But I didn't want experience in just one African country; I wanted to experience them all. One job would bring me as close to that goal as possible: roving management officer. A roving officer is very much like the WAEs I had come to know in that a roving officer gets sent to places where vacancies occur suddenly and thereby create a hardship for the post. But where WAEs can only work part-time, rovers work full-time. It didn't take long for me to realize roving officers were considered more valuable than WAEs because rovers don't have to leave when they had worked as many hours as they could during a contract year. It was all too common for a post with an expected six-month vacancy to have it filled by three WAEs who each had only two months left to work on their contracts. |
There was also a financial incentive for me to fill that roving job. While I would be spending my time in Africa, I was assigned to Washington where locality pay bumped up my take-home above what it would have been were I assigned to an African post by 15%. And once I had been at a hardship post for six weeks, I would also collect the appropriate hardship differential, at least 15% and as much as 25% at the highest level of hardship. And I would collect per diem for every day I spent outside the United States. That all meant I could get ahead on our retirement savings as well,
I expected to spend my final two years with State as a rover, offering the possibility of working at eight or more posts, mostly embassies, in that period. I fully expected to be such an awesome management officer that when I retired the people I met in Africa would all ask for me when they needed temporary help, just as we had requested John when we needed a TDY communicator in Doha. The prospect of working - and traveling at the same time, still on somebody else's nickel - for six months of the year and then having six months of each year to do whatever I wanted to do during retirement seemed too good to be true.
And it was.
Plans are nothing, planning is everything.
I planned to spend one year in Africa before coming back to the U.S. for a break and then return to Africa for the second year. Alex and I planned to get together in Europe for some time together during that first year. That isn't as strange as it may sound since many times it takes less time to get between two African countries that are relatively close to one another by flying to Paris or Rome or London on European air carriers and then back down to the next country than to rely on local air carriers.
But that isn't what happened.
Instead of being able to get together with Alex between assignments somewhere in Europe, it became clear very quickly that I would never know when I would be leaving a country until the last minute. That made it difficult for Alex to plan to travel to meet me. He was able to travel to Africa once where we spent Christmas together that year.
Instead of spending a year in Africa before returning to the U.S., I spent only nine months in three different African countries. Midway through my expected stay in the third country, I received an offer that seemed too good to pass up: the ambassador-designee to Nigeria asked me if I would agree to serve as his Management Counselor. Note the difference in title from what I have referred to up until now. I had been the management officer at several posts, but Management Counselor is a title appropriate for the Senior Foreign Service. Foreign Service Officers do not take the rank of the positions we fill. Ours is a rank-in-person system in contrast to the Civil Service rank-in-position system. So I could fill that Senior Foreign Service position even though I was still a mid-level officer. Filling that position wouldn't guarantee I would be promoted into the Senior Foreign Service, but it would sure help. The offer of the position was a very big deal. Even if it was in Nigeria.
After consulting with Alex and my parents, each of whom I expected would reply with "Are you crazy?" but didn't, I agreed to accept the position in Abuja, Nigeria. That meant I had to leave Africa much earlier than I had planned, but it meant I would be able to spend another three years in Africa when I returned.
Plans are nothing, planning is everything.
I returned to Washington. Our son was living in our home in Virginia. Alex gave up his job and returned to Washington from San Francisco. I was assigned to the job in Nigeria. We painted our entire house ourselves because we didn't have time to find someone to do it for us. We had carpeting put in on two floors of the house and we put in a laminate floor on the main level ourselves, again because we didn't have time to find someone to do it for us. I used up nearly every hour of annual leave I had accumulated. We separated everything in the house into piles of what we wanted to take with us, what we wanted to have shipped, and what needed to stay in the house for our son. We had Nigerian visas in our passports. We had a date set for the packers to come in to box up and remove what we wanted shipped, but I still hadn't received my orders. The day before the packers were scheduled to come, I called to ask about my orders and I was told the Office of Medical Services wouldn't issue a medical clearance for Alex to come with me. Without a medical clearance, no orders would be issued. My assignment to Nigeria was curtailed before I had the chance to go there.
Plans are nothing, planning is everything.
Our son had been looking forward to having the house to himself for three years. Instead, he was now living again with his parents, one unemployed and one who had to hustle to find a job in Washington.
Things worked out. They always do. But my plans took a beating.
Things worked out. They always do. But my plans took a beating.
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