"War Tales" from Zambia

A conventional view of life in the Foreign Service is that of officers living in fancy houses, and hobnobbing with the local elite while wearing pin striped suits. This is true of our activity about 90% of the time, but it’s the other 10% that’s really exciting. Here are a couple of scary events that happened shortly after my arrival. In 1980, two months into my tour in Zambia, while I was officially a Junior Officer Trainee, my boss decided a trip into the hinterlands of western Zambia was just what I needed to orient myself to the country. So I set off in an embassy jeep with Dave, the newly arrived consular officer, and Goodwin, one of our longest serving and most trusted Foreign Service Nationals, the title we gave to our local staff. All went well, calling on local officials and giving talks in schools to the effect that Ronald Reagan, our newly elected president, was appointing moderates so there was no need to worry. As we travelled farther and farther into the bush we appreciated the vast diversity, actually fragmentation, of a nation with some 80 spoken languages. Near the Angolan border, far, far from any central authority, we stopped at a folksy tavern, bought soft drinks and ate lunch. Locals were lounging on the porch with their beers. Dave thought that would make a great picture, something to remember our trip by. So he pulled out his camera and snapped the shutter. Immediately we were surrounded by angry men, one of whom opened the door to our jeep and climbed into the backseat with Dave, demanding that he turn over his camera, which Dave refused to do. I was in the driver’s seat and the guy behind said “I have a gun and I’ll shoot you if you try to drive off.” Apparently they thought we were South African spies intent on destabilizing Zambia. Help! How could we get out of this jam with our lives? Goodwin was calmly explaining we were from the US Embassy and Dave had the idea of showing our travel orders and his diplomatic passport. Our captors grudgingly agreed we weren’t South Africans and let us proceed, Dave still in possession of his camera. It was quite a while before my nerves settled down. Back in Lusaka, the capital, I was installed in a nice house whose walls were largely glass. I had been in the house a few weeks when on a Tuesday night the alarm went off, indicating an attempted break in. The sound scared off the intruder but made me feel rather vulnerable. In response the embassy added a second guard. Two days later, I was awakened by the crash of breaking glass. Two guys with guns who fortunately ran away. The guards had prudently hightailed it over the back fence and my boss said over our radio I could spend the rest of the night at his house. The next morning I went to the ambassador, a generally intimidating man, pounded my fist on his desk and said, no matter what, I wasn’t spending another night in that house. It was located on the path to the city’s shanty town, crime-ridden home to thousands of working poor. So I was installed in what I later discovered was a CIA safe house, where the male house cleaner in residence regularly pilfered my food, not the best , but a big improvement over glass houses and break-ins. Just two examples of the 10% of our time. In the Foreign Service we call these “war stories,” tales we love to swap when we get together.