Author: Robin Chartier

swimming through sand

I’m plenty progressive, but in our
family’s division of labor there are some things that I leave
exclusively to Josh. I hear about wives going to this office on base
or that one – tracking down elusive signatures and filling out
endless government forms, but all of that is Josh’s domain.

First of all, he works for the
government so he’s being paid to be given the runaround. If he wastes
an hour jumping through hoops to get the parking passes updated at
least his frustration is putting pennies in our pockets.
Second, because rank has its
privileges. And I mean any rank. When trying to get things done on a
military base I have found that things go a lot more quickly and with
half the effort if it’s the service member doing the asking. So why
fight it?
But here I am with a kid without an ID
card (since his wallet was stolen a few weeks ago at school) and five
expired residence visas that have to be renewed. Armed with manilla
file folders fat with documents establishing my authority, I set out
to tackle the mountain.
First an ID for the kid. He’s been
cramping my style ever since it went missing because without it he
can’t walk to base after school, he can’t enter the NEX, and he’s big
enough that they can ask for his ID when we drive on base together so
I’ve had to act as his personal escort everywhere. We had been
holding out for Josh to come home from Jordan and apply for a new
card for him, but we all know how that turned out.
The ID system is a first come, first
serve kind of DMV hell. The only way to escape it is to get there as
soon as they open at 7:30am which is my own personal hell. But in the
interest of setting the man-child free and making my life easier, we
arrived first thing Sunday morning, prepared to sit there until
Calvin was official once again. Our plan worked. Maybe a bit too well. We walked into the
waiting room at 7:45 to find it empty and dark. It appeared we had
even beaten the ID department employees. We settled in and read
newspapers for 15 minutes and saw people arriving in the other
offices when I became suspicious and checked the sign on the door:

Closed Saturday and Sunday.

Yes, that looks normal to you, but
Sunday is our Monday. The day when everything that you’ve been
waiting all weekend to accomplish must be done and DONE NOW. It’s
like having the Post Office closed every Monday. What is the sense in
that?! Everything here is Sunday through Thursday – even the bank
and the Post Office are open on Sunday and closed on Friday. It
didn’t even occur to me that they wouldn’t be open since the military
ID is such an essential part of life.
Oh well, at least since I was on base, I could turn in our stack of immigration paperwork that I spent
two hours filling out the night before. It had to be submitted
online, pieced together with information and numbers from our
passports, CPR cards (not the life saving kind — our Bahrain residence
identification), and a photocopied instruction sheet.
The process looked like this: Fumble
through five identical passports to find the identification page –
nope, wrong person. Nope, not this one either. The last one I pick up
is always the one that I need. Find the passport number and input
that. Put the passport down and flip through five identification
papers looking for the corresponding CPR number. Hmm, it says this
number is supposed to be 9 digits long. This kid has an 8 digit
number. Screw it and put in an extra zero and cross my fingers that
it will work out. Find the correct passport again and locate all the
dates of issue/expiration/birth/etc all to be submitted in European
form like this: 13/12/73 – that will twist up your brain. Figure
out which blank needs which piece of information since the webpage
has been translated from Arabic and “holdover date” must mean the
date that it expires, right?

And what sort of visa am I
applying for? Residence yes, but work? Family? We are here for Josh’s
work, but we aren’t working. So family . . . does that mean that I am
a family member of an approved worker or that I have family here in
Bahrain? I just know I’m going to go through all this to have them kicked back
because I picked the wrong kind of visa . . .

At the end I had to print bazillions of
pages in color (each application was 4 pages, multiplied by 5) but my
printer was running out of ink. You better hold out because if I
lose momentum on this project I will never start again . .
But I got it all
finished and printed and I was fully prepared with my special folder when I left the ID office and wandered over in
the direction of where the Immigration office supposedly was (never
been there – Josh’s domain). I wandered around in-between 30 identical
metal trailers (they look like metal shipping containers stacked on
top of each other) until I found the one that says “Immigration.”
Happy day!

Open 9am. Awesome.
It’s 8:02 and 100+ degrees outside. Too bad I’m not getting paid for
this.  

camels

This sign in one of the compounds always makes me laugh. Did they really have to show the poop dropping out of the dog’s butt?

Last Saturday, Carter and I went to mosaic class together. The boys all wanted to go, but Carter’s friend is moving back to the US and he and his mom were going to be at class so that made the decision of who to bring very easy. We both decided to make camels. Carter went for a multicolored approach and got straight to work. 
From the previous class I had my eye on these particular red, gold, and brown glass tiles. I wanted to make a black camel since I had seen one running through the desert a few weeks ago. Until then I didn’t know there was such a thing as a black camel. They are very dark reddish brown, almost black.
(not my photo)

Complete. I was racing to finish at the end, gluing little bits here and there to fill in the spaces before grouting. Carter helped by finding a perfect stone for the camel’s tail and the two glitter pieces for the top of the camel blanket. He finished early and had time to play soccer outside with his friend while his camel dried. 

Carter’s camel with blue legs and a green saddle blanket. I think his turned out great. 

With the black grout — time to polish all the little tiles. 

Getting rid of all of the excess grout takes forever, but it’s fun to see the final project take shape. 

All cleaned and sparkling!

We made them so they could face each other if we hang them on a wall. We need to take them to the framer and have a wire installed on the backs. Carter was fun to have along. He works fast and doesn’t mess around. He always seems like the quiet one until you get him by himself and then he can’t stop talking. We had a great day together.

I love FaceTime. God bless Steve Jobs. For the longest time I thought it was a waste of money to pay more for “the apple name,” but I’ve been converted. The ease of use and integration with everything makes it so WORTH IT.
Josh is happy he is there. That sounds weird, but if he were here and all of this was going on it would be more stressful for everyone. This way he’s gone and we’re not left wondering if he’s going to get a call at any moment to leave. Every military wife I know thinks the worst part of a deployment are the days leading up to it. Once they are gone, the countdown is on for their homecoming!

This girlie turns 4 tomorrow! Unbelievable. 

True Impact writeup

I don’t have any more information about Josh, what he’s doing, or what we will do this summer, but I can say that all is well. We’ve had one sleepover here, another boy farmed out, and a second sleepover happening tonight. Camille has had her fill of Girl Scout cookies and chocolate, so everyone is happy. I can almost guarantee that we won’t be going to Italy as planned since contrary to popular belief, I am not superwoman, and can’t see myself trucking 4 kids around Italy by myself. Technically, I probably could, but that sounds like much more work and much less of a vacation than I had planned. My hope is that we can shift the trip to later in the summer (or even fall if we have to).

I got this in my email the other day and thought some of you might like to read another write up on Calvin’s trip to Uganda and see some more photos of the home and the kids. You know, since Calvin never got past writing about day 2. This was written by our dear friend from Oman, Ross, who invited Calvin to join them on the trip. True Impact

There’s no minute like last minute

AKA: Inshalla

Yesterday was a normal evening at casa de Chartier. Sitting around watching Chopped while kids ran through the room and I read up on Venice travel details. Josh answered his phone and I figured someone from work was checking up on him since he had been home sick with the flu. Until I heard his surprised, “OK. OK.” and was kicked in the gut. He’s gone. 
I guess I had a bit of prior warning the night before when he fielded a call regarding another Marine who had just gotten word that he was going to Iraq. I asked why this Marine was chosen and not him (trying to calculate my odds of losing this particular lottery) and he said that since so many new people were arriving this summer, they wanted him around to provide continuity. Sounds good to me. 
Well someone not in Bahrain decided they knew better and scrolled through a list of personnel and Josh was one of the lucky few chosen to head to Iraq. With less than 24 hours notice. 
I traded my travel books for powers of attorney, visa renewal forms, and all the other administrative paperwork that Josh was going to take care of now that he was home from Jordan. We had an enjoyable week at least. 
Today he leaves in about 2 hours for an undetermined period of time. It’s really the best way to go — like ripping off a bandaid. Otherwise we sit around and look at each other and say things like, “I can’t believe you’ll be gone in a week” or “7 months is going to take forever.” We barely had time last night to do more than figure out which lose ends he could tie up this morning and which ones I had to handle after he was gone. He hadn’t even unpacked from his Jordan trip so he threw a few things in the washing machine and zipped his bag closed. That was it.

****************

So he’s gone, without a return date in sight, but we are good. We went and said goodbye to him at base this morning and as I was about to take a photo of him with the kids, a soldier walked by and she asked, “Would you like me to take one of all of you?”

Not how we expected to be spending our last day of school, but it’s done. And God is good. 

Tis the season

Our fourth Ramadan starts in about 10 days. I say “about” because Muslims follow the lunar calendar and they actually wait until the moon-spotter (I don’t know what his official name is) sees the small crescent moon and then they declare it (with canon fire, though Twitter or text messages is how we check to see if it has begun or ended because you can’t always hear the cannons). It’s a rather archaic way to go about it since technically we can calculate the moon cycles to know when Ramadan will be 20 years from now, but it adds to the mystery of things. 
It also means that we may call Ramadan before Oman calls Ramadan (each country declares it for themselves). Supposedly a spotter in one country may not see the moon due to cloud cover, but in our experience the Omanis manage to make Ramadan fall in a way that offers the most favorable holiday weekend conditions. I think last year we called it on Friday night and they didn’t call it until Saturday night. As a result they didn’t have to start fasting until the work week began. 
Technically, I don’t mind Ramadan — it’s not like I have to fast, but it can put a cramp in our normal routine. It is illegal to eat, drink and chew gum in public for everyone during the month of Ramadan. So though I’m not fasting, I can’t even take a sip of water while driving or shopping, even though it’s blazing outside. And there’s something about Ramadan that makes me extremely thirsty. The rest of the year I can go all day without thinking about drinking water, but during this month I’m like a man in the desert with a parched mouth. 
The other “problem” is that all restaurants and coffee shops are closed until the sun sets every day so there’s nowhere to actually go during the day to escape the heat, unless you like shopping. And even then it’s not like you can stop for a bite to eat or a cup of coffee. We do tend to get a bit stir crazy after a few weeks. Many who are fasting work in the mornings, sleep in the afternoons, and then eat and drink at night as soon as the sun goes down. 

Yes, an actual display on base. Ramadan approved!
But my biggest irritation with Ramadan has nothing to do with Muslims at all. The base has created a policy that during the month of Ramadan, all base personnel and their dependents must dress in long sleeves and long pants (technically elbows and knees have to be covered when seated). Supposedly this is out of respect for their conservative culture, but tell that to my Muslim landlord who strolls around in shorts and tanktops. Really, it’s a policy that the base would like to enforce just for women, but they can’t, so men have to suffer along too. That includes while working out — it must be done in long pants and long sleeves (unless you are in your house or on base). Have I mentioned it’s 110 degrees out? 
The knees thing doesn’t really bother me since I generally keep my knees covered anyway, but elbows? Come on. When we lived in Oman it was a policy to “dress conservatively as you do the rest of the time, being sensitive to their religious holiday,” but not a knees and elbows ban. All it really serves to do is make it super easy to pick out all of the Americans when you go to the mall. They are the only ones wearing long pants and long sleeves. Which seems ironic when we’re always told to keep a low profile for force protection, but whatever. I’ve got my “Ramadan sweater” so I can wear tank tops at home and then throw the sweater on over them when I go out. It’s not a real sweater, but a super thin, cropped cardigan that does the job of covering my shoulders and elbows. I tend to wear it all year since shoulders are forbidden (I say that tongue in cheek, though there is a base policy for shoulders to be covered) and once you’ve had them covered for a while, it feels naked to be showing them off. 
We purposefully planned our vacation to Italy for the second half of Ramadan. We’ll be walking around Rome in our tank tops and eating pizza by the slice, feeling absolutely free!