Africa, Baby! Yeah!

We're not going to Seattle. We're going to Africa, Baby! Of course, nothing is certain until Christopher actually sends the email, but he says he's going to send it tomorrow. It's all written and ready, just waiting for a good night's sleep to confirm that we are happy with our decision.

Why are we staying in Kingston for another 9 months? So we can learn french, and spend two years in a french speaking country and really learn it. So Christopher will have more free time to spend with Salem and me. It will be a great life experience, and Salem will even be old enough to remember some of it. It's the more delayed gratification choice, which is not what the Silkies usually choose, but it's also the adventurous choice. We can visit Timbuktu, and Dogon country. And we don't have to pack up and move just when we're starting to get settled here.

I think it has been a hard decision because choosing Bamako is more abstract and distant. Seattle is easy to visualize because we've been there, and we'd get to leave soon, as in start making preparations tomorrow. Bamako - we won't get there until December 2010. That's a long time away. It's also hard because it's not just one of us, it's three of us. And as far as making a gut decision goes, I think the urge for Seattle has to do with getting out of here now. But we still want to go to Africa, thus the conflicted gut. It's funny because for so many criteria it's hard to say which choice best meets it. For example, if you say take the easy choice, one person might mean go to Seattle because it's familiar, it's only one move instead of three, and it's a more familiar, easier lifestyle. But someone else might mean we should stick with the foreign service because it's the easy choice - we don't have to move now and when we do move, it will be taken care of for us, our housing is always taken care of, we can afford to have a helper who will do the cleaning and watch Salem. Or Christopher might say he likes change. Does that mean he wants immediate change to a more stationary lifestyle or to continue with our current lifestyle of moving every few years?

Great quotes from Christopher:

"I say many funny things - I can't be expected to remember which one."
"I want to have to make some very hard decisions in a couple of months." (while we were still in Oakland in reference to still applying for jobs after being accepted to the foreign service)
"The bottom line is you always have to have a BATNA."
"If we could just go and live in Seattle and not have to work, I think I would want to do that, and then just visit Bamako."

Great quotes from Sarah:

"I have a slight preference for Bamako."
"Whatever, I don't care anymore. I just want a decision."
"I want to live like I'm in a eighteenth century novel"

Great quotes from Salem:

"Gung gung goo. Goo!"
"oooh. oooh. ooooh"
"waaaaaaaaaaaaaaH!"

Come visit!