Out of the way first: Am I furloughed? No. Do I receive a paycheck? Magic 8 Ball says “Reply Hazy, Try Again.”
Pre-shutdown, right before Christmas, I got the news I’d been both dreading and looking forward to: the Consul General’s office manager was going on vacation and I’d need to fill in. Getting “called up to the front office” for the first time is something we talked about with nervousness in our training classes. It can be intimidating for newbies! Most stressful (for me) are official cables. They’re sent via email but even a simple one that says “The CG left the country on _____. Acting CG is ______” requires a whole slew of codes as well as specific wording and signature protocols. The first time I prepared one it took me over an hour to send a one sentence cable. But now official communiques with my name on them are in the U.S. National Archives, so I guess that’s cool?
I could feel myself coming down with a bit of a cold that week before Christmas but I made myself power through because I was only covering the front desk for three days and then the CG was going on his holiday leave and I had a four day weekend and a long planned visit to the Soviet-era bathhouse. Perfect to sweat out whatever illness might be in me.
Side Note: December and January involve a lot of holidays here at US Mission Kazakhstan. As Americans representing America, we obviously take American holidays off. As Americans living in Kazakhstan, we obviously take Kazakhstani holidays off. In December/January we celebrated President’s Day, Independence Day, western Christmas, New Year’s (2 days!), and Orthodox Christmas.
The bathhouse was both a treat and a trip.
A treat because I love a steam bath in any country: Morocco, Hungary, Turkey, Iceland, the USA…and now Kazakhstan. This giant sex-segregated space included a Finnish dry sauna, Russian wet sauna (complete with “massaging” tree branches), and Turkish/Moroccan hamam, plus lots of spa services like massages, scrubs, mani/pedis.
A trip because I wasn’t expecting a bar/cafe and a smoking area within the spa itself. I eschewed the smoking area but did go for beer and a borscht in the cafe.
After Christmas Eve at the Soviet sweat lodge I had a low-key Christmas, FaceTiming with friends and family members in various states and countries. I reminisced about how at Christmastime last year I was on a plane to D.C. to take the test to be an OMS with the Foreign Service. And a year later…here I am, sending one sentence official cables!
I took advantage of the long holiday weekends to explore a little bit more of the city, including the hilltop recreation area of Kok Тобe, accessible via a cable car gondola that carries you over the rooftops of Almaty.
When it was finally time to go back to work, I still wasn’t headed back to my own desk. The acting CG requested that I remain at the front office to answer any phone calls, even though the level of activity was low.
Why so low? Well…
That’s the email I got. Unfortunately, a chunk of my colleagues got an email that said (paraphrase) “go home and stay there until we figure some stuff out.” One of the people getting the “go home and stay there” email was the CG’s regular OMS. With the CG gone and half the people who usually want meetings with him furloughed, I could easily cover both the CG desk and my usual work in the security office.
Side Note: I made the mistake of mentioning both my low workload and my recent bathhouse visit within hearing range of one of the staff members at the Community Liaison Office. The CLO is in charge of, among other things, organizing activities and keeping the American Consulate community up to date on what fun things are happening in the area. They do a newsletter called Steppe’n Out. Get it?
Next thing I know I was requested/commanded to write up an article about how to get nekkid and sweat like a local. So now the question is, am I more excited to have my name show up in official cables at the National Archives or to be a published author in Steppe’n Out?
This week the CG arrived back so there’s been an uptick in activity but it’s still nothing like it was before the shut down. We have to adhere to local labor laws so local staff members are still working, but often their American supervisors are furloughed. Even the Facebook Page is furloughed. I feel fortunate to be in a situation where I can go many weeks without feeling stress about missing a paycheck, but I know not everyone is nearly so lucky.
Current status: colleagues are furloughed, events postponed, and language lessons suspended just as I was in the middle of learning foods, leaving me knowing how to ask for vegetables and fish but with no idea how to ask for meat, not even horse. Let’s hope for an end to the shut down before I finish my upcoming memoir, Congressional Appropriations and My Journey to Pescatarianism.
In Foreign Places 