Playing Catch-Up

Happy Holiday's to Everyone. We are so sorry to have delayed our regular postings by so long. As you know our limited internet access has challenged us to spend our valuable gigabytes we have paid for towards uploading all the photos verses email, skype and general internet usage keeping us connected to the world in other ways. A series of backdated photo postings will follow but in the meantime below is the holiday letter we tried to send to many of you directly.

Well yet another year has rocked by finding me and my family living in the tropical city of Maputo Mozambique. We can't even begin to count the trial and tribulations, adventures and challenges, blessings and sorrows that are part of what we call life. We can tell you that we are all happy, in good health and missing friends and family this special time of the year. So a bit about where we are today and a recap of some of our adventures over the past year. Since we don't even have a real mailing address I imagine the cards and photos you all often send will go undelivered. So we wanted to at least reach back out to you with an update on us. We will find ourselves in San Fran for Xmas with my family and New Years in DC with other close friends. And the biggest news will be Pranvera's ringing in the New Year as a US Citizen. She has her final exam/interview on the 31st and we hope the ceremony will follow that same day. This will finally allow her open and easy access to South Africa (2 hours away drive) whereas now she needs to purchase a limited visa we can only get from DC. Been a serious pain.

I am now working for a great NGO specializing in providing business solutions for the rural poor called TechnoServe. And I have been able to pursue my specialty of designing public private partnerships for Mozambique. This place is just exploding with both private sector and donor investment but after being ravaged from a 20 year civil war, the baseline is very low and progress will take decades upon decades to realize. Rewarding and challenging work with a great expat and local staff. I am  a Senior member of TechnoServe's staff so will be based here indefinitely which makes us happy not having to leave on a set date when a contract might close. Plenty of opportunity for professional growth both within Mozambique and the organization globally as we are in over 30 countries.

Pranvera continues to do a trickle of work for the Asset Recovery Unit of the World Bank but this hasn't been nearly enough to keep her mind engaged as she would like. She is looking for work out here which is difficult to come by, especially if you are not fluent in Portuguese. So she has immersed herself in language school and will be more fluent than I shortly. Fortunately my having learned Portuguese living in Brazil over 20 years ago has helped enormously and with a tutor and daily conversations with my staff it is getting better. But Pranvera has by far the hardest job of the two in handling all the logistics and management of getting settled in a new country, in a new city, in anew house plus taking care of Adi and his schooling. She could easily go into stories about trying to find skilled nannies, or repair people capable of assisting in the areas they are supposedly trained, but none of these come easy here or is ever done the first time. As many of you know, TIA (this is Africa). Just remember to ask us in person about the water tank on the roof of our new rental house overflowing and flooding the place…

So Adi turns a magical 3 next week. He is a little boy now and continues to amaze and delight us. The two's weren't too terrible but he does like 'No', 'I want to do it' and Pranvera's favorite, 'Daddy's really pissing me off' (Ops!)  He is in a half-day daycare and spends afternoon split between our nanny/maid and Pranvera. He loves school but it is certainly more entertainment than educational and despite the fact that our DC daycare cost a fortune, it really was a great learning environment which has advanced most his skills, speech and thinking beyond most the other international kids his age in his class.  He has a best friend Dylan so we have plenty of play dates and often return to the long-term housing/hotel we were in for over 7 months( and now live 15 seconds outside the front entrance) for weekend pool time or visiting the play center. He appears to have adjusted to life out here just fine and it has been extremely nice that his daily wardrobe is shorts, t-shirt, and big boy pants so with his various accidents now becoming potty trained we don't have to deal with winter attire.

As far as Maputo goes, it has its charms and challenges. It certainly provides access to most amenities and has descent infrastructure and a slightly western feel. We love the location on the water and see the beach almost every weekend (not necessarily to swim in). There are 2 dozen places we like to dine at and the seafood is fantastic but surprisingly expensive to eat out. We have a couple parks to spend time with friends but outdoor activities are usually repeated at one of three places. But no mistake this is Africa and everything from very limited western goods and some foods, to rough roads and traffic, to corrupt police, to outrageous rental rates we sometimes miss the easy comforts of 'home'. We have not bought a car yet since I get work vehicles each evening and weekend. But this limits Pranvera during the week and even though our house is in a great location it is not walking distance to any market or coffee shop. We have found the international community to be full of kids, very friendly and open and loaded with many long-timers not part of any diplomatic core. Tons of Portuguese, Brazilians and South African's. But somehow Pranvera keeps linking up with the Scandinavian crowd and she has formed a number of strong friendships with 'her girls'.

Although it feels as if we have already been here for years, it has actually only been 9 months. Since we were in temporary housing for the first 7 we only now find ourselves in a good size 4 bedroom with a small yard front and back. The limited furniture and household items all had to be purchased in S. Africa and brought back (again many more good stories here). We hope to be greeted in the New Year by our cargo finally arriving so we may see our photos, books, plates, Adi's bed and my bikes. We have been fine without all these but know that once we have them we will really feel like we have made ourselves a new home. But the beginning of the year found Pranvera and I in full swing of the DC professional rat race. I was working as an independent consultant with a (fortunate) back-to-back string of assignments that kept me up late into the evenings or on the road for up to three weeks. Rewarding professionally but very challenging personally and not great in affording stability and consistency to raise a family. Pranvera was also juggling her transition away from Booz Allen to getting new work pretty quickly with the Bank. As many of you may recall we had a roller coaster of where and what our lives were to hold a year ago as we had 99% certain job offers that would have taken us to Ghana or Albania or remaining in DC. But as we all know the 1% (Occupy Wallstreet) can make all the difference. But through a combination of fate, luck and patience TechnoServe wanted me to serve as a lead team member for a proposal that was to be in DC but until the announcement was made (which they lost), I had been offered the chance to work with my would be future boss on the project who was Country Director in Mozambique to build partnerships out here. So that is just what we did and now we have the good fortune of making this a 'permanent' arrangement.

So in-between then and now we have found Pranvera and Adi back in Kosovo for 5 weeks during the summer, me with a couple return work trips to DC and all of us spending every 3rd weekend out of the city exploring beaches (including scuba), safaris, shopping (S. Africa). There are great places and sights all around but they can take quite a time to reach. So we are getting the hang of partnering with another family or two to road trip the adventures and split lodging, logistics and food. And with multiple kids around it makes for a much more enjoyable trip for Pranvera and I.