My passport expires in less than a year. My son, who works for the State Department, will be ricocheting from Korea to Niger this fall. For the uninitiated, Niger (rhymes with Pierre) is a landlocked country, surrounded by the terrorist rich countries of Libya, Algeria, Mali, Chad and Nigeria. The Lonely Planet reports, "Niger rarely makes waves in the international consciousness, and when it does it's invariably for all the wrong reasons: coups, rebellions and famines." They add that it is full of warm hearted people. The average temperature is 120 degrees, so I imagine it isn't just their hearts that are warm.
I have been to East Africa. I don't know that I want to go to Niger. But I do want to see my grandchildren, currently 2 and 3 years old. So it was off to the Passport office. Before the hassled passport man took my picture, he advised me to button up. I was displaying age spots, not cleavage. Then he suggested I fix my collar. I fumbled around with it. A nice Hispanic lady fixed it for me. I sighed and said, "It takes a village." The passport man smirked and said "makeup?"
