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.
