Fasaria
By: susan peterson stamis
Tags: foreign service, gardener, kingston jamaica, mischief, pigeon, pineapple, puppy, rat, state department
Category: Uncategorized
We lived in Kingston, Jamaica in a gorgeous two-story colonial in a brilliantly hued tropical setting, with corn stalks and our very own banana tree in the back yard; but our versions of pets were filthy pooping pigeons living in a rickety cote behind the house and endless numbers of hapless rats being terrorized by a dozen or so vicious cats.
One glorious day, and I don’t remember how we acquired him, my sister and I “GOT A DOG!” After observing the little guy for a few minutes, my father (who as a child had a cat named ByChoo, named so because he did just that) suggested we name our puppy ”Fasaría,” the Greek word for “trouble” or “ bother” or “fuss” or “ado.”
In a self-fulfilling prophecy, the bouncing Fasa earnestly set out to live up to his name, chewing, mauling, and digging his doggie way through the garden, uprooting pineapples, snapping at wasps, biting the gardeners, and eating and throwing up things that weren’t food.
We loved him dearly but our parents’ meager supply of tolerance ran out well before his first birthday, and one tragic day our darling Fasa was wrenched from our tear-drenched arms to be sent home with the lesser maimed of the gardeners.
But, it was Jamaica, and we still had the rats…
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About Me
My father was a Consular Officer in the United States Foreign Service. He was first stationed in post World War II Berlin, where I was born in 1950. Subsequently, we lived in the Philippines; Jamaica; Guatemala; Washington, DC; Greece; Ceylon and Mexico; visiting many places in between. I was reared by my parents and nurtured by the various amahs, nannies, and housemaids who, every two years or so, entered and exited my little life.
I was educated in American Schools in “foreign lands,” but the most fascinating classrooms were the exotic locales where we lived, and the most inspiring teachers were the colorful people of those exotic and ancient cultures.
The bi-annual “home leaves” which my family spent at my grandparents’ homes in Los Angeles, California provided a sense of constancy to our nomadic lifestyle. My many aunts, uncles and cousins lived there and I eagerly looked forward to those vacations. We were 1st and 2nd generation Greek Americans (all 4 of my grandparents had immigrated at the turn of the century), and thus had foreignness stamped onto us even though we were Americans.
Two of my father’s siblings were also in the diplomatic service, and we world-traveling cousins were a source of endless curiosity to our domestic counterparts when we came home speaking English with unusual accents, reducing the statesiders to hysterics.With his various cameras, Kodachrome, Ektachrome, 16 millimeter, Super 8 and Polaroid, my father rarely lost an opportunity to document the events unfolding around us. After years of waiting patiently in boxes under the stairs, these photographic records are now fulfilling their purpose as mnemonic retrievals of my little life.
Mnemonic Retrievals 
What a wonderful idea your photo archive and stories are! Someday, when I start going through the photos that my mother Antigone, your dad’s first cousin, kept, I will ask your help in setting up something similar. Since both families were in the U.S. Foreign Service, we had many common experiences. Much love, cousin Chris