Two of REI’s newest workers, Sarah and Samantha, began their [Orient]ation into Vietnamese life and culture just eight weeks ago. The two graduates of Northwestern College, Minneapolis, Minnesota are Resident English Specialists at Hanoi University in Vietnam. During the past eight weeks, Sarah and Samantha have made many adjustments to their way of living and thinking as they have experienced the vast differences between life in Vietnam and the United States.

Across the United States, thousands of children have either returned or are returning to school. According to the most recent U.S. Census numbers, a projected fifty-six million students will be enrolled in the nations elementary through high schools (grades K-12) this fall.

After spending four meaningful days together July 5-8 at the Sundance Mountain Lodge in Monument, Colorado, the first-ever REI Global Forum is now history! The conference was a continuation of conversation that began in December 2010 during REI’s Strategic Thinkers’ Forum.

Last week, the REI home team received the startling news from our staff that Djibouti, like most countries in the Middle East, was beginning to experience pangs of uprising. With presidential elections on the horizon (set for April), the political climate had become tense in the region, with small protests erupting in Djibouti City’s suburbs. However, we had heard that all of our staff were still safe and that they weren’t concerned that their safety would be threatened.

On Saturday, we received a report from staff that Djibouti has calmed. There had been rumors that strikes would come from last Saturday (February 19) through Friday (February 25), but they remained rumors and none of the strikes occurred.

...Read more on REI's blog!

Amidst all the turmoil in the Middle East, our staff in Africa have been holding their breath to see how it affects the countries where they live and work. Our staff in Djibouti, up to this point, have not been impacted by the protests in other countries, but just this past Friday, the REI home team received an email giving us a new update on protests in Djibouti. Read more from our staff members!

In the past two weeks, it would have been hard to avoid hearing of the unrest that is currently occurring in Egypt. The protests calling for President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation began on January 25. Cairo’s poverty was one of the main instigators for the protests, along with complaints about rising food prices, social exclusion, anger over corruption within the President’s National Democratic Party, and difficulty in finding jobs for many young people.

Tammy, one of REI's staff members in Kazakhstan, shares her thoughts on excess and poverty in a very practical way: she compares the number of pairs of underwear people in impoverished nations have compared with people in the U.S.A. And the result is shocking! We hope you enjoy her comical reflection.

Question: When you put a lot of gifted and experienced people in the same room for nearly three days straight, what comes out at the end?

Answer: A lot of great ideas!

That is what happened on December 1-3, 2010, at REI’s Strategic Thinker’s Forum. REI’s President and CEO, Roderick Beidler, called together twenty “strategic” REI and non-REI staff to discuss and think through the identity of Resource Exchange International.

After many hours of working with a web developer, staff members, and copy-editors, REI-Vietnam has finally completed the renovations on their new website.

On Thursday, October 28, 2010, Mount Merapi erupted, spewing hot gas and debris that killed 35 people. The eruptions continued into Friday, forcing 50,000 people to stay in temporary camps outside the radius of the blast. Those in the camps couldn’t even use the water to clean the food because it was so full of dust.

REI’s President and CEO, Roderick Beidler, just returned last week from a round-the-world trip to visit REI staff. He was joined by REI’s Regional President for East Africa and the Middle East, Rick Heupel, and together they visited REI’s staff in Djibouti, Egypt, and Jordan—and boy, were they excited about what they saw.In Roderick’s words, “Nothing substitutes for being there!”

“11:45PM: Wake from a light sleep. Dogs are barking. Check the street. A car is stopped 200 meters up the road. Watch as it drives away. The two pedestrians who were there half an hour ago are gone. No glow of flames from the fields across the street or the village across the fields. No sound of crowds. Back to bed. 1:30AM: Wake up and check the roads again. 3:00AM: Wake again. It would be a beautiful spring night if not for the adrenaline.

“About a month before, I’d written a letter to send to friends and family at home to tell them about our work in Kyrgyzstan. The new English curriculum and books were on schedule to be completed and printed for the local language school that we run, and we were six months ahead of schedule on our other business goals.

Then the revolution came and changed everything…”

Cardboard boxes piled around the living room, the sound of duct tape coming off the roll, leaving a kitchen that you’ve loved to cook in: our REI staff are familiar with the actions of moving.

But the actions are not the difficult part. It’s the emotions that bite. When you move, you miss whatever you are leaving behind.

Sometimes our staff get homesick...

Being an expatriate in Djibouti is an opportunity to learn to live all over again.

I stepped off the plane in 2004 and thought I knew something about living in east Africa. I had already finished a teaching stint of eight months in Somalia where I had learned how to tell goat meat from camel meat, how to ignore machine gun fire and how to explain English idioms to non-native English speakers. But Djibouti is an entirely different place and I soon realized that I’ve only begun to learn.