A Traveler In The Foreign Service: How To Avoid Posts Where You Might Get Eaten Alive

Have you ever received a phone call from someone who was hoping to entice you to live in a country where cannibalism is still practiced? I have.

“I have a great opportunity for you in Port Moresby,” said Hollis, my State Department Career Development Officer (CDO)/used car salesperson.

I Googled Port Moresby from my office at the American Embassy in Skopje, Macedonia, and the results weren’t encouraging. And when I asked a more senior person at the embassy what he thought, his first reaction told me all I needed to know about the place.

“Papua New Guinea,” he said. “Don’t they still eat people there?”In the peculiar world of the Foreign Service, diplomats are always obsessing over their next post. No matter whether you’re in Paris or Bangui, it’s hard not to think about what’s next, thanks to the unique bidding system, where State Department Foreign Service Officers (FSO’s) typically bid a year or more in advance of taking up a new post.

The practicality of this system is that if you’re in a two or three year assignment, you typically know where you’re going next near the midway point of your tour. If you love your post and are heading somewhere dreadful next, you have plenty of time for the apprehension to build, but if you’re excited about your onward assignment it can make even the worst job or post seem bearable.

If you have a one-year assignment to a danger post, you typically bid right before or after arriving in say, Kabul or Baghdad. And since serving at a post like that gives one some serious bidding equity the next time around, nearly everyone manages to go somewhere they want after serving in conflict zones. So your ticket to Afghanistan can be tempered by a ticket to Sydney or Rome that’s already in the bag by the time you land in Kabul.

If you’re a traveler who has thought about joining the State Department’s Foreign Service, but want to know more about how likely you are to be able to live in the regions you prefer, this is a primer on what to expect if you join the Foreign Service.

First tour: FSO’s start their careers in a class called A-100 and are given a “directed assignment” to their first post. Officers can express bidding preferences but whether you get what you want is a real crapshoot. If you have a foreign language proficiency, your chances of going to that country/region are good, but don’t bank on it.

Career development officers (CDO’s) take a variety of factors into account in deciding who goes where: job/career fit, family and school considerations (i.e. they are less likely to send someone with school age children to a post with no accredited schools), health considerations (if an FSO has a family member with health issues), language ability and the timing of when the job is open versus what job and language training the person would need to fill the position.

Second tour: The second tour is also a directed assignment but here’s where things get really tricky, as far as bidding strategy goes. Junior officers can only get one full language course in their first two tours, and they have to do a consular job as well. So if, for example, you exhaust your language training on the first go around, or don’t fulfill your consular obligation, your bidding options can be severely hampered.

In my case, I was given Albanian language training prior to departing for my first post in Macedonia, and since I wasn’t proficient in any other foreign languages at that time, I could only bid on jobs at English speaking posts and jobs, which didn’t require foreign language proficiency.

The second assignment is supposed to be based upon bidding “equity.” Those who are at the toughest posts – and here, toughest is defined by those with the highest hardship and danger pay ratings – have the most equity, and should get the first pick of assignments.

But in reality, FSO’s with connections or good karma sometimes manage to float by from one good post to another while others go from bad posts to even worse ones. I loved living in Macedonia, but since it was rated as a 20 percent hardship post at the time I was bidding for the second go-around, I thought I would have plenty of equity to get one of the 20 jobs I bid on for my second tour.

But then I got the Port Moresby phone call from Hollis, who explained that I didn’t have enough equity to get any of the 20 posts I’d bid on, and would have to take my chances with the leftovers. CDO’s are very much like used car salespeople, so he was trying to push the places that no one had bid on. After weeks of wrangling, I was given Port of Spain, Trinidad, which wasn’t at all up my alley, but seemed quite acceptable compared to Port Moresby.

Mid Level Bidding: Once FSO’s get tenure, the directed assignment process is over and officers lobby and interview for jobs based on their own merit. The equity system is still in play but less so. In decades past, some FSO’s managed to specialize in one geographic area, but these days, with huge missions in Baghdad and Kabul, no one can get away without at least bidding on hardship posts, and many officers are getting sent on unaccompanied assignments in dangerous places against their will.

Tips: In an A-100 class, it’s essential to try to find out through the grapevine as much as you can on who’s bidding on what. The most important thing to gauge is what jobs everyone is putting at the very bottom of his or her list. Let’s say, for example, that nearly everyone has Khartoum as the bottom of their list, but you have it somewhere near the middle of your list. Well, guess who’s got a pretty damn good shot of spending Christmas in Sudan?

In general, you want to present bid lists that make sense and that you can defend rationally. Trying to tell CDO’s you prefer Dublin, Sydney and Prague because they have good beer in each place is a sure way to get a one-way ticket to Dhaka. And last, but definitely not least, if you have high-level connections, use them, and remember that you can always negotiate.

Bottom line: Joining the Foreign Service is a little bit like joining the military, in terms of signing your fate over to the government. It’s obviously far cushier, pays better and is less dangerous, but you can’t completely control where you go and you can get sent to places you do not want to go without your family members. If you’re flexible, adventurous and not extremely risk averse, it might be a good career option for you. But if you’re just hoping for an easy way to live in Sydney or Rome, you’re barking up the wrong tree.

Read more from “A Traveler in The Foreign Service” here.

[Photos by Dave Seminara and friar’s balsam on Flickr]

A Traveler In The Foreign Service: A Globetrotting USAID FSO Serving in Afghanistan

USAID Foreign Service Officer David Thompson has lived in eight countries in the last 15 years and has visited countless others, but at 46, his adventures are far from over. He helped reconstruct homes in the immediate aftermath of the war in Bosnia, worked to restore democracy in Honduras after a coup, and has lived through attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul while serving there as the head of USAID’s Democracy & Governance office.

Thompson has been a Foreign Service Officer with USAID (The U.S. Agency for International Development) for nearly ten years and has served in Washington, Albania, Honduras and Afghanistan. The Alexandria native and father of two lives alone in 8 by 12 hooch and is a month shy of his return to the U.S. Thompson spoke to us about his unlikely career path, the challenges of working in Honduras and Afghanistan, and the difficulties and pleasures of working overseas. Thompson’s story also offers a ray of hope to those seeking a career change.

Tell us about the career path that led you to USAID?

My undergrad degree was in architecture. When I was in my mid to late 20s I was trying to sort out what to do with my life. I worked as a carpenter’s helper and built up a body of knowledge about construction. I had an abbreviated stint in the Peace Corps in Tunisia, and then I followed that with a year as a Vista volunteer in Waterbury, CT. In the mid ’90s, I was a construction manager, managing the construction of single-family homes in Northern Virginia and I wasn’t really enjoying my job.I got an interview with an NGO that was hiring people to work in Bosnia. I went into work one day and got laid off, but I went home that day and found out that I got the job in Bosnia.

I ended up staying in Bosnia for two and a half years in the immediate aftermath of the war. I learned about development and post-conflict reconstruction but what I learned was the complexity of development. People don’t just return to their houses – they need jobs and schools and health care so I decided to go to grad school. I went to Duke University’s Center for International Development Policy and got a masters degree from ’98-2000. And I met my wife there; she’s from Brazil and we had common interests.

I ended up getting a job with CHF International in South Africa as a Country Director and we moved to Port Elizabeth, South Africa in 2000. We loved it there but rather quickly we decided we wanted to be closer to home, so we moved to Brazil, where my wife is from. We switched roles in Brazil, where she had the good steady job and I was the one teaching English, and getting a few consultancies here and there.

And that led you to USAID?

I was looking at my enormous student debt and thinking, ‘I have to pay this. I wanted stability and the chance to work with the USG’s premier international development agency, so I applied with USAID, interviewed in 2002 and started with them in March 2003.

What advice do you have for those interested in becoming a USAID Foreign Service Officer?

The current program is called the Development Leadership Initiative. Getting a graduate degree is very essential for this work – especially with the level of competition these days.

I assume it’s also important to have international experience?

Yes. USAID wants to see the ability to live overseas and thrive in different cultures.

And not necessarily just a study abroad in London or Rome, right?

Exactly. It’s best to have experience in the more traditional development countries.

Should new hires at USAID expect to serve in Afghanistan or Iraq at some point in their careers?

Yes. They should expect and be prepared for that.

And if you have kids they don’t spare you, right? Do you have kids?

I do. Two girls. One 8, and the other will turn 6 next week. My wife and two girls live at my mom’s house in Alexandria, in the house where I grew up. It’s a one-year tour here and then my next assignment will be in Washington. It’s tough. It’s a challenge for everyone, not just for people with kids.

I have two kids and I’m not sure if I could leave them. It’s very difficult to leave for a year isn’t it?

We come here because it’s our duty. It’s part of our job. If I could be in Mozambique, I would but this is what the Agency decided for me and I accepted it.

How do you stay in touch with your family?

We have a U.S. phone number, so I speak to my family twice a day. We thought we’d Skype more but it’s kind of easier to call and sometimes less painful than it is to see your family (on cam).

Were you in Afghanistan during the Koran burning incidents?

I was. And I was here for the big attack on the Embassy on September 13. That was crazy because I remember being in a bunker when the attack started and all of the sudden there’s this realization, ‘Oh my God, my wife is going to see this on the news,’ so I wanted to contact her first.

Remind us about the attacks against the embassy that have occurred since you’ve been there.

In the past year, there have been two attacks – once, the American embassy was the target, that was on September 13, and then on April 15, several Western embassies were attacked. There were no serious injuries; we were taken to a safe place by the security guards. In the first incident, some local people in the consular waiting room were hit with shrapnel.

I had left the embassy just minutes before the second attack occurred. I was on my way to a meeting and we ended up having to stay at a base overnight because we couldn’t return to the embassy right away.

What did your wife say when you told her you were going to Afghanistan?

We knew it was coming. If I could have avoided it, I would have. But we get three R & R’s where we get to go home during the year. Our military colleagues are here for a year and only get one two-week R & R. So we’re well taken care of.

We’ve gone through some scary times. The former President Rabbani was assassinated just a stone’s throw from the embassy but I do feel very safe here. The guards here are fantastic. Our colleagues here on the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT’s), some of them are under fire almost daily and they survive, so we can certainly survive here in Kabul.

Has your wife been able to continue to pursue her career?

That’s been the biggest challenge about the Foreign Service for us. I’ve been fortunate to live overseas and expose my kids to these cultures but it’s been much harder on my wife than it has been on me, so I would definitely advise couples to talk about the realities of this career choice.

Tell us about the hooch you live in?

It’s kind of a nice little trailer. I have no complaints, it’s about 8 feet across by 12 feet long, with a nice ¾ bathroom with a shower, and it has a nice TV with the Armed Forces Network. I find it very cozy quite frankly. We have hot water and water pressure.

And what does your job entail there?

As head of the Office of Democracy & Governance, I help manage the USG’s development assistance that goes toward governance, rule of law and anti-corruption, civil society and media development, elections and political processes.

How many USAID missions are there and where should people expect that they could be sent?

There are about 130 posts. For the most part they’ll be in developing countries. There are a few odd positions in places like Tokyo or Rome dealing with donor coordination but not many. You can be in Pretoria, Cairo, New Delhi, or you could be in Chad, or South Sudan or the Congo or Uganda. So there’s a big variety in terms of size of the mission and conditions you live in. The better posts are four-year tours, the more challenging ones would be two-year tours. The really special hardcore posts like Afghanistan are one year.

In the State Department, it’s hard to get promoted if you don’t go to the really tough places. Is it the same in USAID?

Yes, you have to show a willingness to serve in different types of situations and on different continents. People used to stay in one region, like Latin America, and now they really encourage people to break away from that.

Do USAID officers usually get language training?

It depends if their job is language designated. I didn’t get language training for Albania, but I did get 3.5 months of training in Spanish for Honduras.

You were in Honduras at a very momentous time. Tell us about the coup.

I was there in the summer of 2009. My family was in Brazil and I woke up to a coup. All of the sudden, what was known as a sleepy post turned into something else. The U.S. didn’t recognize the de-facto regime. We said, ‘No – this was not a constitutional transfer of power, this was a coup.’ When you take someone out of the country in his pajamas, it’s a coup.

So we responded that way but we didn’t entirely cut off assistance because we didn’t want to put ordinary Hondurans in jeopardy, so we cut off a variety of assistance programs, particularly the programs the government benefited from. Our office supported the embassy’s strategy of trying to help get Honduras back on track through the November 2009 Presidential elections.

Despite all the political instability, were things operating as usual in the country?

Things were pretty normal. There were clashes between police and protesters in the major cities but you didn’t see that unless you went looking for it. The schools were closed for a few tense days but then they reopened, stores stayed open. It was my first coup, so it was crazy just to experience it.

You’ve been outside of the U.S. for a long time now; do you lose touch at all with your hometown and feel rootless?

When I go back to USAID in Washington, I’m going home and that’s the most important thing. After being overseas for most of the time since 1996, I’m happy to be going home. I’ve always had my mom’s house to go back to, so that’s been some stability. We just bought our own house in the DC area, so we do want to put some roots down there. We appreciate going home. The green trees, the sidewalks, the security, the different kinds of food, the playgrounds for kids, the museums – we love it. But that said, I love being overseas, learning about new cultures, studying languages and seeing how my kids respond to that.

What do you love about your job?

The ability to contribute to the policy of our development assistance. Also, the exposure to different countries. It’s an incredible life. If you’re going to be in international development, being with AID is a home; it’s a career.

I will work for USAID for the rest of my career, but every few years, I’ll have a new job in a different place in a new office. I’m constantly learning and that’s really exciting. Even if you’re down on one job, you know that you’re next job will be different.

Read more from “A Traveler In The Foreign Service” here.

(Photos of David and his hooch supplied by USAID, photo of the Afghan sunrise in Kandahar via the US Army on Flickr, Afghan cycler via the US Embassy Kabul, and Honduras coup photo by David Nallah on Flickr.)

A Traveler In The Foreign Service: Inconsiderate Chadian Rebels Fail To Scuttle My Holiday Plans

The Foreign Service isn’t a normal, 9-5 occupation, where one can check out after leaving the office each day. The benefits outweigh the negatives for most, but almost every Foreign Service Officer (FSO) faces moments when they’re forced to decide if they want to prioritize their career at the expense of their personal life.

Most who want to become an Ambassador or Deputy Chief of Mission at an overseas post or high ranking officer in Washington, end up having to do damage control on the family side at one time or another as they pursue their careers. Others who are content to muddle through and pick up a steady paycheck can sometimes, but not always, keep the after hours duties to a minimum.

I faced my first real career crossroads in the Foreign Service several years ago as the State Department’s Desk Officer for Chad & The Central African Republic, when Chadian rebels rudely staged a coup attempt just as I was about to leave Washington for a well deserved vacation in Sicily with my wife, Jen.Coup attempts in Chad are about as predictable as a “Love Boat” episode, so I wasn’t immediately panicked when I heard the news from Kathleen, our political officer in N’Djamena early one morning, less than 48 hours before our departure for Sicily. But my boss, whom I’ll call Cleopatra, just for fun, acted like the love of her life had just told her she was a one-night-stand when I reminded her of my impending trip later that day.

“You’re not going to Sicily,” she commanded. “Humpty Dumpty’s about to fall and I need you here.”

It should be said here that my boss had an unhealthy obsession with Chad’s President, Idriss Deby. Cleopatra was responsible for overseeing well over a dozen countries in Africa, but she was fixated on Chad. President Deby’s rule was more or less a model for bad governance, so she was right to hope that he’d go, but my view was a bit more nuanced.

There are plenty of heavy hitters in and out of government in Washington who believe that, as the world’s lone superpower, the United States can influence and direct developments in every corner of the globe. I don’t subscribe to that theory and I think that we get ourselves in trouble too often by meddling in the affairs of other countries. I agreed that Deby needed to go, but felt that it was up to the Chadians, and not us, to find a way to get rid of him.

I promised Cleopatra that I’d look into postponing my trip but made no promises, as I knew that it would be complicated and possibly expensive. Also, the situation in Chad was so unstable that there was no real way to safely reschedule the trip, since we had no idea when or if the situation would stabilize.

I looked into changing our airline tickets and hotel reservations but discovered that it would cost a bundle to change the airline tickets and some of the hotel reservations couldn’t be cancelled with so little notice. My wife thought that there was no way in hell we should cancel the trip and I agreed, though I dreaded telling Cleopatra the following day.

To pre-empt her concerns, I found a veteran Chad expert from S/CRS, the State Department’s Office of Stabilization and Reconstruction who had recently made trips to Chad and was well versed on the situation to cover for me. She was eager to get a taste for the work of a desk officer – which is kind of like being a middleman who coordinates policy between Washington and the post – and her boss graciously allowed her to assume my role while I’d be gone.

Cleopatra had an unhealthy habit of screaming my name out when she wanted to speak to me, rather than picking up her telephone and calling me, and, after I heard her yell out, “DAVVVVVVVVID!” for the first time on my last day before the trip, I knew it was time to break the news to her.

I told her about the replacement and promised that I’d check in every day via email in case any issues arose, but still, she pouted and acted like a jilted lover. In the span of 24 hours, I’d gone from being her favorite person in the office to a pariah.

After the uncomfortable conversation was over, I went back to my tiny little windowless office and took stock of the situation. I felt bad about proceeding with the trip, but knew that the situation in Chad was going to proceed apace no matter where I was. We had a fully functional embassy in Chad and I was leaving them with a more than competent replacement.

The preceding year had been the worst of my life, as I had spent months struggling with a serious illness that was hard to diagnose. I had been looking forward to visiting Sicily because I wanted to trace my ancestry and because I needed a break.

I decided to go on the trip, but in order to please Cleopatra, I brought my suitcase in to work and planned to work up until the time I needed to head to Dulles for my flight that evening. I spent the afternoon with my replacement and when it came time to leave the office at the end of the day, I ducked into Cleopatra’s office to say goodbye.

“You aren’t really going are you?” she asked, despite the fact that I was carrying a rolling suitcase.

I reminded her that I’d be checking in every day via email but she just sat at her desk, looking at me in disbelief. She asked me to draft a paper about one of the rebel leaders whom we knew nothing about and looked inconsolable when I told her I had a flight to catch. She was single with no kids and I wondered if there was anything in the world she cared about other than her job.

“Cleopatra,” I said. “This is just another false alarm in Chad. Believe me, Deby’s still going to be in office long after you and I aren’t working here any more.”

History proved me to be correct. That coup attempt and others fizzled and Deby is still in office, longer after both Cleopatra and I left the State Department. But my relationship with my boss was never the same and my next evaluation from her was good but not great. (And in the Foreign Service, only complete reprobates get bad evaluations, so good, not great ones don’t take you very far.)

My wife and I had a great time in Sicily, though, hitchhiking to the villages my grandparents came from, enjoying the food and wine as though it was our job, and trying hard to forget about Chad and Cleo, despite daily missives from her to my gmail account. When I was asked to choose between travel and work, I chose travel, but I don’t think many other FSO’s would have done the same.

Read more from “A Traveler in the Foreign Service” here.
[Photo via Opendemocracy on Flickr]

A Traveler In The Foreign Service: Get Paid To Learn Languages

Americans are often criticized for our inability or unwillingness to learn foreign languages. I didn’t even have the option to study a foreign language until I was 14 years old and while kids these days start learning languages – usually Spanish – much earlier, most Americans never achieve true proficiency in a second language. But in the world of diplomacy, no other country invests as much as the US does in training its diplomats in foreign languages.

State Department Foreign Service Officers (FSO’s) spend large chunks of their careers studying languages full time at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI). (Formally called The National Foreign Affairs Training Center.) Language courses can range from short crash courses that last just a few weeks, to a year or more for difficult languages like Arabic or Mandarin. I was in the Foreign Service for just less than six years and I spent 9 months of that studying Albanian (6 months) and Hungarian (3 months) full time, earning my normal salary.

The amount of training one receives depends on the job and the timing of when the incumbent in the job leaves post. A typical course lasts 5-6 months, and during that time period students study in small groups ranging from 1-4 in a class. Students spend 4-6 hours per day in the classroom depending on how large the class is and there’s homework and lab work to do each night. At the end of the course, students have to take a test to assess their speaking and reading skills.Typically, FSO’s aren’t allowed to take vacation days during language training and the training itself certainly isn’t like being on holiday. I studied Albanian in a class of just two students, so there was nowhere to hide if you didn’t feel like speaking Albanian on a given day. Normally I like to ease into a workday, quietly checking email over coffee, but at FSI you’re off and running having to make small talk in a foreign language at 8 a.m. That said, I was usually free to go home at 1 p.m. each day, which was awfully sweet.

Some FSO’s aren’t crazy about language training, but I still viewed it as a terrific, relatively stress-free break from the normal working grind. FSI has a collegial feel in that you can dress casually and, since family members are also eligible for language training, you see couples holding hands on the grounds. It’s a bit like being back in college minus the fake ID’s, binge drinking and student loans.

The State Department goes to great lengths to hire native speakers to teach language courses and that makes FSI a veritable United Nations. Walk down any random hallway and you might hear Finish, Dari, Thai, and Tajik all in a 50-meter stroll. Very few other countries pay their diplomats to study languages, especially obscure ones, for significant periods of time. For example, I served in Skopje and Budapest, and most of the other members of the diplomatic corps received no training in Macedonian, Albanian or Hungarian, as we did.

The fact that the State Department invests in language training is undoubtedly a good thing for employees and family members. But is it a good use of taxpayer dollars? In some cases, it’s hard to justify paying someone a salary to study an obscure language they may never use again during their careers, and might use only sparingly in their overseas assignment. For example, my Albanian classmate spent six months learning Albanian prior to an assignment in Kosovo that was just one year long. She didn’t have an aptitude or love for languages and admitted to me after her tour that she had rarely used the Albanian she learned – either on her job or during her off-hours, since she lived on a compound. There are also cases where we endeavor to teach people very difficult languages in too short a time period, or teach people obscure languages for countries where a huge majority already speak English.

In some cases, FSO’s also end up speaking English at post, even after spending months or years learning the local language, because our interlocutors speak English better than we speak the local tongue. Also, some languages have so many different dialects that it’s impossible to train FSO’s in the one they’ll need. For example, in Albanian, there are two primary dialects, Gheg and Tosk. Tosk is spoken in most of Albania, while Gheg is spoken in Macedonia and Kosovo. We learned Tosk at FSI and when I got to post, people could understand me but I struggled to understand them.

But on balance, I think it makes sense for us to invest in training our diplomats to speak foreign languages. The common perception of Americans around the world is that we’re arrogant, monolingual and generally uninformed about other cultures. By learning to communicate with people in their mother tongue, we’re showing humility and respect for their culture.

And in a practical sense, diplomats who are truly fluent in a local language can be more effective than ones who have to rely on the filter of a translator. No matter how hard you try, you can’t fully understand a place if you don’t speak the language, and if you can only communicate with people who speak English, you risk having a distorted view of the local situation.

If you’re the kind of person who enjoys studying foreign languages, the Foreign Service is one of the few careers that offer a chance to get paid to study. In fact, you can actually make more than your normal salary if you perform well in a difficult language. These days, some FSO’s are also learning languages like Arabic overseas, which probably makes more sense due to the variety of dialects and cost of training people in the US. And if you’re already proficient in a foreign language, especially a difficult one like Mandarin, Arabic, Farsi or Russian, you’re chances of getting into the Foreign Service are much better than if you’re one of the monolingual masses.

Read more from “A Traveler in the Foreign Service” here.

[Photo courtesy of Nina Toessiner on Flickr]

A Traveler In The Foreign Service: Meet An Intrepid Diplomat

In our ongoing attempt to demystify the Foreign Service, we’re going to occasionally introduce you to diplomats living in various parts of the world. Amy Tachco is a 36-year-old Foreign Service Officer (FSO) originally from Southern California and Central Ohio who joined the Foreign Service just over ten years ago.

Amy and I joined the Foreign Service at the same time and were part of the same A-100 class, which is essentially a two month long intro to the Foreign Service. As I described in December, at least one of our classmates shed tears over an assignment to Jamaica, but Amy was unfazed when she was sent to Karachi, Pakistan, her 19th choice.

Over the last ten years, she’s also served in Casablanca, Madrid, Beirut and Damascus. She arrived in Karachi just days after a suicide bomber struck the embassy, flew into Beirut on a helicopter during the height of the 2006 conflict and recently had a Bashar Assad thug pelt her with a tomato. She was evacuated from Syria in mid-January as the conflict there intensified and recently returned from a brief stint in Istanbul, where she continued to report on the situation in Syria.

Why did you join the Foreign Service?

I did my junior year overseas as an economics and French major and then went to Geneva for grad school. It’s an international city and I worked at the World Economic Forum for a while. The lifestyle of the Foreign Service appealed to me – you have a job, but you get to move all the time and constantly do something different. After I graduated I worked for a company that did asset management and then I worked for a hedge fund. I was earning more than my initial salary in the Foreign Service.

Your first assignment was Karachi – your 19th choice. But you took it like a champ. Were you disappointed to be sent to Pakistan right out of the gate?

No. I wasn’t upset. Jerusalem was my first choice – it’s been my first choice many times but it’s never happened.

And the day you were set to leave for post the consulate in Karachi was bombed?

It was a car bomb, a suicide bomber. A car pulled up right in front of the building and blew a 30-foot hole in the front wall. Thirteen people were killed. My parents called and said, ‘Turn on CNN, it’s your consulate.’ I made the executive decision not to call anyone at the State Department, because I was afraid they’d tell me not to go.What was it like to arrive at post in the wake of that incident?

We had a Marine expeditionary unit in the consular section. They had their guns pointed out the upstairs windows to keep people from entering the big hole in the wall. There was a bathroom with a shower right next to my office, so these Marines would come by my office just draped in their bath towels. They had been on a ship for the last six months, so they liked to stop by my office to say hi on the way back from their showers. They hadn’t seen women in a really long time.

Did your parents worry about you being in Pakistan?

My mom was worried the entire time I was there. She’s never been a worrywart but she was scared the whole time. I tried to tell her, ‘mom, here’s my day. I get up, I have breakfast and I go to work.’ Granted, I’d get picked up in an armored car with an escort vehicle with guys carrying AK-47’s and we’d take different routes to the consulate every day even though I could see the place from my house. You get used to weirdness.

You were supposed to be there a year but got pulled out after 9 months?

The Ambassador had been trying to reduce staff there for a long time (due to the security situation) and at a certain point I got a call from Washington and they told me I needed to find a new job. That’s how I ended up in Casablanca.

You were in Morocco and then Madrid for your next tour. Did you have much time for travel opportunities?

I did. I was a public affairs officer in Morocco so I traveled a lot there. I went to the The Marrakesh Film Festival, The Gnaoua World Music Festival, the Festival of Sacred Music in Fes, and lots of other places too. I also liked visiting this American style university there called Al Akhawayn, it’s in a town called Ifrane. You feel like you’re in Switzerland there, and the same in Spain. I tried to make it to all the provinces. I think I made it to half of them.

Did you find that the best places to visit as a traveler aren’t always the best places to live?

I haven’t had a bad post but there are places I’m not sure of. I just spent a month in Istanbul. Traffic is hideous and if you’re forced to deal with more of the city than just the tourist areas it can be a little unwieldy. Whereas I did my last tour in Damascus and that’s an easy place to live. In Beirut, we had extreme security restrictions but still a great city to live in. Madrid was obviously great. Living in Karachi presented challenges, but going there to work for the U.S. Government is the best deal you’re going to get. I loved it.

So you’ve never been stuck a post you couldn’t wait to leave?

Never.

How was the situation in Beirut when you were there?

The embassy had gone on evacuation status during the 2006 war, and then in May 2008, before I arrived in Beirut, there was street fighting in the city and clashes in the mountains, which made people think war was once again not far off. I got there a couple months later and it was relatively quiet for my two years there. But I had been there during the 2006 war as well. I traveled there with the Assistant Secretary who was trying to mediate the conflict with the Israelis.


What was that like?

It was creepy. There was no traffic – everyone was inside. The fighting was nearby, but not smack in the middle of Beirut. When the war broke out, Secretary Rice told my boss to get over there and we sort of took off without even knowing how we were going to get there. We went to Rome for a conference and then I had to figure out how to get us a helicopter into Beirut despite the fact that the airport was closed. So I did.

When you live in a place like Karachi, Beirut or Damascus, are you supposed to have a suitcase ready in case of emergency?

We were supposed to in Damascus but I never did. We were lucky though; we got all our stuff out before I left Damascus in January. I know that a lot of FSO’s in Tripoli lost all their stuff when they were evacuated last year. We had a couple of suicide bombings in December and we’d already had a series of evacuations last year, first in April and then again in August and December.

So some people got to leave but you had to stay until January?

Got to leave? No one wanted to leave Syria.

No one wanted to get out of Dodge?

No. Syria’s a beautiful place. I knew for probably six weeks or so before we were finally evacuated out that the decision was coming. But strangely enough, when it came, I felt like my whole universe just crashed. I cried big time because I felt like I was abandoning the people.

The local staff and your friends there?

Them but also the opposition. I was responsible for dealing with the Syrian opposition. On my last day there, I sat with one of the leaders in his office for about 2 hours and two weeks later the regime raided their office and arrested them all. It wasn’t because we left, I don’t think, but there was definitely that feeling. That’s why I asked to be sent to Istanbul, so I could continue doing my job from there. When you work in a country where people are fighting for their lives, you get emotionally involved.

Were you concerned for your safety in Syria?

The violence wasn’t in the middle of Damascus. The thing that was weird about Damascus is that you could walk the streets and see people drinking coffee and smoking nargiles in the cafés. Bizarre knowing that three kilometers away people were getting shot.

I took the Ambassador to a few meetings where we were sort of assaulted by regime thugs. On one occasion, we went into a meeting with a member of the opposition and a big group of regime loyalists started chanting at us and they followed us in and were banging on the door. And I got hit with a tomato.

Did it splatter all over you?

It didn’t and I was wearing a red dress anyways. They were trying to pelt us though. We ended up getting trapped in the building for more than two hours. We had to call our RSO’s (Regional Security Officers) to get us out of there in some armored cars. They got attacked with rocks and concrete through their windows.

What’s the hardest part about life in the Foreign Service, other than occasionally being pelted with tomatoes?

I’m headed to Madrid again now and I’ll be there for three years, which for the Foreign Service, is considered a nice long time. The hardest part of the lifestyle is the transitions between posts. I thought they’d get easier over time but it actually gets harder.

Arriving at a new post and starting fresh is the hardest part?

Both ends. Leaving one place and then having to live out a suitcase when you’re in between posts and then finally arriving at a new place but not having all your stuff. It’s really hard to leave a post and then you might live out of your suitcase for months and months, because you have training and home leave and then your stuff has to be shipped. And if you’re single, like me, it’s particularly hard. If you have your family with you, at least you’re not alone.
Every time I do these transitions, I ask myself why I’m doing this but then a year later I say, ‘wow, I have the best job in the world.’

A lot of people who like to travel consider joining the Foreign Service. What questions should people ask themselves before they decide to pursue this line of work?

It’s hard to say because you can make so many different types of careers in the Foreign Service. I know FSO’s who prefer to serve in more “cushy” locations. When I think about spending a career in places like that, I just can’t imagine it. But there are people who are into that. You wrote an article about this, it is easier for guys in the Foreign Service to move to a Third World country and find a lovely bride. Well, as a woman you can meet a lovely man too, but he’s not likely to follow you around the world.

So it’s harder for single women?

Yeah. For example, I was dating a Lebanese guy in Beirut and he told me before it was time for me to move – I can’t leave. And I could have stayed there, but I would have been miserable. So there’s the relationship element, there’s how you deal with transition.

The career itself, the lifestyle, it’s very much what you make of it. You can find yourself doing things you could never possibly imagine in rural areas of strange countries you never dreamed of going to. I’ve been on yachts of rich Lebanese businessmen or you can find yourself careening across the West Bank to visit settlements or you can be the cultural attaché in a cushy European post. I’ve met Bashar Al-Assad five times (before the conflict started) but that’s not something I’m terribly proud of.

Did you shake his hand?

Of course. You get to meet with presidents and ministers and heads of state – people you’d never expect to meet. I gave visas to the Real Madrid soccer team. The stuff that can happen to you in the Foreign Service is 100 billion times better than what you do in 99% of jobs you’d find. It is really, really cool and I wouldn’t trade that for anything.

Read more from A Traveler in the Foreign Service here.

Photos by Commander, U.S. 7th Fleet, Ahron de Leeuw, and Man@Che on Flickr.