coefficient, which means it does not expand or contract within normal operating temperatures.   The glass was then shipped to Eastman Kodak for cutting and polishing, and finally shipped to the observatory for mirroring with a 100 nm layer of aluminum.

The primary mirror’s 91 mirrors are arranged and collimated into a sphere, and use a Center of Curvature Alignment Sensor (CCAS) laser system to measure and align the individual mirrors into a perfect sphere.  The laser is situated within a high tower outside the observatory and is prominent in the photo above.  Every few days this laser is used to align the mirrors and 8 sensors on each mirror segment constantly measure each position and track that information back in the control room.  A computer makes tiny adjustments as needed through 3 small servos attached to the back of each mirror to keep the mirrors aligned.

The telescope’s most unusual property is that it is fixed in altitude at 37 degrees.  This altitude was chosen as it is centered on the Magellanic clouds, a key target to study in the Southern skies.  To track the sky, the telescope’s optical system payload, which sits 13 meters above the primary at focus, tracks across the mirror.  Being able to use any part of the mirror is possible as the mirror is a sphere, so there is no real center.  The payload tracking gimbal is able to move 3 meters in any direction, which allows the telescope to track an object for 6 degrees at a time.  This gives astronomers from 1 to 3 hours of track-time depending on the location of the target in the sky.  The gimbal uses a laser to measure the distance to the primary mirror as it tracks, and moves the payload inward or outward as needed to keep the optics in focus.  To prevent field-rotation, the platform also can rotate as the sky revolves overhead.  The payload, and tracking platform combined weigh just over 5 tons but can track to accuracy of 5 microns!

This photo on the right shows the payload system, containing a 50-filter cartridge, and a $600,000 CCD camera called the SALTICAM.

The payload can also carry the Robert Stobie Spectograph (RSS) which is the star of the S.A.L.T.  This instrument, designed by a joint effort of the University of Wisconsin and Rutgers University is designed mainly to study objects in the ultra violet wavelength down to 320 nm.  Some of the SALT project scientists, including my guide for the night, will use the RSS to make detailed studies of planetary nebulas in very distant galaxies to help understand the composition of very early stars.  Planetary nebulas are useful in this regard as they show the physical composition of stars at the last phase of a stars life.  You get to see what stars are made of, at the moment of their deaths, when they have virtually stopped creating new elements.

Since the telescope can rotate 360 degrees in azimuth, it can cover 71% of the sky at some point during a year.  Astronomers queue up targets for observation well in advance, and computers are used to schedule observations based on when a target will be observable, taking into consideration the moon and obstruction by the tall CCAS tower.

The observatory itself contains the telescope, control room, mirror coating room, and a payload workshop.  They also have room located under the primary mirror to house a future spectroscopic instrument currently under development.   The main observatory bay, with the telescope, has many temperature and humidity sensors.  The entire environment is controlled by computers to regulate the interior observatory temperature and humidity one full day in advance.  Meteorological instruments and computer modeling predict the nights observing conditions and use air conditioning and dozens of louvers to match the observatory dome’s environment.  As a side-note, the louvers are computer controlled in such a way as to prevent moonlight from shining on the primary.  As the moon moves across the sky (or as the dome rotates) louvers that open towards the moon close and those on the opposite side on the dome open.  Very clever!  You can see all the louvers in my photo of the outside of the observatory above.

The telescope’s massive mechanical tracking system, primary mirrors, complex environmental controls, and optical imaging systems are all controlled from one control room.  The optical-fiber feeds from these components are kept at the same temperature by keeping them, and their computers at the same temperature with an ethylene glycol cooling system.  The final results of these computers are then fed into the warm control room.

Only two people, an equipment operator and a project astronomer, can operate the S.A.L.T..   This gives you some idea of the computing power of the whole system.

The SALT team is based out of Cape Town, South Africa, which is a 4-hour drive.  An astronomer and engineer take turns spending a week at the observatory, lodging in a small hostel located below the telescope hill.  The hostel includes a decent astronomical library, computers, pool table and a staffed kitchen.  I had dinner with the night’s astronomers and the kitchen staff made me a midnight lunch-box to take up to the SALT.  There was plenty of coffee, tea, and caffeinated cold drinks.

Like any new complicated system, there are bound to be bugs.  Many of the environmental defects and system bugs have been worked out, but two main problems are preventing the SALT from being completely active at this time.  The RSS (spectroscopic imager) which was designed to record ultra violet had a major flaw; it’s main lens  absorbed ultraviolet light instead of passing it!  This was due to a manufacturing error in which a plastic mixing container was used to hold the glue that held the lens layers together.  This glue (which was designed to pass ultraviolet light) absorbed traces of the plastic mixing cup.  After a few months, the plastic molecules changed (probably due to ultraviolet exposure) and began to absorb ultraviolet light, thus blocking the very light the astronomers needed to record!  The SALT team sent the camera back to Wisconsin where a new lens was built.  It took almost a year to solve the problem, but they finally created a perfect lens that had no contamination.  Then they broke it!  A technician indivertibly used the wrong kind of lens cleaning spray, a Freon based solvent, which froze the lens and cracked it.  It’s taken more than 6 months to build a new one, which should be shipped to South Africa any day now.

A few weeks ago, while changing out one of the mirror segments they dropped it at the only part of the operation that had no safety controls to prevent a mirror from falling.  It smashed to the floor and shattered.  They now have 3 spare mirror segments left.  I was given a piece of the broken one as a souvenir!

The other problem is that the SALT design team hired a non-astronomer to design the collimation laser, the CCAS.  Remember the laser shines continuously at the primary during tracking, to keep the optical payload at precise focus.  This engineer installed a laser that worked at 673 nm, the same spectrum as ionized sulfur, a key element when analyzing star composition!  Now, when they look at a star, that entire region of light is awash in laser light. It’s back to drawing board on that one.

So while much of the work at SALT is still faultfinding and correcting design flaws, here’s one of the first photos taken by SALT of 47 Tucanae, before the scope’s adaptive optics are operational.

http://www.salt.ac.za/fileadmin/files/telescope/first_light/PR47tuc.jpg

The hill that the S.A.L.T. sits on a barren rocky hill.  In the following photo you can see the small buildings that house the astronomer’s living quarters and the large S.A.L.T. observatory to the left.  The hill is also home to several other telescopes.

The oldest telescope is the 1.9 meter (almost 6 feet) diameter built in the 1930′s.

This beautiful scope, now retrofitted with the most advanced digital cameras and spectroscopic imagers still get a lot of use, but astronomy students from all over South Africa and beyond.

So I drove 16 hours in pristine clear skies to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to visit the Southern African Large telescope and spend a few days under the most incredible skies in the world with my own telescope.  I arrived at 7PM and by 8PM the entire sky clouded over and winds picked up to 30 kph.  This stayed the same until the night I went up to the SALT, where the winds rose to 48 kph with gusts to 60.  The whole sky was clouded over the whole night, and all the next day and night too.

Finally at 0430AM when I was packing up, the sky cleared and the winds stopped completely.  As I drove across the Karoo on the way home, the whole sky was filled with stars and its inky black background.  I was in awe at the incredible beauty of the night sky, but also terribly disappointed at not being able to do any observing with my scope and especially the S.A.L.T.

One note… if you ever go to a location with a darkness rating of Bortel 1, on a moonless night and the sky completely overcast, you will find yourself in total darkness like being in a deep cave.  It’s an incredible experience as I felt my way across the parking lot to find my car and could not see anything.  Not even my hand 2 inches from my face.  I literally walked into my car, bumping my shin on its bumper.  I had to search with my hands to locate the door and finally get some light from the interior.  Wow.

(coming soon)

Our Ambassador’s driver, a black South African, retired today after 37 years of service to the US Government. He worked at the US Embassy here since 1970 and saw his country completely transformed into a republic, and the end of apartheid.  All the time, he rushed ambassadors and other senior diplomats back and forth between Pretoria, Johannesburg and Cape Town, at all hours of the night, usually working 12+ hour days. It was wonderful to hear all the letters from previous Ambassadors who described how this “driver”, who spoke 10 African languages and knew every short cut and dirt road in the country, was the best teacher of South African culture and was instrumental in the successful mission of the American Embassy.

Then the whole auditorium broke out in African singing and high-pitched traditional calls that I can’t begin to describe, and a long procession with everyone dancing and swaying, and singing as we made our way out of the auditorium. It was a very unique way to end a ceremony, unlike anything I have seen before. A lot of fun – and much happier than the traditional retirement ceremonies I have been to, that were more like a funeral!

I completed some job applications when I first arrived in Pretoria, and they paid off quite quickly.  I just got hired as an Office Manager.  For those who are new to this – as a dependent spouse of a U.S. Diplomat, we are entitled to work at the U.S. Embassy in Federal positions.  Indeed, there are several jobs within an Embassy reserved just for spouses.

At my last post (Warsaw, Poland) I was in a highly visible management office, in which I dealt with almost every other department in the Embassy. This meant I was smartly dressed, and the office was the model for office decorum and protocol.

This week I started my new job in the Security Engineering Office, down in the basement of the Embassy. The office is basically 8 guys who repair every aspect of embassy electronic security systems – from cameras and sensors, to electronic doors and safes. Two are US Navy SeaBees. They cover every US embassy and consulate in Southern Africa as far North as Kenya – so they basically use this post as a base station between TDY assignments to these other posts. Most of the time, 3/4 of them are gone out of the country two to three weeks every month.

Anyway – it is good that we work down in the basement, behind a large steel door with scramble key pads and a large spin-dial to keep everyone else out. Like most military maintenance units I have been exposed to, they have a language that would make most Sexual-Harassment officers run screaming. I half expect to see nude Playmate posters on the wall and empty beer cans on a peanut-shell covered floor – but fortunately it isn’t that bad yet.  Fortunately – no one smokes or worse, chews tobacco, in the office.  Nice!

Jeans, T-Shirt and sneakers are the office attire.

This place is night and day difference from every other US Embassy office I have ever been in.  But I like it!

The starting pay is $36,000 a year, with 8 hours of annual leave per month and retirement benefits.  Not much, but at least I am working full time!

Pretoria is famous for her thousands of Jacaranda trees, imported to South Africa in the late 1800s.   Pretoria is often called the Jacaranda city because of these wonderful purple trees that blossom in spring (October – November) and fill the air with a wonderful perfume.

This weekend we were at the used car lot again and came across this beautiful 4×4 just calling my name.  It was in perfect shape, and had the one feature Megan wanted – an automatic transmission.  Here’s a shot of our new baby, a 1998 Land Rover Discovery.  Should do nicely on safaris!

We went out shopping for a car, and  what I am finding is that every vehicle here is about 2 to 3X the USA bluebook values!  The only cars that are actually less expensive are classic Volkswagen Beetles from the early 70s’ They run around $3,000 for fully reconditioned models with rebuilt engines! I think I may get one – since that is one part of my youth that I never experienced!

There is a nice used car lot that opens up every weekend at one side of the mall.  Lots of vehicles to choose from, and the more I look, the more I think I want a heavy, rugged, Land Rover.  I am itching to get out and explore this country as I hear from friends that the country is incredible - with the right vehicle.   Everyone tells me that grass is very high, and if you can’t see over it you will miss 90% of the wildlife.  They also talk about crossing rivers, and climbing steep rocky hill trails.  That’s the kind of exploration I could enjoy, and I’ve always fancied the thought of going out on “Safari” on my own – not on a tour bus in a park.

There’s a few awesome land Rovers here, fully equipped with roof-top tents, hot water shower nozzles, winches, snorkels, and one even had a home-made laundry washing contraption built on the top that apparently washing a small load of clothes while the vehicle is bouncing along a rough trail.  Very clever!

We’ll keep looking until we spot a deal… in the meantime we use the Embassy’s motor-pool to pick us up and take us to the Embassy, and use taxies to get to and from the mall.

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 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!

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

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.