Global Reflections

Previously: Pre-Packout Preparation

On packout day, Jeff and I try to arrive at the house early. We each have notebooks and pens. We’re as prepared as we can be, but there are still uncertainties. Although we know what to expect procedure-wise, we have no idea what to expect from our moving crew. Will we have a crew of 4, 8, or 20? Will they stay together, break into two groups, or have to be prevented from breaking into three or more groups? Will they be conscientious and pack our things as carefully as if they were the owners, or will they do as little as possible and potentially put our things at risk? In our three moves, we’ve had both extremes: the American crew was very good, and we thought at the time that they were the gold standard; the Egyptian crew was atrocious; and the Cambodian crew overwhelmed us with their skill, their conscientiousness, and their professionalism—they are the gold standard, as far as I'm concerned.

The crew always consists of at least four men, usually five to seven men. One of them is the crew supervisor, and often, a manager will come too—I don’t recall if a manager came in the States, but one dropped by once or twice in Egypt, and one was here full-time in Cambodia (I think it was a requirement here because of language differences).

The procedure always has the same structure, though details may vary. The first priority always is to pack and weigh the UAB. The second priority is to pack the Storage. This procedure clears the way for the bulk of the packing—the HHE—to be free and clear, without worrying about mixing my piles.

In our previous moves, the crew supervisor packed the UAB, with or without help from one or two others, under Jeff’s supervision, while the rest of the crew got started on the Storage, under my supervision. In this most recent packout, the crew preferred to stay together, so everyone worked on the UAB, and when it was done, everyone worked on the Storage. This preference to stay together made it incredibly easy for Jeff and me to supervise—in the past, I’ve had to chase men down and tell them that they can’t work in that room yet, that they have to stay in one room where I can see them all; but this time, I never had to go chasing after anyone, and Jeff and I even were able to switch off for bathroom breaks without leaving anyone unsupervised.

Why the emphasis on supervision? Well … because this is our stuff and these are strangers. I believe that most people are mostly trustworthy. But some aren’t, and I don’t know which ones those are. So no one gets trusted until I know them better. Especially since even basically trustworthy people may have moments of weakness when faced with small items of relatively large value (in developing countries, an item worth $20 is valuable!) and a lack of supervision around those items. Plus, close supervision of the movers allows us to catch our mistakes before they become unfixable—if we’re watching each item go into the box, we’ll recognize that that charging cord shouldn’t go, and we’ll notice if the trash can still has trash in it (there have been cases of foreign service families opening their shipments to discover that the trash cans were still full, and the contents had been rotting in shipping containers for months). We also can verify that our things are packed appropriately; Jeff has given many lessons on the vulnerability points of certain electronics. Supervision also means that we can protect our safe areas from overzealous packers—the American ones were good in this regard, and the Cambodians were exceptional, but the Egyptians had to be told multiple times “No, put that back! Don’t pack any of that!”

Once the UAB is packed and weighed (giving us the chance to take items out or add more items, depending on how good our planning was), and the Storage is out of the way, it becomes more of a free-for-all: If it’s there and it doesn’t have an “X” on it, into a box it goes. Most of the embassy shippers have enough experience to recognize embassy furniture, embassy transformers, embassy lamps, and other things that stay with the house, so they usually avoid those things on their own—though Jeff or I watch constantly to be sure. The house becomes a mess of boxes (filled, made but empty, and not yet made), white paper, bubble wrap, tape … our stuff gradually disappears and is replaced by brown boxes, ideally with contents and room labeled, but always with Jeff’s full name and a number. The numbers are used for inventory control: the supervisor creates a master list with each box’s number, contents, and weight. In the past, Jeff and I have created our own inventory lists with box numbers and a more detailed description of the contents, as well as the box’s weight—we didn’t bother with that this time, as we’ve never actually used our lists in the past; they usually get set aside during unpacking because it takes so much longer to actually inventory everything as we unpack it, and we never manage to write down all the contents anyway, and we see the boxes get sealed in the crates, so it’s very uncommon for anything to go missing during transit. But we do value the copy of the master list we receive from the supervisor—we use it to make sure all the boxes make a reappearance on delivery day, and for some items that we want to unpack first, we can use the contents list to figure out which box they’re in.

This whole process takes anywhere from two to three days. Theoretically, it could take one, but that hasn’t happened for us. Most of our things usually get packed in one day, and then day two consists of putting the boxes in the crates (called lift vans), putting the lift vans in the truck (unless they were constructed and filled in the truck to begin with), and going over the paperwork. This time, it took a full two days to put everything in boxes. Day three was devoted entirely to constructing, filling, and loading the lift vans. Jeff and the manager met for a few moments on day four to go over the paperwork. It took longer this time both because we had more things, and because this crew took exceptional care to pack things well—they constructed boxes for a perfect fit around furniture, speakers, and other large or oddly-shaped items; they carefully supported our double-glass framed papyri with cardboard, paper, and bubble wrap before putting them in specially made boxes before putting them in specially made crates complete with extra styrofoam padding; they took the time to fill in around fragile items (like a small sculptures made from camel bone) with broken down styrofoam, as packing peanuts were not available. 

However long it takes, it always ends the same way: our stuff boxed up and trucked off to the warehouse to await customs clearance and loading onto the ship or plane, and us checking out of the hotel and moving into a shell of a house.

Up Next: Leaving Post, Pets, and Home Leave

~~~~~~~~~

Anatomy of a Foreign Service Move, Part:

1: Introduction and Post Assignment

2: Pre-Packout Preparation

3: Packout

4: Leaving Post, Pets, and Home Leave

5: New Beginnings

Previously: Introduction and Post Assignment

In the two or three months before the packout (the day when our stuff leaves), I inevitably make lists. A list of things to do, which at this point often becomes a list of lists I need to make. A list of questions I need answered, often because the answers will determine what objects or actions go on which other lists. A list of things I need to buy because we’ll need them at our next post. A list of things I know (or at least believe) we won’t need at our next post—which then gets divided into lists of things to give away, things to sell, and things to put into long-term storage in the United States. A list of things I want to buy from our current location as keepsakes, memorabilia, and general “treasures.” A list of things I still want to do at our current location. Lists of what will go in the air freight, the sea freight, and our suitcases—these lists must be done early.

A week or two before packout, we have the Pre-Packout Survey. Representatives from the shipping company—or companies, if two companies are bidding against each other—visit our home. I give them the grand tour as they scribble in their notepads. They make note of our pictures, our carpets, our furniture (only a few pieces are ours; the rest belongs to the embassy and stays with the house). They open drawers and look in closets. I point out items that require special handling (which usually causes tape measures to appear) or that are heavier than they look. The constant questions are “Is this going to your next post? Is this going to storage? Can I look in here?” The purpose of this visit is to allow the company to get an idea of just how much stuff they will be packing up and shipping. How many boxes will they need to bring? How many people? How many crates do they expect to fill? Will we be under our weight allowance, or do they need to be prepared for us to be over? How much will it cost them to ship our stuff—and so how much will they need to charge the Department for their services?

At some point, I start checking things off my lists. I go to all those touristy places that I meant to go to all along but somehow never got around to. We buy the paintings—it always seems to be wall art, for us; we love the lamps and quilts and sculptures that we buy, but the must-haves always include wall art—that we’ve been considering for months, and we even leave enough time to have them framed. I give away or sell a few items. Then, as the time shortens, I give or sell some more. Finally, we have a big purge … or this time, a few big purges … often interspersed with last-minute shopping expeditions. (We gave away 200 pounds of books—surely we can add two super-light, super-cute quilted floor cushions decorated with jungle animals!)

But the biggest, arguably most important, lists remain untouched until just a day or two before the packout.

In our pre-cat, pre-Alexa days, the pre-packout craziness was diluted over a period of a week or two. However, cats love to climb, jump, and perch on precarious stacks of stuff, and toddlers—particularly those who are a bit change-resistant—don’t like to see single items go anywhere other than where they belong; they especially object to the large-scale rearranging that happens before the packout, and they tend to take items away from where Mama put them and put them back where they go … or anywhere else they can reach that isn’t where Mama wants them. So this time, we checked into a hotel two days before the packout—at our choice, and at our expense; the embassy assumes that you can live in your house throughout the packout, which is possible but impractical for us—and our housekeeper watched Alexa there during the days of the packout and for the day before it, when we destroyed the house.

Ok, so we don’t actually destroythe house. We just destroy the home-like atmosphere of it.

Remember those most important lists that are untouched until a day or two before the packout? Well, those are the “what goes where” lists. As a foreign service family, we are moved from post to post by the federal government. We have allowances for how much stuff we can take with us, and if we go over those limits, we have to pay the excess cost. Most of it goes by sea, because that’s the most economical way, but we do get a limited allowance for air freight, so that we can receive necessities more quickly. The shipment that goes by sea is referred to as the HHE (Household Effects), and the shipment that goes by air is the UAB (Unaccompanied Air Baggage). The government will ship a total of 7,200 pounds of freight per family. Most of that typically is HHE, but the UAB comes out of that as well—the exact weight limit for the UAB depends on family size (250 pounds for the employee, 200 for the first dependent, 150 for the second, and 100 for each additional dependent). We also are allowed to use an unlimited portion of our weight allowance to ship items back to the United States for long-term storage, so long as the total amount in storage does not exceed 10,800 pounds. So my four most important lists are lists of what goes into the suitcases to travel with us, what goes into the UAB, what goes into Storage, and what goes into the HHE (though I never actually write out an HHE list, which would consist of only one entry: “everything else”).

The day before the packout, we physically move things around the house so that instead of UAB and Storage lists, we have UAB and Storage piles. (The suitcase pile, ideally, is already at the hotel, although we inevitably find more things during the sorting—and during the packout—that we realize should be at the hotel.)

Because it’s prohibitively expensive to go over our UAB weight limits, we have to be judicious in what we goes UAB. We have to make some trade-offs: Do we put in some more clothes or shoes, or do we put in an extra trash can to use in the bathroom? (Trash can.) Do we take Alexa’s bike, or more of her books? (The bike.) Can we get by without the cats’ big scratching post, or will that just cost us in furniture damage? (Scratching post goes.) Which pots and pans are necessities, and which are luxuries? (Take half.) Do we take our Select Comfort bed, which is the only mattress in the world on which both Jeff and I can sleep comfortably, or do we leave it out and have more room for other things? (The mattress goes, although the platform has to go HHE both because of the weight and because the pieces are too big for the air freight boxes.)

I’m a bit obsessive when it comes to the UAB … I literally weigh everything and record it, ending up with a list of precisely what is in the UAB and how much it weighs. I have a food scale with which I weigh the smaller items, and we have a bathroom scale with which I weigh the bulkier items. My goal is to get as close as possible to 90% of our weight allowance, since we have to allow for the packaging materials. I’m very proud of myself with this move—once all was said and done, we were 10 pounds under our UAB weight allowance, the closest we’ve ever come to perfect.

I put the UAB on and around the dining room table. Things that are going into Storage, this time, went on and around the coffee table in the living room—except for the big items, like a few pieces of furniture from Alexa’s nursery set and a couple of papyrus paintings that were still on the walls. Those items were noted carefully in my notebook, to which I referred obsessively during the packout.

I also create “safe areas,” marked with pieces of paper with a huge “X.” Those areas this time consisted of the shelving units in the kitchen and hall, the guest bathroom, and Jeff’s nightstand drawers (which he hadn’t had time to go through). The safe areas become the temporary home of things that should not go into any shipment but that didn’t go to the hotel for one reason or another—bulky items like Alexa’s stroller or car seat case, food items we’ll still be using after the packout, Ziploc bags that we want available during the packout so that screws and other small hardware can be contained after things like the crib are disassembled. We also throw in anything we come across during the packout that we realize should have gone to the hotel—Kindles, phone charging cords, cameras, a clothesline that I’ll use in place of my drying rack.

While I’m destroying the house, Jeff destroys the electronics. He unplugs all the components of the home entertainment system, carefully notes which power brick goes with which component, what wire goes where to connect everything to everything else in the most efficient configuration. He handles the components that require some care—disconnecting the speaker wire without damaging any connectors, for example. He does some prep work on the TV console, which is specially designed for efficiency and accessibility, but which is more fragile than most similar-appearing furniture. He makes sure we save (unpacked) all the home computer network components—marking “X”s on post-it notes and slapping them onto the wireless router, the internet company’s box, the embassy’s transformers, the power strip, and all the other little boxes that I have no idea what they are. He makes sure that we have the velvet bags in which the speakers were shipped ready for re-use, and the foam that was packed around the TV (the box itself survived two moves but was judged no-longer-reusable upon arrival in Cambodia).

Finally, as ready as we can be, we head back to the hotel. It’s important to get as good a night’s rest as possible before the packout begins the next day, as the first day of packout often is one of the most stressful days of the whole process.

Up Next: Packout

~~~~~~~~~

Anatomy of a Foreign Service Move, Part:

1: Introduction and Post Assignment

2: Pre-Packout Preparation

3: Packout

4: Leaving Post, Pets, and Home Leave

5: New Beginnings

Different departments (i.e., Department of Defense civilians and military personnel as opposed to Department of State foreign service officers and USAID personnel) handle each phase of work-related moves differently, and even different agencies within the same department may have some differences in how they go about things. What I’m going to talk about is what has been our experience, with Jeff’s role as a Foreign Service Specialist. If you’re part of a foreign service family, our experiences may be different from yours—but I trust that you’ll recognize the broad similarities even if a few specifics vary.

Sometime early in each calendar year, the State Department publishes an internal document known as the bid list. This document lists all the vacancies (positions and their locations) that are coming open in the next rotation cycle (all the position changes for one year are assigned at the same time, so each year is one cycle). Each employee is expected to review the list and start the process of acquiring a “next post.” In our family, Jeff reviews the list and narrows it down based on position requirements—he eliminates any posts with positions that are above or below his pay grade, positions that he finds professionally boring or unsuitable, and positions that wouldn’t be a decent move for his career. He also eliminates posts to which he is not allowed to take family members for security reasons (unaccompanied posts, such as Iraq or Afghanistan, or posts where spouses are allowed but children aren’t—like Kosovo, until recently) and most likely also eliminates posts to which he would not be willing to take Alexa and me for security, health, or other reasons. He ends up with a list of (usually) 10 to 15 cities, all of which would be manageable posts for him, and he brings that list home to share with me.

Usually I read over the list and ask Jeff if he has any early favorites. After whatever discussion follows, my first stop is the computer. I get basic information about all of the cities, often beginning with Jeff’s early favorites or cities that pique my interest. I always look for information about climate, security, crime, money and exchange rate, attitudes of the local population toward Americans, and pet importation (if we can’t take the cats, we strike it off the list immediately). When we’re preparing to leave Kosovo, I’ll also have to start looking at education information: what schools are available for expat children, how good they are, and whether homeschooling is a reasonable option in that country. I also look for blogs written by expats who live there, though I’ve had little luck with any of my three such searches to date—I never seem to find the blogs until I get there and meet the expats who write them. Basically, I start trying to get information about each country on the list with the goal of forming a general impression as to whether or not I’d like to live there.

Jeff and I discuss some more, pray, and come up with our top five choices, in order. Then Jeff takes our list in to work and starts the submission and negotiation process. It’s a weird mix of bureaucratic procedure and interpersonal negotiation, and I’m happy that he deals with it and I don’t have to understand all the particulars—diplomacy and negotiation are not my strong points.

And I wait.

Weeks or months later, people start receiving official offers. At some point, Jeff calls me from work and tells me where we’re going. It’s almost always one of our top five, though not always … ok, never so far … our number one choice. Once it turned out to be a position that not only wasn’t in our top five, but wasn’t even on the bid list—a position had come open at the last minute, they recruited Jeff for it, he was excited about it, and my response mirrored his: “If that had been on the bid list, it would have been my number one choice!” And so we were assigned to Egypt for our first post.

Once we know where we’re going, we return to waiting. There are several months between the time we’re notified of our new assignment and the time when things really start happening. In the meantime, we live our lives and enjoy wherever we are at the time. We also spread the word as to our new assignment, giving people plenty of time to ask us all the questions to which we do not yet know the answers, and allowing friends and family time to decide if they’re going to come visit us and start saving the required funds if they are.

I embark on a quest for information during this time. I usually order a travel guide and read through it in these months of waiting, and I periodically search for blogs written by or about expats in the new post city. I scour every source I can find for any information that will give me an idea of what to expect. My search is almost always fruitless. Only once have I found the information that I sought: when we were waiting for our move to Cairo, a friend introduced me to a wonderful book called Cairo: The Practical Guide, which provided a plethora of information for expats moving to and living in Cairo. Unfortunately, I was not able to find such a resource for Phnom Penh or Prishtina … if any expats have lived in these cities for many years and have the skills, inclination, and time to write such a guide, let me be the first to encourage you to write it!

Toward the end of this time, I start thinking about the practicalities of the move itself: what will go with us? What will go into storage? What should simply go away? These thoughts awaken my obsessive need to plan and organize, organize and plan … and transitions us into the next phase of our moving cycle.

Next up: Pre-Packout Preparation

~~~~~~~~~

Anatomy of a Foreign Service Move, Part:

1: Introduction and Post Assignment

2: Pre-Packout Preparation

3: Packout

4: Leaving Post, Pets, and Home Leave

5: New Beginnings