Yamoussoukro, Bouake, and the Botanical Garden

February was fun here in Abidjan! Les Elephants pulled out a spectacular come-from-behind African Cup of Nations victory, and you could feel the joy all throughout the city. I also traveled to Yamoussoukro and Bouake. Yamoussoukro is the political capital of Cote d'Ivoire and Bouake is the second largest city. I'd never visited either before, so it was great to see some more of the country and get out of Abidjan.

One of the guards talked my way onto a private tour because I arrived at an awkward time and there would have been a long wait for a group tour. These guys were very nice about me tagging along!

The stained glass in the Basilica of Yamoussoukro was all imported from France.

The tour guide knew all the best angles for pictures.

At a pottery cooperative outside of Bouake.

The community liaison office at the Embassy also pulled together a trip to the botanical garden, which was a lot of fun!

Praying mantis!

I was particularly interested by the bougainvillea, having just read a book (Airplane Mode by Shahnaz Habib) that, in one chapter, used bougainvillea as an entree to talk about the naturalist mode of colonialism and travel.

On the work side of things, I switched to a different portfolio that I've never worked on before: American Citizen Services. It's definitely an interesting challenge, and part of why I was excited to be assigned to a smaller consular section where you get to do a little bit of everything.

Bonus: me and Secretary of State Blinken and a handful of our good buddies. (This is from his visit last month, but they just shared the pictures.)

Holiday Travel to the U.S. and Excitement in Abidjan

For my first trip back to the U.S. since getting to Abidjan, I took a nice long holiday vacation, spending time in Michigan, Minnesota, and Colorado. I worked until right before Christmas, departing on December 22 and getting back to the U.S. on December 23. Because I was taking so long off work, I expected my time in the U.S. to feel relaxed--and I certainly did get plenty of time to unwind--but it really was pretty packed!

The day I landed mom, dad, and Mer picked me up at the airport, and then Aunt Ellen almost immediately stopped by the house to spend some time. That evening I attended the church's Lessons and Carols service and read one of the lessons (despite being very tired from having slept on the plane). The next day, Christmas Eve, was the big Brehob extended family Christmas, then on Christmas Day we did the BreKapp family gift exchange. The day after Christmas, as per tradition, we drove to Minnesota, and then on the 27th we did the Kappauf family Christmas. We had a couple of quieter days in Minnesota, then drove back to Michigan where I fretted about packing and got a haircut, and then it was off to Colorado.

The reason I departed for the holidays so late was because my Peace Corps training group decided to have a reunion on MLK day weekend. I thought I could just about make it work to attend the reunion by combining it with my holiday travel, but if I was staying so late after, I didn't want to use a ton of leave before the holidays. When I told my other friends who live in Colorado that I was going to be there, and would they like to get dinner if I got there a day early, they suggested that I come a week early and go snowboarding with them that weekend. That then left me with the week to fill in between the two weekends--I couldn't bring myself to fly back to Michigan for just four days or so!--so I managed to convince my dad to fly out and join me for four days of skiing, for six days in a row, total.

I guess the snow conditions weren't great at Breckenridge, per the Coloradans, but I don't get to go skiing much and hadn't gone for more than a day or two at a time since I was in high school, I'm pretty sure, so it seemed fine to me! Worse was the cold, which even natives agreed was unusually punishing. With my grad school friends I stayed in an AirBNB, the steep and snowy drive up to which made me very glad the car rental place had upsold me to a 4WD Jeep. When I swapped out and joined my dad, he had booked accommodations for us maybe a three minute walk from a ski lift, it was fantastically convenient! Both with my grad school friends and with dad we took it pretty easy with lots of breaks to warm up and not forcing ourselves to shut down the lifts.

Unfortunately, the first day I ran into dad--I thought he was doing a turn but was going to keep going, and only realized he was pulling up for a full stop too late. Even he agreed (maybe just being nice) that it was a pretty light hit, but definitely still bad! There's no excuse. It hurt his arm and although he kept going the remaining three days, it kept hurting and he was worried it might be a hairline fracture. Fortunately, unless he's lying to me to keep me from feeling guilty, it was just a soft tissue injury and is already feeling a lot better. I also fell the first day, no one to blame but myself, and hurt my ribs on the left side, where the hurt after I fell running in April last year--I've since seen the Embassy nurse in Abidjan who said it's almost certainly just a muscle strain, so it's good to know it's nothing serious, but running seems to irritate it so for the last couple of weeks I've been exercising less, and mostly on the stair machine or elliptical when I do. Chronicling the injuries makes it sound like it couldn't have been a very fun trip, but we had a good time! It wasn't too crowded, and we tried a few new things. We also went to Keystone one day, which I'd never been to before.

Me and dad at Breckenridge! The combination of the cold and the dry air wreaked havoc on my skin, it was fully flaking off my skin by the end of the week and I was slathering on petroleum jelly to keep it from cracking painfully. Still worth it!

We drove back to Denver the night before dad's flight, rather than the morning of as we'd originally planned, due to a storm warning. That made it pretty smooth to drop him off at the airport, and I had a nice relaxing day in Denver--I'd originally planned to get a massage, but the appointment got cancelled last minute, so I did a light hike in the Rocky Mountain Arsenal and did some shopping. We can't have lithium ion batteries shipped to post in any of our official shipments, whether by air or cargo ship, we can't have them shipped through diplomatic post or pouch, we can't even bring them in checked luggage, the only way we can get any modern devices to post is in our carry on bags, so I had requested as holiday gifts things that I'd been wanting for a while but couldn't get shipped to post, namely, an insect repellant device from REI to use on my porch, and more controllers for my Nintendo Switch to better enjoy Mario Party. While in the mountains, I'd tried someone's TheraGun and thought it seemed pretty great, and when I considered that I couldn't get one shipped to post and would have to wait months or possibly more than a year if I didn't get one right away, I decided to just stop at a Dick's Sporting Goods and buy one.

Me at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal--it was a nice hike, and practically balmy after being up in the mountains. There are buffalo in the background, trust me.

And then I picked up some Peace Corps buddies from the airport and drove back into the mountains, this time to Granby. It was a really great weekend--we listened to our favorite songs from the Peace Corps and caught up on everyone's life developments and went for walks and to a hot spring. They're not people I talk to on a regular basis anymore, but it's really nice to know that the dynamic does come back when we're able to get together.

Getting back to Abidjan from Granby was quite the adventure. There was a winter storm warning active the entire weekend, so I and a few others with early flights Monday had decided that we were going to drive down early to try to avoid traffic, and I was monitoring it most of Sunday. When we went to the hot springs, there was a sign on the door advising that they expected the pass that we wanted to take would be closed soon due to avalanche risk--no big deal, there were other roads that would take us where we needed to be. We left around 16:40, and at the time, google maps predicted that we'd get in around 19:15. We were looking forward to getting dinner and having a restful evening before turning in early so we could get to the airport early.

Google maps' predicted arrival time kept getting later and later. Occasionally we'd go through an area with no signal, and when the signal was back, the predicted arrival time would have jumped 40 minutes later, or a full hour. Eventually we were on I-70 in a complete standstill. It took us 90 minutes to go one mile. People were getting out of their cars to pee on the side of the road, or just to talk to other people. At that point I'm pretty sure we didn't have cell signal because the network was overwhelmed, it's a pretty major highway so I suspect we usually would have had service there. We had to pull over to the far right to make room for emergency vehicles and tow trucks multiple times. Eventually we got past the stoppage, but we couldn't see anything to explain what had happened--as traffic funneled into one moving lane, there were a bunch of police cars and two semi trucks with no apparent damage. Maybe the more damaged vehicles had already been towed away at that point. Even once we got past that, it was slow going because it was completely dark and snowing pretty heavily. I absolutely did not want to slide off the road or get into an accident, so I was driving pretty far under the speed limit. All told, we got to Denver SEVEN hours after leaving Granby. Everything was closed, even the Taco Bell that google maps claimed would be open and on which we'd pinned all our hopes for some kind of warm meal. We ended up going to a gas station so I could fill up and just bought snacks there--I got Nutter Butters and Fritos as my last meal in the U.S. The attendant asked if we'd been stuck on I-70, so I guess the traffic was bad enough it made the local news, at least the radio. It was a hellacious drive, but I really appreciate the passengers for being so calm and patient. We weren't completely free of anxiety, but I've definitely known people who would have been freaking out a lot worse. We managed to mostly just have nice conversation, interspersed with practical discussions about if we'd even be able to sleep or just have to go straight to the airport, or at what point we should think about rescheduling our flights.

One of our Denver-based Peace Corps hosts let us crash at her place, but we didn't get much sleep, falling asleep after midnight and waking up shortly after 04:00 to get to the airport. I dropped my driving buddies off at the airport, then swung back to the rental car place to drop off the Jeep as soon as they opened. The shuttle back to the airport was so cold that I took off my shoe and started massaging my foot to stay warm--even with all the frigid time on the mountain, it was the coldest I'd been the entire trip! But the whole ordeal paid off, more or less, because everyone who'd gone in my car made our flights. I was nervous for a bit at the airport, the snow was still really coming down and a lot of flights were being cancelled or delayed, but my flight left only slightly late. The others in our group who drove down the morning of got stuck on the mountain because I-70 itself was completely closed. I think they ended up having a decent time, being able to change their flights and having some nice additional bonding time, but I was definitely glad not to have to deal with rescheduling anything so last minute.

I made my connection in Detroit by the skin of my teeth and with a lot of luck, including my luggage for the first time I can remember being some of the first off the plane, and a very nice desk agent letting me skip the line to check in when I told her I was in danger of missing my flight. I was especially nervous because these tickets were booked separately--I'd used my government-funded rest and recuperation ticket to get to Detroit, but had paid for my own ticket to Denver, so they wouldn't automatically rebook me if I missed the Detroit-Paris flight because my flight from Denver was late, even though they were all Delta flights. But I did make it, and from there the rest of the travel went pretty smoothly.

And it was right back to work in Abidjan! I got in at about 20:00 on Tuesday, and was back in the office at 07:30 on Wednesday. I'd been contacted the week before to let me know that the Secretary of State was coming to Abidjan, and to ask if I would be site officer for his meeting with the Minister for Foreign Affairs. His schedule ended up changing and he didn't have a full meeting with the Minister, so I got moved to a smaller role at the airport during his arrival, but it was still quite a welcome back to work! The African Cup of Nations has also been taking place since I got back, and Cote d'Ivoire is still very much in it (with a little rescue from Morocco!) so that's causing lots of excitement.

Similar to the buffalo, you just have to trust me that Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in the distance in this picture.

With everything going on I still feel like I'm getting back in the swing of things after leave. Soon I'll be moving from the immigrant visa portfolio at work to American citizen services, and I have a few small trips coming up, but it shouldn't be anything as eventful as my three week expedition back to the U.S.

💪💪💪

Paris, Visits, Holiday Cheer

Well initially my thought was that I was going to update this blog every month but things got away from me! I see that in my last post I highlighted that I didn't have any plans to travel in all of Autumn, but that ended up changing. After the crisis in Israel and Gaza started, the State Department, and specifically Consular Affairs, put out a call for volunteers who would be willing to go on TDY--that is, on a temporary duty assignment--to support the crisis response. I signed up, saying I would be willing to go anywhere, and before long I got an email letting me know that they wanted me to go to... Paris?

Obviously I was excited, and glad to be able to contribute, but I was a little confused! It turns out that two of Paris's consular officers had TDYed to Cairo, Egypt to directly support the evacuation of U.S. citizens from Gaza. Why not just send me to do that, rather than sending me to backfill for them? Well, they both had prior evacuation and American Citizen Services (ACS) experience, and I don't. So, them to Cairo, me to Paris.

It was a lot of work--some days I was on the visa line until 2:30 PM, having skipped lunch. The visas section isn't huge in Paris, just six officers, and a few of the officers who weren't in Cairo had pre-scheduled leave, or were sick, so some days we were doing six officers' worth of appointments with just three or four of us. The numbers weren't so high, but with Paris being such an international city, you see people from all nationalities, in all visa classes, doing all kinds of interesting things in the U.S., that have hyper-specific requirements and things you need to mention in your case notes. It was a real challenge adjudicating those cases, but interesting and satisfying work.

And then after work, I was in Paris! I did walking tours, went to the Louvre, the Paris Sewer Museum, the Musee d'Orsay, and the Musee Quai Branly. I took day trips to Chartres and Reims to see the cathedrals there and try some champagne. I handed out candy at the Embassy's Halloween party and went to a movie, something I've missed in Abidjan (there are theaters here, but the only English language showings tend to be Monday or Tuesday nights, not very convenient). I went to the Place de la Concorde free watch party of the Rugby World Cup, happening in Paris, and cheered the South African Springboks on to victory over the New Zealand All Blacks (although I think the haka they do is so dang cool that I'm always kind of on the All Blacks' side, even when I watched the movie Invictus). By luck, I'd met a Parisian who works as an English-French simultaneous interpreter at the African Development Bank at a friend's house party just days before I went to Paris, and she kindly sent me a very long list of vegetarian-friendly restaurants that she recommended, so I worked through as many of those as was practical. And I also hung out with the Paris consular officers--they're a great group, many of them in their second tours having used their high equity from serving in places like Mali, Senegal, or Haiti to get to Paris. All in all, I have to say I enjoyed my time in the Abidjan of Europe.

I neglected to take many pictures, but some things that stand out in my memory are:

• The delightful profusion of accents at the Rugby World Cup watch party.
• Getting to see Kehinde Wiley's show of portraits of African presidents in person at the Musee Quai Branly; I'd read about it in the New York Times before knowing there was any chance I might be able to see it in person, and his work definitely benefits from being seen live.
• By coincidence ending up at the Musee d'Orsay on a night when they had live musical performers scattered throughout the museum (and getting to see some Van Goghs for the second time, having already seen certain key pieces when they were on display at the Detroit Institute of art last winter).
• Being the only Spanish speaker on the consular line and getting the Spanish-speaking applicants directed my way; adding a third language into the mix was an interesting challenge and it was good to see that I haven't forgotten everything!
• Having Mexican food and Tex-Mex (other than my own attempts) for the first time in a while.
• Going to an English language book store.
• Running along the Seine--the crisp fall weather was perfect for it, and the running trail was completely separated from traffic and satisfyingly well-populated day and night.
• Going to the Louvre with a consular colleague and finding out that her guest pass wouldn't get me in--but having a nice entry attendant give us the inside scoop that we could get into a side exhibit, and that we'd have the opportunity to get into the rest of the Louvre when we exited that.

Akan artifacts on display at the Musee Quai Branly. Akan culture includes ethnic groups in modern-day Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire.

The Musee Quai Branly had an exhibit on the cultural importance of "Fancy" fabric, a cheaper printed alternative to wax pagne prints which is often used to make fabric commemorating political events, membership in social or religious groups, etc. Some interesting examples from Cote d'Ivoire (and Cameroon)!

Sewer access example at the Museum of the Paris Sewers.

Restaurant in Reims.

There weren't many disappointments, but I will say that the gift shop at the Museum of the Paris Sewers was decidedly underwhelming! Every other aspect of Paris tourism feels like it's designed by five marketing PhDs, and yet the one place where I wanted to find weird and kitschy postcards and poop emoji plushes and whatever else I'm sure I can't even think of, it was just a bunch of stuff with their logo on it (or without their logo even, just generic Paris merch). Missed opportunity!

I was in Paris two and a half weeks in total. After getting back, I was acting consular chief for two weeks (which was pretty quiet, although I did end up getting pulled into an interesting external meeting that I usually wouldn't have gotten to attend), and then had one week back in my normal job but still with an additional responsibility. We had many officials from D.C. visiting in late November/early December to get their visits in before the holiday season, so unusually, the responsibility of being control officer for a visitor and his three-person team fell to me. I've been control officer in Monterrey, but this was the first time I'd done it in Abidjan, so it was a lot of work as I learned how to navigate the different system here, pull together paper, set meetings. The team was incredibly friendly and easy-going, and were very effective at conveying the importance of the issues they discussed to our counterparts. It was just a one day visit, but even so, with all of the preparation it took, it ended up making me feel like I'd been go-go-go from my time in Paris through their departure.

A few other notables:

• I was duty officer for the first time here, and fortunately got no calls.
• I watched my supervisor's dog for one of the weeks she was out, Cam's a good boy who seemed to enjoy getting to explore my apartment complex and getting attention from kids.

• I was social sponsor to a new arrival who seems to be settling in well.
• On Thanksgiving I participated in the Embassy-wide festivities, including a 5k, a HIIT class, and a touch football game. I scored the game-winning touchdown!

Me and Anne, who convinced me to play.

• There have been lots of formal and informal Christmas/holiday get togethers, starting even in late November as people try to make sure they catch as many people as possible before everyone's on their way out for the season. I also went to a Christmas market, which was a lot of fun, although there were so many stalls that it was overwhelming and I didn't end up being able to decide on anything.

The past couple of weeks have been a bit quieter, which has been nice, but all-in-all it's been a little more eventful than I anticipated. I'll go on leave soon for the holiday season, and I'm looking forward to taking it easy!

(Gosh it's been so long that I hadn't realized, but at the beginning of October, before I even went on TDY, I went to Assinie, a local beach town, with three colleagues. I chose the absolute worst possible weekend, it rained the ENTIRE time--I was the instigator of the trip and I felt so bad! But everyone was nice about it and we ended up having a good time just relaxing at hotel restaurants and our AirBNB, even if we couldn't enjoy the beach as intended.)

Me and the crew in Assinie on day one! When we still had a feeble hope that the sun would come out.

I didn't mention this anywhere in the rest of this post, but this was from a weekend event at the Embassy Annex where SOME people ran 5k every hour on the hour from 5-8 AM; I ended up joining only for the last 5k, but more power to the people who did the full 20!

Election Observation and Travel

September started off with Cote d'Ivoire's regional and local elections. I got to travel to Bongouanou as an election observer, which was great. Bongouanou is a medium-sized city in eastern Cote d'Ivoire, and I traveled with some of our great locally engaged staff so I even got to tag along for some other work-related events while we were there. National media generally agreed that the elections were pretty peaceful with no widespread allegations of mismanagement, and it was really interesting to get to learn how election observation works.

Breakfast on Election Day, at a place that was (to me) charmingly reminiscent of the kinds of roadside stands I ate at in the Peace Corps.

Later in the month, I went on vacation to Italy, Slovenia, and Serbia! I was in my own on Italy, in Venice, and had a great time. Although it was touristy, it was still enjoyable and I was able to pack in a lot of interesting activities. Highlights were getting to the Abbey of Saint George first thing in the morning so that I got to enjoy the view from the clocktower with no one else around (a rare moment of solitude in a packed city!), a Spanish-language tour of Murano and Burano, and enjoying a performance of the Four Seasons at a chapel where Vivaldi worked and composed.

A selfie at the top of the clock tower at the Abbey of Saint George.

Mural in Burano.

In Slovenia, I met up with my friend L and her mom, M. We enjoyed Ljubljana and also got out to Lake Bled and a pass through the Alps. It was a really charming city and it was great to see L. I particularly enjoyed the wine tasting we did--the sommelier was really knowledgeable and personable, and the wines were all great!

Lake Bled

Then L and I went to Serbia. We were supposed to meet up with another friend there, but unfortunately she ended up getting sick and wasn't able to travel. Serbia was still very fun and very interesting--we did a walking tour which let us explore the more distant history of the city going back to Rome, and then went to the Museum of Yugoslavia and some of the preserved NATO bombing sites to learn about the more recent history of the Balkans.

Some gifts Tito received from African leaders/delegations.

I've really been enjoying my time in Cote d'Ivoire, but it was good to get out of Abidjan for a bit and completely forget about work. I realized that this was my first trip to a country where I don't speak the language since 2019, and those were just very brief trips to Mexico (before I got to learn Spanish for work) for a few days--I haven't spent a full week in a country where I don't speak the language since 2017. It really made me appreciate my French ability, imperfect though it is!

Now we're fully in Autumn and I don't have any leave scheduled this entire season. I'm going to try to get away on some weekend trips, but the next time I leave the country will be for Christmas--and I'll be acting Consular Chief for some meaningful chunks of time in October and November, as well as having some other additional responsibilities, so I'm going to be more work focused for the next few months, and then I'll have a nice long break in winter and some good opportunities to see friends and family.

Man, What a Trip

The month started off big for Mission Abidjan with a visit from P--that is, Undersecretary for Political Affairs and Acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. She came to Abidjan as part of a whirlwind three country tour of Africa, which wasn't cancelled but just shifted in mission and topic after the unfortunate events in Niger. However, I didn't get roped into this hardly at all (although I did get to attend her town hall with mission staff) because I and another staff member had work-related travel scheduled to begin the day after her departure.

The consular section doesn't necessarily travel as much as some other sections, but it's still generally good for us to get outside of the capital and meet with local authorities. We met with the hospital and the police station to encourage them to contact the Embassy if they ever encounter any U.S. citizens in crisis, and we also gave a presentation (which was even covered by the press!) to about 80 students about the diversity visa lottery program.

There are only flights to Man every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday, though, and since we arrived on a Thursday, we had to stay until Sunday so we could get a flight back. (It's driveable, but part of why we went when we did was because the Ambassador was traveling to Man with a much bigger entourage and they'd already sent a bunch of the vehicles ahead, so they were available to take us to and from meetings--sending a car away for two days to take us to Abidjan and then go back to Man wouldn't have been very efficient.)

So we got to enjoy Man during our remaining time in the city. It's a medium-sized city of about 160 thousand people or so, and it's a tourist destination, mostly within Cote d'Ivoire, thanks to the mild climate and beautiful rolling hills. By coincidence, some of my embassy colleagues were on vacation in Man while I was there, and they invited me to join them on a couple of hikes to waterfalls. Since it was the rainy season, the waterfalls were particularly impressive. The weather alternated between sunny and overcast with light rain, so it didn't get too hot. The group had compatible interests and fitness levels, and the hikes were beautiful.

Later in the month I hosted people for trivia for the first time. I wanted to get comfortable hosting people now that I have my UAB and my HHE. In Monterrey I hosted people, but I never really got fully into the swing of it, and here I want to be better about not thinking I have to make a big production and put out some fancy spread when I have people over. Trivia was great in that respect.

A colleague also invited me and a bunch of our neighbors over for Ethiopian food. It was an absolute feast, with tons of different dishes, most of them vegetarian--completely delicious! I'm planning to go to South Korea next year, and to stop in Ethiopia for a few days in one direction (because the most direct routing from Abidjan includes a layover in Addis Ababa anyway) and that meal definitely made an Ethiopia trip seem even more appealing.

Towards the end of the month I was acting consular chief again as my boss was on leave. It's a lot of work--really makes me respect all the additional work she takes on and keeps from falling on me and the other officers--but it's also good to get exposed to more variety of tasks and higher level discussions at the embassy.