Picking Through the Rubble

(Written November 2011) Unpacking is never fun. Though it’s a lot more fun than packing. And after not seeing our stuff for six months, I was rather delighted to make its acquaintance once again. It was like seeing old friends; if your friends are mugs, pictures, and an electric guitar.

As I dug through boxes and mountains and tried to shuffle like things into similar piles, I found myself oohhing and aahhing at some old faves. It was great fun seeing all those carefully chosen possessions that make our home personal. And then by day four it was less fun. I have yet to get used to the moment when you have to decide where each and every item is going to live for the next two or three years. Yes, I know it doesn’t have to be permanent, but if you can get it right the first time, all’s the better. Who wants to keep moving the silverware drawer? So staring at the mountains of kitchen crap we own and having to decide the dish cupboard and the glasses cupboard and the tea and coffee cupboard, let alone the pots, pans, lids, Tupperware, spices, bakeware, and catfood cupboards, is an exhausting exercise. Now do it again for the dining room, the living room, the family room, the laundry room, two bedrooms, etc. The novelty wears thin quickly.

But I tackled it methodically and within a week we were about 90% unpacked, and probably 80% in a permanent place. It’s been three weeks as of today, and I’ve been able to get all of our pictures hung, t-shirts folded and stacked, Tupperware sorted, and china displayed. When we were in Cairo I never took advantage of having an official picture-hanger come out to hang things; I just hammered in a nail and went to town. But after attempting to hammer in one nail in our cement walls in Kuwait, I had my husband put in the request. How is it that we can hear the children next door screaming daily and yet I can’t bang in one sturdy nail?

With any move, there are issues. We were extremely lucky and only had two things break, and considering all the glass and ceramic items I shipped out of Cairo, it’s frankly astonishing. The one lingering issue, that we’ll probably be fighting with our entire time here, is all the missing things. These are not missing, in the sense of lost. These are missing in the sense of being sent to storage – at least that’s what we’re optimistically thinking.

This all started back in May, when we shipped out of Cairo. At the time, we knew we were going to be over the allotted shipment weight. When the assessor came to estimate our weight, he said we had at least 1,000 pounds in books alone (which is one-seventh of our entire weight allowance). And that’s with us purging at least a third of them, including all of my husband’s computer books (which I had been griping about since pre-wedding days).

We had made some definite mistakes with our first move overseas. When they say “furnished” it truly means furnished – you don’t need to bring anything other than clothes, TV, computers and “stuff”. We didn’t really understand this and had approached our first move as if we needed to bring every item that we would have in our home back in the U.S. And we brought it all. Plus, “we” definitely took advantage of all that there was to purchase in Cairo, which then added to our already hefty load. So come moving day, we knew we had to make some changes.

In addition to purging a metric ton of books, we also got rid of two of the seven bookcases we’d brought, we got rid of piles of shoes and clothes, and various miscellaneous kitchen items and such. Our housekeeper had been shuffling stuff out of our apartment for months. She inherited so much from another neighbor that she had to borrow someone’s truck, so we added some marble table top pieces, a small table and other items to her stash for that day.

When not purging and furnishing the local Filipino community with our cast-offs, I was carefully designating items for storage. This included our bed and boxspring (we opted to bring the mattress), the remaining six bookcases, the couch, the big chair and ottoman, two marble side tables, a marble desk top, an oud (or two, who can keep track?), plus piles of “little” stuff.

We did a commendable job, given the circumstances. However, once all was said, done and packed up, we were still a thousand pounds overweight. So we paid for the extra weight and then sat down to assess our possessions. The issue was that even with the designated-for-storage items removed from the inventory, we were still within a thousand pounds of our allotted total. And we knew that our goal was to acquire a baby in the next two years, and apparently they come with piles of their own stuff. So, as we sat down with our personal inventory list we started blindly designating even more things to be sent off to storage, all the while keeping our fingers crossed that the boxes labeled books did not include additional items, like TV remotes. Apparently the moving gods were looking elsewhere that day, and did not heed our prayers.

Over the last three weeks, we’ve been slowly noticing the items that did not make it to Kuwait. About a third of our frames didn’t make it, and none of the wooden rods to hang our appliqués made it. No family photos arrived, nor half of our clocks. None of my well-stocked Bath & Body Works shower gels arrived, and none of our reams of printer paper or the refill cartridges for our label maker made it (which matters if you’re type-A, believe me!). Our humidifier apparently went to storage, as did half of our board games. (We have since replaced our humidifier and re-purchased “Settlers of Catan” because there are some things worth owning two of.) Under “truly annoying” displaced items we have a TV remote (and ironically it apparently went off with our universal remote as well), and the stands for the TV speakers, of which we have the speakers and the bases only.

Now, none of these things affect us drastically. It does come down to being just “stuff” and frankly we can live without any of it (though we might be a tad whiny). But had I paid more attention during the packout in Cairo, and labeled boxes better, then we could have subsequently made more informed decisions. This would potentially have prevented some sleepless nights when I find myself lying in bed wondering where our custom-designed thank you notes are and hoping they’re keeping the air mattress, my bathroom trash can and our mop and broom company until we meet again. Someday I vow to get better at this.

The True Value of Things

(Written November 2011) With a cautionary note in his voice, my husband told me last night that our personal shipment had arrived in country. When my eyes lit up, he quickly added, “We should be able to get them next week.” Bummer, I wanted them now. But after waiting five months, I can certainly wait another few days (if I absolutely have to).

I will admit that for all the thousands of pounds we shipped out of Cairo that I have not seen for the last five months, there isn’t a lot that I really yearn for. I would like our ipod speakers (we should have mailed those, dumb), I’d like more of our mugs and kitchen stuff, my sewing machine could help greatly in my sudden desire to make baby quilts and onesies and nappies, our DVDs would be great, and oddly enough, I really miss our decorations – the wall-hangings, photos, lamps. Things that make our home ours.

Part of my excitement is also in having something to fill my days with for a while; unpacking, organizing, nesting. All things my husband hates to do, or at least has managed to convince me he’s incapable of doing. I know that he would be just as happy living in a white-walled, no-décor, home, living out of boxes, suitcases, and piles. And I know this, because if I don’t keep up with the pile-reduction-methods I’ve honed over the last four years, they start to rally and draft a constitution. And when I muse about where we should put certain photos or hangings, he stares at me as if I’m debating whether to wear a blue barrette or a purple barrette. Blank, with mental capacity taken up by latest obstacle in level four “Call of Duty,” or some such video game. All of that is fine. He can live in “Call of Duty” while I nest around him.

For all my excitement about getting our stuff, it really is just stuff. And that’s something that became painfully clear to me this past year. When I was told to pack a suitcase in Cairo during the evacuation with everything I wanted to take with me, all I wanted was my husband and the kitties. I would have happily foregone taking even a sock, if I could have had them. And I even asked my husband to see if I could take cats instead of suitcases, but the answer was no.

I remember thinking that other than them, there’s very little that’s truly irreplaceable in our home. Yes, I’d love the hard drive that holds all our digital pictures and my writings, and the original painting we received from a friend for our wedding. But when it comes down to everything else, it’s just stuff. Bought and paid for. Used, maybe enjoyed, maybe even well-loved. But stuff none-the-less. And while I may remember with fondness the clock I inherited from Uncle Harold, or the hand-stitched appliqué wall-hanging I bargained heavily for in Cairo, the things I remember most are the memories surrounding them. I lovingly remember Uncle Harold winding his clock every morning in the front hall. And I remember slogging through the muck and dust in Bab Zuwela in Cairo and using all my shopping wiles to get the appliqué I’d thought was so beautiful.

It’s the experiences and memories that surround the stuff in our life that give them meaning. And even when that item is lost or broken or mistakenly sent to storage, the memories are still there; though admittedly it’s not as easy to make a cup of tea with a memory as it would be with Nana’s teapot.

So perhaps the true value of things – stuff, possessions, effects, belongings, property, goods, assets – is really in the memories they hold within. I’m not saying I won’t delight in using our toaster or camel spoon rest again, but I also know I can live without them. It’s corny, but home really is where your heart is, or where those who hold your heart are, regardless of whether the walls are painted or the pictures are hung. I might not share this sudden insight with my husband just yet. A little harmless nesting wouldn't hurt anyone; besides, I know the perfect place for the Sufi appliqué!

Missings

(Written November 2011) Living overseas is an amazing opportunity. There are so many perks and benefits; social, financial, emotional, spiritual. And for the most part I am so excited to be living this life and I do my best to keep in mind on a daily basis just how lucky we are. But there are days when the distance and the loneliness and the missings catch up. Sometimes they’re triggered by a phone call from a friend who could use a hug, or from missing an important family event, or even from just wanting to hang with friends who’ve known you long enough that you can truly be yourself, bloody warts and all. But with each new job, and with every new country, there’s always a stretch of time where you force yourself to get out and meet folks, all in the hope of finding your new BFF.

For whatever reason, despite all attempts to repress it, I remember with heightened clarity that feeling of standing in a new lunchroom, in a new school, with my bright white sneakers on, holding a red plastic lunch tray with my chocolate milk and ice cream sandwich (lunch of every seventh grader I knew), and hoping with all my might that someone, anyone, would look up and ask me to sit with them. And twenty-five years later, that feeling of being an outsider resurfaces constantly in the expat life, though the chocolate milk and ice cream sandwich has been replaced with a Pinot Grigio (or iced tea) and a questionable canapé.

I’ve been attending some of the organized-socializing-for-the-expat-in-Kuwait events lately, from the Halloween volunteering, to Pampered Chef parties, to even a 3-year-old’s birthday party. And they’ve all been lovely and entertaining and the people have been very nice. But therein lies part of the problem. Everyone’s so damn nice. And in turn, I feel I have to be nice, smile a lot, try to pull off some sweetness, stay on “safe” topics, and do my best to keep my snarky, sometimes outright rude, comments to a minimum (though some do leak out despite my containment attempts). So I leave every event thoroughly soaked in niceness and completely exhausted. It’s not like I’m dying for a nice brawl with some hair-pulling and black-eyes. Nor am I dying to sit next to someone who winges and moans or starts mud-slinging. And luckily as I’ve aged I’ve lost the desperate desire to be liked by everyone (sometimes anyone). But there’s definitely a BFF void in my expat life.

I guess I’m just used to deep, bare-your-soul, keep-my-secrets, help-me-hide-the-bodies, type of friendships. And while those don’t dissipate with distance, staying in regular contact can be difficult without some math-like time zone equations. And equally so, they also don’t instantly materialize over a guacamole demonstration at a Pampered Chef party.

I hadn’t really realized the depth of this void until I was chatting with some women one night at some forced-socialization event and one casually mentioned, “I’d really like to go check out the fabric souk this weekend,” and without fully realizing that she was making a comment, versus extending an invitation, my hand shot up and I said with a little too much gusto, “Yes, yes, yes!! I’d love to go!” Luckily she’s been overseas for a while, so she has the niceness down pat and she smiled sweetly at me and said, “Oh, that’d be great.” I actually felt a flutter of excitement at the possibility of finding someone to “do” things with – which in Kuwait, primarily means shopping, but I’ll take anything. She did follow up with me, being nice, but unfortunately our times didn’t work out so I wasn’t able to go. Maybe next country.

So while I forge on in my quest to find a new BFF, I will just continue to rely on those cultivated back home. Because, like a good Pinot Grigio, they all just get better with time. And believe me, I know my Pinot Grigios!

Avoiding the Three Bs

(Written October 2011) Moving anywhere new you have to get the lay of the land and find out the local rules (when can I put trash out, when can I water the lawn, can I paint my shutters fuschia with pea-green stripes, etc.). Moving to a new country, you also have to educated yourself to the local laws. In Kuwait, there are three local laws that Western expats have to be aware of: avoiding “the three Bs” – booze, babes and bacon.

Simply put, if you are found transporting alcohol, pornography or pig-products into the country, they can send you packing. Personally, I’m not too worried. Though this does explain why the movers in the U.S. specifically told us that pornography was not allowed, which, at the time, I found a bit curious and wondered what type of people they thought we were.

The reason for these rules is because Kuwait is a Muslim country, and under Islam these three things are forbidden. Egypt is also a Muslim country, but it’s a little more lax. In Cairo, many restaurants served beer and wine and there were a handful of stores, appropriately called “Drinkies”, that sold beer and wine and would even deliver to your home. But if you were dying for pig products, there was nothing sold in the local markets or in the restaurants. Now, in terms of the third B, I have to admit that I never, in all my three years in Cairo, went on a porn-search, so I cannot speak to its availability.

Conversely, in Kuwait, you won’t find pig products or alcohol anywhere in local markets. Even the restaurants don’t serve alcohol (much to my husband’s chagrin, “It just doesn’t seem right, not having red wine with an Italian dinner.” -- don’t let it be said that we’re not suffering.) In regards to the porn procurement network here, I’ll have to keep you posted on that. (But don’t hold your breath.)

While possibly amusing to some, the three Bs can literally get us throw out of the country. So we will not be those Americans who “just tried” to sneak in a bottle of Jack wedged next to their toiletry kit. Nor will we re-enact my grandmother’s flight from England to Ohio thirty-five years ago, where she casually carried through large slabs of English bacon draped over her arm, hidden by her coat, because my grandfather liked it for breakfast.

However, although it’s not bacon, apparently I may have inherited my Nana’s penchant for a little food carting across the Atlantic. My husband was a bit worried that the LightLife Smart Veggie Italian sausages, all frozen and nestled into my t-shirts in my suitcase, might set off some pork alerts upon our arrival in Kuwait. However, if they did, we’d have far larger issues to deal with than a possible eviction. It’s a lesson you only learn once; don’t mess with a vegetarian’s veggie dogs, especially when replacements cost $9!

Beware of the Idle Expat Wife

(Written October 2011) So we’ve been in Kuwait over a month. And I’ve done the “settling in to the house” thing, I’m working on the “exploring the city” thing, I’m waiting on the “receiving our stuff” thing, but I’m definitely fully entrenched in the “filling my time” thing (beyond reading and writing). Which means two things, crafting and volunteering.

The former is marginally thwarted by the lack of having “our stuff” – with my crafting and sewing supplies not ranking high enough to ship them out early. So instead of doing, I’m amassing ideas and projects left and right, from quilting, to making baby clothes and nappies, to making tablecloths and napkins, to making napkin rings, necklaces and jewelry. I’m ordering supplies online and bookmarking websites and YouTube videos with wild abandon and just a touch of desperation.

As I mentioned before, I did attend a “Meet and Bead” meeting, that’s held once a month here in Jabriya. It’s basically a “Stitch-n-Bitch” for beaders. It was great fun seeing all of the amazing projects people are working on and is definitely something i'd like to do again. It also made me realize that I am not a “beader”; I am a “stringer.” All I do is string bead after bead. True beaders apparently employ actual stitches and weaving techniques to create patterns and shapes. So I’m going to take a class or two to learn some fundamental beading skills. Then I’ll start going through the multitude of videos awaiting me in my bookmark file to further enhance my beading abilities. Oh, the joy to be had!

On the volunteering side I’ve done a few things. I helped organize, sort, and purge the local expat library. It’s comprised of 100% donated books, so the variety can be striking. From hundreds of mysteries and thrillers, to romance, lots of child-rearing books (guess you either read and utilize, or never the get the time to read so you pass on to the next hopeful), some odd travel books, children and teen books, lots of religion books, and even some Econ and Algebra textbooks. In both Cairo and here, I make use of the library a lot. So when they asked for help organizing piles of new donations, I figured it was only fair.

My next volunteering also involved books. I had heard that American volunteers were needed to staff a booth at the Kuwait International Book Fair. How exciting! So I convinced a friend to volunteer as well, and we signed up for two evening shifts. Let me interject here and point out that in most volunteer “jobs” there are two fundamental problems; first, trying to find someone willing to give up their free time to do something that’s often rather mundane (stuffing envelopes, manning a booth, sorting donations, etc.), and two, being said person and having absolutely no guidance or information on what you are actually supposed to be doing, beyond seat-warming. The Book Fair fell in to the latter category.

The booth had really nothing to do with books at all. It was basically set up for the purpose of handing out information on studying abroad – in the U.S. So all the information we had was on two organizations, Amideast and StudyUSA, who can help students do that. Well, that’s wonderful. But what the heck are we doing here then? There was one employee from each organization who was also there with us (thank goodness!) so basically we just tried to keep people occupied until they could actually speak to the person who knew anything.

During a lull in the excitement, I did take a moment to wander the fair. I’m not sure what I was picturing, but any “International Book Fair” sounds exotic and intriguing. It was quite packed, with families bustling through, competing for space with the vendors’ carts coming by selling sodas and snacks, like we were at the county fair. And as I wandered, I came to realize that while definitely international, with booths from Dubai and Doha, among others, it was almost entirely books in Arabic. For a little variety, there were a few booths with some children’s books in English, and the seemingly displaced man with books in Japanese in the booth next to ours.

In our booth we did have some books for sale. But I did wonder whether someone just found boxes of remainders in a closet and said, “Let’s sell them at the Book Fair!” Most were in Arabic, and were scientific or political. We had stacks of Colin Powell’s book, “My American Journey” in English, as well as some American Readers that were well out of print (and were full of encyclopedic chapters on the 1900s, some poems, and even a song entitled, “The Drunken Hillbilly”). We also had a few children’s book in Arabic and the Arabic translation of Truman Capote’s classic, “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”. Now, I’m a huge fan of both Capote’s and Hepburn’s renditions, however between the drunken hillbilly and a lovely story of Ms. Golightly and her antics as an “American geisha” (Capote’s preferred term, as he openly disputed that she was a prostitute), I’m not entirely sure these are the best images we want to convey of typical American life. Though that could explain the heightened interest in studying in America.

My most recent volunteering stint, was at a huge American Halloween party. They’d set up games all over the lawn, then they split the groups into zero to five-year-olds, and six to ten-year-olds, and went trick-or-treating through the parking lot where certain participating parents had decorated their cars and were handing out candy to the buzzing broods. I truly love Halloween, especially seeing the little ones’ costumes. There were some fabulous costumes this year, including a three-year-old Princess Leia and her little brother Yoda (I’m assuming there was some parental nudging with those choices), lots of superheros and villains, witches and princesses, a Shrek or two, and lots of parents all decked out as well. I went as a Volunteering Expat Wife and think I pulled it off with great flair (our costume box is coming, some day).

So I said I’d help with the “pizza distribution.” Sounded a little industrial, but I figured I could handle it. Luckily there was another volunteer, too. I found her sitting in the patio area where she said she’d been banished to by her eleven-year-old. We chatted as we waited to hear from “Papa John’s” with the delivery (yes, they are here in Kuwait competing against Domino’s and Pizza Hut). When the call came, I followed her out to the gate pulling a very rickety clattering metal cart. “How many pizzas are we getting?” I asked. “Forty,” she said. Yikes!

It took some finagling, but we managed to get the cart through the gate to the delivery guys. She paid him the 115kd (almost $400) and we then proceeded to stack up thirty-nine cheese pizzas and one mushroom (that was labeled “chicken BBQ”) on the metal cart. With incredible luck we got the cart and pizzas back through the gate unscathed and started our slow trek back to the patio area. She took the lead and pulled the cart while keeping a hand on one of the stacks, and I brought up the rear, holding the other stack and keeping an eye on both stacks as they leaned precariously. “You know what we have here?” I said, looking at the tilting towers. “Don’t say it.” “Really? But they’re such perfect leaning towers of pizza.” (Groan with me, not against me.)

So we then set up and distributed the pizzas with mild confusion, but eventual happy diners. Another parent was helping us and kept telling all the kids, “Now don’t forget to brush and floss tonight!” One little girl dressed as a dinosaur, following her pumpkin-cloaked mother holding their pizza, proudly reported, “We brush, but we never floss.” To which the parent wasn’t sure how to respond. I think I saw pumpkin-mom cringe a little.

Not all of my Expat Wife doings are this well-planned or thought out. Some of them are whim-inspired and completely spontaneous. Like the papier-mâché pig. I’m going to blame this moment of tunnel vision on my friend Robin. She knows me well enough to know how to plant the seed. All she did was call up to discuss possible table centerpieces for an event she was planning and we were musing about different animal-related themes. “You could do papier-mâché animals!” I said. “But how?” “It would be easy, just use a balloon and a paper towel tube, cut it up to make the legs and a snout.” “Okay, why don’t you make me twenty and ship them to me.” Ha, ha, very funny. Seed planted.

I slept on it, thought about it, saw the balloons bobbing in the wind at the Halloween party, and on my way out asked to take two. Before I knew it I was online researching how to make damn papier-mâché paste and then whipping up a batch of the ooey gooey goodness. Then I was cutting and taping the legs and snout in place, then shredding newspaper and suddenly making a pig! My husband came down to the kitchen just as I was finishing. It was also the moment that I realized I probably shouldn’t have grabbed our Arabic newspaper to make a pig, of all things (remember, it’s one of the forbidden Bs). My husband’s look went from confused, to bemused, to all-too-alert. “You’re not going to leave it like that, are you? With the Arabic showing?” he said with just a touch of worry. “No, no, don’t worry. I’m going to cover it with another layer of white paper.” (No one will ever know…) So we now have a beautiful white papier-mâché pig who will eventually be painted pink, once I find some paint. And no, I’m not making nineteen more or becoming a papier-mâché exporter. My whim has faded. Such is the life of an idle Expat Wife. Beware of low-hanging whims.