Adventures in Suburbia

       The chairman of the board has wanted to remodel our kitchen for a long time.  We both agreed that we didn’t like where the stove was located but couldn’t decide where to put it and the refrigerator. For a while I stalled by declaring, ” I am studying the problem.” It worked for a for a period of time, but then she let me know that she expected action. 

        At a moment of inspiration, we figured out the optimum appliance configuration.  Then the chairman of the board decided to manage the project herself. She picked a contractor, bought appliances and picked out flooring, paint colors, light fixtures back splashes, counter tops and a sink.  We are keeping our old cabinets.

         When the contractor told her he could start in October I was happy. I was hoping that the job would be done when I got back from Mexico Nov 8. That didn’t happen.  They started Dec 6 and are well along in the process. For the duration of the project, our kitchen is in the garage.  We are getting water from a bucket and flipping waste water into the yard.  Kitchen items and the contents of 3 closets are scattered around the house. Our house will be in disarray over Christmas.  It looks like January 4^th is the earliest that we can expect the counter installation.  It is pretty chilly when we make our toast in the morning.

In my second week in Mexico City I had tightness in my stomach.  This often happens to me when I travel.  The new water and diet means new microbes which have not yet made friends with my digestive system.  I usually don’t do anything, but this time I remembered what I used to do when traveling along the rivers of the Congo basin rainforest.  The water we drank was not as pure as you could hope for.  I used to chew 2 Pepto Bismol tablets a day.  It slows the growth of harmful microbes.  It helped me in the Congo and it worked for me in Mexico City.

I have been using a collapsible coffee cone for a couple of years now.  Where I lived in India you could buy instant coffee, but the ground coffee supply was limited and there were no pour over coffee filters in the stores.  On my first visit I found some coffee, but only had enough filters to use 1 every 3 days.  I had to dry and reuse them.  Believe me, I remembered the coffee filters the next time.  I recommend the collapsible pour over coffee brew cone pictured. 

There are crossing lights in some of the places I have been in Mexico City.  I never saw one in India.  It was intimidating crossing the road.  Whenever possible I looked for where other people were crossing the road and stuck with them.  You would think that a motorist would be less likely to mow down three people than one.  The other day here in Mexico City I followed a man across 4 lanes when the crossing light was red.  We hit it wrong and a wave of cars and trucks came at us.   After we sprinted to the other side we had a bonding moment.  As Winston Churchill once said, “There is nothing more exhilarating than getting shot at and missed.”

I was talking to my friend ZC as he was packing to return to the US from South Asia. He told me about the items his family brought to South Asia from the US and were now returning to the US without having used them. Since our family has moved from the US to several parts of the world and back, I was able to share with him the term that we coined for this, “yoyoing.”

When global cross-cultural workers travel overseas, we bring what we expect to need, but sometimes we make mistakes. The first time we went to the Congo we, brought 2 bee hives and assorted beekeeping supplies with us that we never used. The smoker and bee bonnet sat on a shelf in the shed as a reminder of my mistake. Technically it was not yoyoing because we never brought the stuff back to the US. I am thinking of keeping a few hives in our back yard in TN so I wish I had the items.  All over Africa there is beekeeping with appropriate techniques such as bar hives. US hive designs are not appropriate.

For another of my hair brained schemes I brought a beautiful cast iron burr grinder to the Congo as part of a locally grown coffee business.  After Bill Schofield put a fly wheel on it, grinding stuff became fun. I had some oil palms and cocoa trees so I added a section of coffee trees. One day JG, not knowing about my coffee trees, was mowing with the tractor and cut them all down. I yoyoed the 25 lb grinder and now it is at our house in TN ready for the coffee beans I can get when we work at the “Centro de Capacitación Intercultural AB Simpson” near Armenia, Colombia.

I am still learning.   I will not tell you what yoyoed items were in my suitcase when I came back from my last trip to South Asia Sept. 18.

I am in South Asia until September 16.  The apartment and neighborhood where I am staying has no garbage collection. The neighbors were vague when asked where to put the garbage.  I figured out that any garbage pile nearby would do.  I feel bad every time I flip a trash bag into the pile next to a house by the main road.  I do it at night, but there are always people walking by.  The general consensus is that if we were doing anything wrong, people would let us know.

What I do like about our neighborhood is that I can burn important papers along side the road any time.  That is what I do with anything that has my name on it or items that are sensitve in nature.  I like burning paper and it is a local custom.

Do you remember back when you got a bank statement in the mail every month? While in Africa, all of our statements came to my mother in NH.  When we saw her after 4 years there was a pile of them.  I used to go out in her back yard and burn all the statements I didn’t need.  She told me that I should shred them. 

When we were house hunting in the US in 2018, we had a contract on a house in a neighborhood with pesky rules like no burning paper in your back yard.  I am so glad we ended up living where I can burn paper and brush.  Even with a permit, a fire truck once visited me during a brush burning session.  The fireman said that a neighbor had called it in.  While burning paper by the side of the road this afternoon, the neighbors that walked by smiled and waved.  I don’t think that is what would happen in your neighborhood. 

Many years ago, the chairman of the board’s parents visited us in NH. On the day of their flight out, her dad Jack asked us to take them to the airport 5 hours before the flight. It made him feel good to know that he would be on time for his flight. We chuckled about it at the time, but I am now sympathetic. 

A lot of drama can happen on the way to the airport.  I tell people to leave earlier than they have to in case of a flat tire.  We once had a flat tire within 5 miles of the airport in East London, South Africa.  Our flight had a scheduled departure within 1.5 hours.  Our host, the chairman of the board and the kids attacked the problem like a NASCAR pit crew.  We made the flight. 

Leaving early gives you margin.  Once in Nairobi, Kenya our ride to the airport didn’t show up for the 5 am pickup. The driver had stayed up late the night before watching a soccer game, so he decided to take the next day off.  After lots of phone calls, his boss finally came to pick us up and we made our flight.

I needed margin once again when I came back from Dakar, Senegal May 7^th.  Our team uses Bravo Services for the airport runs.  My driver picked me up at the appointed time (7:00 am) in a VW Golf.  Then we stopped at a gas station.  It seemed so routine I didn’t pay attention to the scrapping noises the station attendant and driver were making in the back of the car.  It seemed odd that the driver was tinkering with wires accessible because there was no door panel on his side.  We continued down the road, but stopped at another service station before getting on the highway. 

Before pulling up to the pump, the driver stopped the car and continued to play with the wires in the door.  He pulled up to the pump and I heard more scraping noises as if the gas pump was being used as a pry bar.  What ever they were doing was unsuccessful and we pulled into a parking space in front of the convenience store.  The driver had my full attention, but I had to pry the facts out of him.  The electric gas flap latch on the VW Golf was not working so there was no way to open it to put fuel in the car for the airport run.  I called his boss and 45 minutes later another vehicle came to take me to the airport.  I arrived at the Dakar airport 1 hour and 15 minutes later than expected, but on time for the flight.  Jack was right all along.

One of my COVID projects when we were all sheltering in place was placing red retaining wall blocks to form a stair step above the gazebo.  I got into the rhythm of laying the decorative blocks and continued the line past the steps to delineate a flower bed.  At a certain point the flower bed continues, but I stopped laying the blocks.  The picture below indicates how unsightly this is.  I just lost momentum.  The chairman of the board tells me that I could probably lay the remaining 3 blocks in less than an hour, but in the last 2 years I have not been able to bring myself to restarting the job.

Momentum is a funny thing.  In sports, it is often the difference between winning and loosing.  In South Asia our gang played the ancient Viking game called Kubb (It is a lot of fun).   At one point my team mate and I came close to victory, but we lost momentum and had to go through more tense rounds until momentum returned and pushed us to victory. 

When we lived in the Republic of Congo there was no road to our region.  Travel involved either a flight or a boat trip. Even with reservations sometimes government officials took our seats on the plane so we could not travel.  Once Diane and the kids made the flight to Brazzaville, but there was no seat for me.  I used the time alone in Impfondo to do something for the family.  Our water came from the rain that we directed into a cistern and pumped to a water tower.  It was hot when the sun was out, but cooled off quickly in the evening.  I was excited about surprising everyone with a solar hot water heater.  What I made was beautiful.  A black 5 gallon container insulated and surrounded by a sheet metal housing with glass panes on top.  I got a flight out the next day.  Our beautiful solar hot water heater was in the shed when we got back from Brazzaville and remained there, unattached to the water pipes, for the next 11 years.

When I was growing up, I learned something about momentum.  In the winter of our first year in New Hampshire the whole family browsed through a bunch of seed company catalogs.  We had long discussions about which kind of fruit trees we would plant.  That momentum waned and we planted no fruit trees.  After that lesson, when we settled in TN,  we made a point of planting fruit trees our first spring in the house.

I have learned to ride a wave of momentum as far as possible.  The time to paint or hang pictures is the first week after you move into a house or apartment.  For this blog post I planned on researching more ways to carry projects on to completion without stalling, but I just ran out of momentum.

When I need clothes, I tend to check out the thrift stores first.  It is a habit after living in Africa so long.  Did you ever wonder what happens to the donations of used clothes that Good Will is not able to put in their retail store?  They get bailed up and shipped to Africa and other places.  In the Congo we would occasionally have someone wanting us to exchange a 1 or 5 dollar bill into the local currency.  They got it from the pocket of a pair of pants they bought from a seller of used clothes. These used clothes sellers buy bails of pants or shirts or other clothing and sell them retail. TIP 1: Before you give clothes to charity, check the pockets.  I do not put my thrift store tips up on any social media site. They are exclusively available to readers of Adventures in Suburbia.

 In Dakar I shop at the Saturday market.  It takes place on the narrow median strip of Frond du Terre Road.  The individual shops put up awnings and line the median on Saturdays.  On the median strip of Front du Terre Road and at yard sales there are no changing rooms.  TIP 2: Before going to the thrift store, use a piece of string, to measure the length of the folded waist of a pair of pants that fit. Use the string to pick out yard sale and thrift store pants that fit without trying them on. 

In a US thrift store I bought a nice warm jacket that was issued to an employee of Ben Franklin Plumbing.  I love the jacket, but didn’t feel so great walking around with the Ben Franklin Plumbing embroidered logo on my coat. Tip 3: Buy an “iron on” patch of your choice to put over the undesirable embroidery logo on any thrift store purchase.  In my case I needed a little Walmart fabric glue to compensate for minor “iron on” failures.  It also took a little work with a black permanent marker to cover an exposed spot in the original embroidery.  I found the 4 trout patch that you see in the picture on Ebay.  The seller threw in a few extras into the envelop without charge.  My guess is that the seller has a large inventory and they weren’t selling well.             

The local newspaper reports that there are 2000 cases of Dengue Fever in our area.  It is a disease spread by mosquitos.  Since there are no screens on the windows and our apartment building is not tight, there are mosquitos in my room.  I could try to spray, but I have opted for organic pest control. 

On the reality show “Billy the Exterminator”  Billy advocates for organic pest control.  I have seen him use Eungenil oils mixed with fatty acids, Silica Gel powder (it sucks the moisture out of bugs) and Pyrethra Fog (the oil from the Chyrsanthumum plant).  These products work in some situations, but I think that if you are dealing with something major, like termites, you need to get out the big guns.

Each year, the chairman of the board and I have to decide what to use for pest control in our garden.  Someone told her that diatomaceous earth dust would stop the harlequin beetles from eating the broccoli.  It has not worked for us.  Our solution in Northeast TN is to plant broccoli in March and in late August.  The first crop is harvested before the beetles get started and the second crop grows after they give up for the year. 

When I came to South Asia in August, I passed through the capital city.  In the hotel dining room where I had breakfast, they used organic pest control techniques.  A man walked through the dining room with one of those bug zappers that looks like a tennis racket.  Have you ever used one?  They are a lot of fun.  There is nothing more satisfying than hear the zzzz when you get a mosquito.  When we lived in West Africa, I noticed that mosquitos like to hide amongst the dirty clothes during the day.  In the morning you shake the laundry basket and get them as they fly away.

In my present situation, since the chairman of the board is not here, the laundry is in a pile in on the floor rather than in a basket.  Unfortunately, I do not have one of those tennis racket bug zappers.  I have opted for another organic pest control technique.  There is a hole in the bathroom wall where an exhaust fan should be.  It is a mosquito highway into my bedroom.  I have hired the spiders you see in the picture above to make their web across the hole and catch any mosquitos that try to come in. 

Last fall I noticed that there were ads on the Carter county, TN school buses.  This reminded me of our failed business venture in Senegal.  The medical exchange associates teamed up with our first PFS intern to develop a pioneer business.  They noticed that there was unused advertising space walking all through Thies, Senegal.  The next step was negotiations with the herders and companies. 

Rather than say the business failed I should say that it never started.  Nestles decide not to put their logo on the side of a cow.  They thought that the concept had too much of rural/hick connotation and had a high liability risk.  The herders run their cattle right through large population centers when they head to dry season pasture.   If one of those cows hurt someone it would be bad for the company

I am now seeing cows taking a major role in advertising ( Chick-Fil-A and various milk product companies).  I think that the time is right to resuscitate the business here in the US.  Years ago, red and white Herefords made up the vast majority of beef cattle in the US.  Genius branding changed things to where you will now see Black Angus on those farms.   This is good for my new company. 

I have trademarked, “Black Leather Advertising”.  Many Apps are now offering a dark mode option with light colored letters and graphics on a dark background.  The side of a Black Angus is a perfect dark mode canvas for any kind of ad campaign.  I am looking for business partners especially those that feel gifted in actually putting the advertising logos and advertising copy on the cows.

One of my regrets in life is over a missed opportunity.  A few years ago at a street fair in Thies, Senegal a local healer was selling all sorts of sovereign remedies for whatever ails you.  One of his products was a jar of snake oil which I foolishly neglected to purchase.  I went back the next day, but he was gone. 

Many of you know that I enjoy listening to medical advice from radio doctors.  Street healers are also right up my ally.  They advertise on the radio in Senegal claiming they can heal just about any ailment.     The Senegalese people call these folks charlatans because a real healer doesn’t need to advertise.  They tend to go to the local healers before trying doctors and hospitals. 

When MT got hit in his eyes by a spitting cobra, his neighbors were amazed that he went to the hospital, rather than the local healer known for his abilities in treating snake related injuries.  My friend Babacar broke a leg in a car accident.  The orthopedic specialists at the local hospital set the leg and put it in a cast, but it was not lined up correctly.  Babacar gave up western medicine in disgust and went to the local bone healer.  I would love to know what that guy did.  As the story goes, his treatment of Babacar’s leg led to total recovery. 

Prevention is better than treatment.  In Senegal the first sellers of Quail eggs got rich claiming that they had all sorts of therapeutic properties.  In the package there was a verse from the the Bible (Numbers 11:32)and the Quran.  I heard Dr Bob on the radio promote a nasal spray with grapefruit seed extract to prevent Covid.  So far it has worked for me.