Vive le Dash

I love my dog Koki way too much. It actually is strange to me how attached to her I am. I grew up with dogs and of course loved having them, but Koki is MY dog. Ashley and I raised her from a puppy. We spent time training her, socializing her with other dogs and people, and even took her to school. Like I really love this dog. But my love PALES in comparison to Ashley’s. If Ash had to choose between me and the dog, she would not hesitate on picking the pup. When it came to researching ways to get Koki to France, Ashley had to leave that to me. You see, if you start researching how to move a dog abroad, lots of sites  such as the Humane Society  recommend that you do not fly dogs–particularly in cargo–because, sometimes, they do not make it and it was stressing Ashley out. Well, Koki is 50 lbs and cannot fly in the cabin anywhere. Unless we decided to send her by boat (which you can do luxury style for 4k) or charter a flight (as low as 10k by one service!), she was going to h...

It’s been a hell of a year. Ash had just started at NIH, we moved to Rockville, we did a ton of traveling including to three of our friends’ weddings and a couple trips abroad, Ashley got accepted into grad school, I got promoted, we got MARRIED with our own amazing wedding, and now, to top it all off, we’ve moved to Nice, France for her MBA! It’s been a crazy, BUSY ride. Working at Deloitte was a great experience. I had an amazing team of smart, dedicated, and truly wonderful people. I learned a whole lot about consulting and working with clients using everything I know or could think of with data to solve problems. I probably learned more than I’d care to admit, mostly through osmosis, about process improvements, communication, change management, and–dare I say it–project management (I mostly learned to stay away from that!). That’s what happens when you are around smart people all day. And I guess now I know more than ever about workforce strategy and management. I did try to stick...

I filled a lot of paper writing about my time in Africa.  Considering I've only managed to write in my journal a handful of times in the three months I've been back (yes, three damn months) I was quite impressed with my work.  Look! Seems like a lot, yes?  Well I was just reading Paul Theroux's The Great Railway Bazaar.  He took a six month trek and he filled out six notebooks just like those!  Way to take the wind out of my sails… But what, anyway, do I intend on doing with these tomes?  First I plan on typing them up.  I know, I know: why not type them up to begin with?  There is something much more intimate putting pen to paper.  You feel like you really created something.  Take a picture and impress me with anything you wrote on your computer.  When I write I use ink, because there is no taking back a thought after it has been born.  Plus typing them all up is to relive them.  Walk down memory lane. ...

Number one question since I've returned: What is the best thing about being back in America?  I always answer food…  I don't even want to talk about food, but saying food just makes me smile and think of how delicious it is here.  In Africa I sometimes wouldn't eat just because food was difficult to come by.  You had to make it or find someone to make it for you and it would be the same food you've had every, single, damn day.  Why bother? A close second is how easy everything is here.  If you want food, you go to your kitchen.  There is food there; I promise.  Even if you think there isn't, there is.  Maybe it's in a can or just some rice or pasta, but you have food.  If you managed to really fuck up your grocery shopping, you can go do that with ease.  Or stop at one of a billion types of restaurants.  OR, and I just discovered this, you can use an app on your phone to pay someone to shop for you!  They'll do your g...

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me be the first to welcome you to the next step in internet pleasure... THE DALEVERSE I wanted to say hello world.  But you aren't the world.  No, you are a select few who have decided that you enjoy listening to me talk.  You have somehow found me, Dale, and fallen into my orbit. Congratulations on whatever good decisions in life brought you here. Is it colder in America or what? I enjoyed writing my blog so I'm just going to crack on.  In honor of my loosely titled  daledoesafrica.blogspot.com , I have managed an even more all-encompassing title. Mostly so that I never have to change it again. For the moment, I am loosely based in the state of North Carolina.  Bouncing between my father's house, my mother's, or my brother's.  So far in the past two months, I've visited Boston twice (for a pretty girl), West Virginia (for a pretty boy... and some snowboarding), and Washington D.C. (for a number of pretty peop...

I'm back.  The vast majority of you likely know that from facebook or the like.  I hope you enjoyed this adventure.  I wanted to entertain you. I think I've done at least that.  I hope too that you learned something.  I wanted you to have a glimpse of what it is to live in Cameroon.  In Africa.  As Americans a lot of what we have comes from the news or commercials begging for dollars.  The news shows war and the commercials show poverty, but there is so much more.  I hope your ideas about Africa were broadened.  Leaving Mbakaou was hard.  I wasn't prepared for it.  I was prepared to leave my country, my friends, my family.  Prepared to learn a new language, a culture, a lifestyle.  I knew working in harsh conditions and in an unknown environment would be hard.  And trying to make friends with so many differences between us could never be easy.  But all that was survivable.  Even failure in those th...

What follows is likely the most important news you will hear in coming months.  Possibly years.  Or even your lives (depending on how central a part I am and how little else you have gong on).  I officially finish my Peace Corps service on October 24th, 2014 .  That's right, ladies and gents, I'm coming home! Now, I don't actually have a flight back yet.  Sure they'd book it for me, but they told me they'd give me two grand and let me do it myself.  Gotta be able to get back for less than that, right? It's been a good service.  Lots of ups and downs.  I'm currently writing a draft of a document summarizing it all.  Apparently this document will stay on record with the US Government "as long as the Union stands".  Kind of intimidating, specially as my once clear mastery of the English language has diminished over my long sojourn here.  (I misspelled three words in that last sentence!)  I'm super ready to go home, see fr...