Skip Ahead a Few Years

I have let this blog lapse over the past few years.  Writing in it had become a chore, I had become lazy, and it was easy to stop.  However, my children have begged me to recommence this blog because they love reading through the family stories.  They have been asking me for quite some time, and so with a fresh start in a new place I've made a resolution to pick the stories up again.  At this point, I'm pretty sure that this is just a public family record, but that's okay with me.

We are now living in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, back after a seven-year absence.  When Brandon was bidding on his next post while we were in Astana, I floated the idea of returning to Dushanbe.  Brandon doesn't care much for lobbying, we've been in Central Asia for a decade, it's not hard to get a job in Dushanbe, and they're paying us a lot of money to be here - plus extra R&R flights.  

Having enjoyed his economic job in Astana, he decided to bid on an economic job in Dushanbe.  As he speaks Russian, he out-year bid (bidding a year earlier than everyone else) in 2023.  And since Dushanbe is a hard place to get people to come to, he got to bid early, in May of 2023 (normally the bid season is in October) There were, surprisingly, three other bidders for the job, and they were all actual economic officers so Brandon was not Dushanbe's first pick.  

When handshakes were handed out, Brandon didn't get an email and we resigned ourselves to bidding again in October.  Meanwhile, we went on our usual summer pilgrimage (also known as R&R) and moved on with life.  We were at Brandon's brother's house in Idaho playing whiffle ball one afternoon, and I checked my phone to see if anyone wanted something from me.  Waiting on the phone was an email offering Brandon a handshake for the job in Dushanbe.  I'm pretty sure nobody was as excited to go back to Dushanbe as we were that day.

Skip ahead a few years, and here we are, back in Dushanbe.  We arrived on Monday morning at 1 AM, which was a vast improvement on the 6 AM flight arrival time that we used to have to endure here.  We are now living in a neighborhood that is walkable distance to the embassy, and Brandon is much enjoying not having to fight morning traffic to get home every evening.  

I can't say that Dushanbe itself has many charms that we have been missing - it's just bigger, dustier, and more crowded than the last time around - but I'm very, very happy to be able to swim in September instead of dreading impending death of another Kazakh winter.  I could never make my peace with cold so deep that it would kill you if you weren't dressed properly.  

I'm also happy that our favorite housekeeper we've ever had, Zarifa, is still working for embassy families and was willing to come and work for us again.  Her first day is Tuesday, and she has promised to come with pumpkin sambusas to welcome us back to Dushanbe.  Good household help makes life so much easier, and having good household help that already knows my preferences is amazing.  I may not be within thousands of miles of the closest Target, but I do have someone to come and clean my four-story house every week.  There are always compensations.

More than anything, however, I am most happy to be here, mostly unpacked, and not moving for another three years.  After our two-month sojourn in the US, I would be happy to be just about anywhere I could unpack my suitcases and not have to pack them up again shortly.  The diplomatic lifestyle reels that make it look and sound glamorous are truthful, but they only show a small percentage of the entirety of our lives - and a lot of it is anything but glamorous.  However, all those less-glamorous parts do help you to appreciate the small luxuries in life - like being in a place that is now home, if only for the next three years.