Day 327 - Christmas Around the World, Part I

I always found a way to celebrate Christmas while I lived overseas, although I often had to do without the little things that I associate with that holiday. Little things like Christmas trees. And lights. And lefse. And while my biological family was not with me for any of my around-the-world Christmases, I usually had a stand-in family until I got my own family - Alex and his son.

Iranian Christmas Tree

My first Christmas in Iran was colder and bleaker than many I had spent in Minnesota because my roommate Annie and I had moved from our second floor apartment above our landlord's home to a third floor unit in a building with nine apartments. That apartment had central heating, but that didn't mean it was warm. In spite of all that I had learned in science classes about heat rising, the heat in that building seemed to hover right around the ground floor.

There was a doctor's office in the ground floor and we understood that the doctor wanted the temperature in his office to be comfortable for his patients. I don't recall what his specialty was, but it seemed to Annie and me that his patients must not have had to take off many clothes to be examined. Our apartment was so cold that I used to keep my clothes on the top of the bedclothes so I could drag them under the covers in order to dress to avoid having to put my feet onto the cold floor.

We had no tree that first year. Instead, a small evergreen plant that a boyfriend who turned out not to be so reliable had given me served as our holiday tree.

The second year in Iran, Christmas coincided with the most inexplicable Shi'ite holiday of them all, Ashura. That meant everything was closed for Christmas: restaurants, theaters, night clubs, everything that might be construed as providing entertainment. We could get together in our homes, but we had to be careful not to be overheard. I also learned about the difference in the Orthodox calendar which is about two weeks behind our calendar. So while Christmas coincided with Ashura for us, there was another opportunity to observe Christmas just around the corner, on January 7.

I spent that Christmas with my surrogate family - Patty, Cheryl, Neal, Shirley, and Maureen. There may have been others there as well, but those five were the core for me. We exchanged gifts, but mostly for the fun of watching one another open them. For example, Patty received a bottle of White Out because we all knew her alter-ego, Patty Black, who appeared after a few drinks and whose tongue had an acid edge to it. But we loved both Patties and had a good laugh when she opened the package.

by  Resident on Earth 

The following year, I was in Romania where it seemed inevitable that all the foreign lecturers would go somewhere else for Christmas and New Year. Since two of my friends from Iran, Bill and Shellagh, were living in Paris, that is where I headed. Some may claim April is Paris is the best time to be there, but Christmas in Paris is pretty magical.

I saw the Eiffel Tower, Cathédrale Notre Dame, la Basilique du Sacré Coeur de Montmartre, Musée du Louvre, Château de Versailles, Centre Georges Pompidou, Arc de Triomphe, the Champs-Élysées, all on the list of the top 10 must-see sights of Paris. Another couple from Iran joined us for Christmas dinner, extending my pleasant experiences of Iran and helping me push away the unpleasant memories.

Next stop: Germany. While Christmas in Paris was magical, Christmas markets in Germany are enchanting. They are a little like a carnival fair with plenty of hawkers selling items such as scarf rings, hand-held vacuum cleaners, and silver polish, but there are so many wonderful and colorful things to see and food and drink to smell and consume that the commercial side isn't distracting. Since my household effects hadn't arrived yet by Christmas, I didn't have my usual Christmas decorations to put up in my apartment. After a couple of afternoons wandering through the Christmas market, I decided I had to have a tree. I bought a very small pine tree and then stocked up on wooden ornaments from the market to fill it with jewels.

by  mv_touristboard  I also was introduced to the Wichtel, Germany's secret Santa, although sometimes a Wichtel is known to play tricks, not just give gifts. My Wichtel must have known my household effects hadn't arrived because I got more and more ornaments for my tree throughout the days leading up to Christmas, My second Christmas in Germany was spent in England where friends from Romania, Gayle and Roger, lived. In addition to getting an introduction to life in England, Gayle and Roger introduced me to their other houseguest, a teacher from China on an exchange program in England for a few months. Having her with us as we traveled in their neighborhood was a good balance for my observations. Every time I noticed something, such as how small many of the homes in England are, she observed the opposite from her Chinese viewpoint, that homes in England are large. She helped keep things in perspective.

Roger let Gayle and me pick out the Christmas tree that year. We got one just the right height, but it had a kink not noticeable from the angle we looked when picking it out, making it lean over ever so slightly.

PJ and Heather in front; Sandra, Zofia, Pete,
and Marge in back

My first Christmas in Doha was spent with my surrogate family in that country: Pete, Zofia and their children PJ and Heather, and Marge. We played Pictionary and I couldn't believe how well those kids understood one another without words. PJ would scribble something on a paper and Heather would announce the word on the first guess. If they were cheating, I never figured out how.

By the second Christmas in Doha, I had met Alex, but he flew back to England to be with his son. I knew they planned to travel through Scotland so when I heard about Pan Am Flight 103 crashing over Lockerbie, I was frantic to know where they were. Alex didn't think to call to let me know they were fine, although on Christmas Day when I was at the house of our friends Alex and Jean, he called five times just to be sure I was OK and we were having a good time.

That's what happens when a telephone guy goes on vacation - he makes phone calls home all the time, except when I want to hear from him.

Day 325 - While Actually Employed

by  SalFalko  I knew there was life after retirement. I had been introduced to the While Actually Employed, or WAE, opportunities all the way back to my assignment in Doha when John was sent as our communicator while Steve was on leave in Australia to be with his wife for the birth of their second child. John wasn't the first TDY or temporary duty communicator, but he was the most memorable. He became part of our small embassy family so quickly that when we later needed a TDY communicator again, we asked for John. The TDY coordinator wasn't used to being asked for a specific individual and warned us that she couldn't make any promises, but she did send John. We ran into John again in Barbados and eventually spent a very pleasant weekend with him and his wife in Pennsylvania a few years later. In Moldova, we had a number of TDY staff, some sent from Washington where they otherwise worked, some, WAE. But it was Yemen where I began to see that working on a WAE basis after retirement was something quite desirable. One couple who arrived as a pair to help us were Ann and Allen. Ann was a retired consular officer who was one of several TDY consular officers sent to help Pat while Cynthia remained in Aden. Her husband Allen had been a foreign service officer back in the 1960s, although he resigned after a few years and chose instead a career in education. When he retired from teaching, Ann decided it was her turn to explore career options. She took the foreign service exam and entered the service just before she turned 60, right at the age limit. When she retired and explored WAE opportunities, Allen learned as a former Foreign Service Officer he too could work part-time for State. Allen was the first WAE GSO to fill in after David resigned. I think his first week on the job was the week of the ambassador's plane being hijacked.

Another of the WAEs who worked for me in Sanaa was Irene who also filled in as GSO. Her husband, Mel, was a retired regional security officer who worked for a company that provided training to law enforcement and security personnel. The ambassador had run into him while she was in the U.S. after the attack on the USS Cole. The ambassador arranged for Mel to come to Yemen to set up a training program for Yemeni security staff. Irene was our bonus.

Many more WAE staff were sent to Aden, some of them previously quite senior within State. When the FBI abandoned their Aden offices and moved back to Sanaa, these retired senior officials ended up in Sanaa, purportedly working for me. It was a bit intimidating to have the man who was the executive director of the Near East Asian Affairs bureau while I was the administrative officer in Doha nearly 15 years earlier working as GSO in Sanaa. I was especially pleased to have the opportunity to work with Georgia who had previously been the administrative officer in Doha and Sanaa. I knew how similar our situations were because people who knew her told me all the time. But since she was always ahead of me, she didn't know about the parallels in our personal and professional lives. She had also met her British husband in Doha, for example.

Working after retirement on a WAE basis is less than half-time work, but the idea of continuing to travel while the government paid for both the travel and accommodations made it a very attractive prospect for my post-retirement life. My career plans were set at that point for me to retire after two more years, at my 20th anniversary with State.

But plans, they have a way of not working out.

Day 310 - Other Travels in the Region

road map of the United Arab Emirates showing
the triangle of Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Al Ain

The roads connecting three cities in the United Arab Emirates form an equilateral triangle. Sixty miles separated Abu Dhabi from Dubai, Dubai from Al Ain, and Al Ain from Abu Dhabi. We traveled that triangle often.

Our first trip to Dubai was in the fall, just after all the family members of expatriate workers, who abandonded the peninsula for the summer, returned. Also, coincidentally right after a number of roads had been added or rerouted within and around Dubai. We got lost on our way to the souq in Sharjah, one of the smaller emirates of the seven that constitute the United Arab Emirates, and even the traffic police couldn't tell us which way to go. Sharjah was adjacent to Dubai and had one of the most modern souqs in the country. It was also the home of Pinky's a set of three warehouses where the owner stored items he imported from India for his shop which had been in the downtown Dubai souq. When the owner of Pinky's learned several years earlier that the old souq was going to be replaced by a modern souq, he closed up his shop in anticipation of the old souq being destroyed, but that still hadn't happened. But the three warehouses gave him so much more room, he never looked for new space. Instead, he welcomed shoppers to the warehouses which were so crowded with stuff that just walking into them was an adventure. There were treasurers to be found everywhere.

by  J I G I S H A
 a.k.a Nitin Badhwar

We often headed out on the weekend for breakfast either in Dubai or Al Ain. The Jumeirah Beach Hotel opened in 1997 and offered a spectacular location for Friday (Gulf Sunday) brunch with its view of the Burj Al Arab, a companion hotel located off the coast on a man-made island.

Al Ain was an oasis city, the original home of the then leader of the U.A.E., Sheikh Zayid bin Sultan Al Nahyan. Flowers, especially roses, lined the roads of Al Ain, making it a garden in the desert. Lucent had a hotel suite permanently rented there for its staff when work needed to be done in that area. More than once, I went with Alex and while he worked, I spent the time around the pool at the hotel.

by  fchmksfkcb  Al Ain was right on the border with Oman. The Omani city of Buraimi sat across the border, and together with Al Ain formed international twin cities. We often crossed into Oman at Buraimi on our way to the Al Suwadi Beach Hotel on the coast of Oman, just outside Muscat, where we spent more than one Eid holiday during our three years in Abu Dhabi. The two Eid holidays begin when the religious leaders of the country see the new moon or otherwise determine when the holiday begins. Most countries on the Arabian peninsula follow whatever the religious leaders in Saudi Arabia declare. Our friends told us that Oman, however, did not. Oman had its own designated religious leaders who declared when the holidays began. Their religious leaders always seemed not to see the signs until the day after the leaders in Saudi Arabia. But since so many people traveled internationally to be together with family for these important holidays, the Omani government gave employees the day before the holidays began off. A neat trick, right? We also spent time in Muscat with friends. A couple we met through Doha Players, Alf and Gina, had moved to Oman from Doha. And my friend Gloria, the ambassador's secretary in Doha, was also on assignment with the embassy in Muscat. Our travels to Oman were the only trips where we couldn't get unleaded gasoline for our car. We filled the tank in Al Ain and hoped we wouldn't run out before returning to the U.A.E. If we ran dangerously low, we would add a few gallons, but never fill it. by  rapidtravelchai  There were pockets of Oman completely surrounded by the emirate of Dubai as well. There were no border crossing booths at the edges of these pockets, but no one could mistake that we were in Oman. The Sultan of Oman was insistent that the streets not just be clean, they sparkled. The rocks and bricks lining the roads appeared to have been shellacked or washed just moments before we passed them. We also traveled in 1998 from Abu Dhabi to Doha. Doha had been an important period in our lives since Alex and I met there. Several people we knew in Doha were in Abu Dhabi with us - the deputy chief of mission and his wife, one of the information program officers, Allan and Janis, and Ian and Julie. Allan worked with Alex at Etisalat. Ian worked with Alex at Lucent. We met others who had also previously been in Doha including Don who also worked at Etisalat. And one evening at a representational event at the ambassador's residence, a couple who were talking with the head of the consular section, Charlie, overheard one of us mention that we had previously been in Doha and they asked to be introduced to us. They also had been in Doha and had equally good memories of their time there. There was something magical about Doha that drew us back. by  vobios  In 1998 the embassy was still in the same building I knew although a number of temporary buildings had been added along the edge of the compound where all the administrative functions were now housed. The main building had been turned into a controlled access area which required everyone to be escorted within. We never went in. But we thoroughly enjoyed walking through the places we enjoyed so much when we lived there - the Center, the Caravan restaurant, the Sheraton Hotel, and the ring roads. We also went to the mall which had opened since we left Doha. In contrast to the elaborate and exotic and over-the-top malls in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, the mall in Doha could have been in any midwestern U.S. town, just one more reason that we enjoyed living in Doha. It was a small town, just like the small towns we had grown up in, with just enough exotic foreignness to make living there an adventure.

Day 220 - Contrasts

While there were some similarities between Qatar and Barnados - the climate is hot, hot, hot in both places, the countries are both small, the U.S. ambassadors in both countries at the times I was there were political appointees - there were many more differences, even putting political issues aside.

Both countries were hot most of the time, but in spite of the temperature readings in Qatar far exceeding what we saw in Barbados, Barbados was much more uncomfortable because the humidity was so high. For three years, I never felt that I got dry after showering. We had air conditioning in our bedrooms, so those rooms were comfortable enough. Still, I never felt dry.

image of rusted keyby Ava Babili,
via Flickr.com

The humidity in Barbados had a greater impact on us than that feeling of never getting dry. Leather shoes and purses grew mold in the closets; everything metal, including paper clips and staples in file folders, rusted; books swelled in size as the pages mildewed; and brass lamps, pots, and furniture tarnished. Clothing and other cloth items such as table cloths and napkins also sometimes mildewed. I had heard these things happened, but I expected to escape them since we didn't expect to be in Barbados longer than three years. It happened within the first year.

Culturally, the countries were about as far apart as possible. In Doha, just as I had while living in Iran, I wore very conservative clothing, covering as much of my body as I could without adopting Arab dress styles. My sleeves were at least down to my elbows, my necklines were modestly high, often covered further with scarves, and the length of my dresses was always at least to mid-calf. While I didn't adopt Caribbean clothing styles, I had to get used to seeing a lot more skin on everyone else. In addition, clothing on display in the shop windows often included T-shirts with drawings on them more suitable for under-the-counter in an adult book and toy store.

image of censored magazine by Mink, via Flickr.com

Qatar had a Ministry of Information which may have been more accurately referred to as the Ministry of Controlling Information because this was the government office responsible for censoring news, books, and radio program content. The Ministry of Information made sure that any page in an atlas that referred to Israel was removed from the book. The Ministry also made sure that references to the Persian Gulf were edited with magic marker blotting out the word Persian. Magazines that showed too much cleavage would similarly be edited with magic marker additions to cover up what the Ministry felt shouldn't be seen. When British news papers arrived on the island with articles cut out of them, the phone lines between Qatar and England would be jammed with calls to family members there to find out what had been in that space in the unexcised versions. Books critical of the country would never be imported into the country. My favorite bit of censoring was on the English language radio station when a British woman on a cooking show explained how to make a grape tart. One of the ingredients she referred to was white liquid flavoring. Initially I thought there must be something on the market in England called white liquid flavoring. As she continued to describe the process of making the tart, it finally dawned on me that white liquid flavoring was the Qatari-code for white wine.

There was a second couple in Doha who had lived previously in the Caribbean who responded to my news of the Barbados assignment slightly more enthusiastically. They recommended I read a Herman Wouk book, Don't Stop the Carnival, before going to Barbados. While the novel is set in a fictional Caribbean island, the challenges faced by the New York City publisher main character are recognizable to any westerner on any of the Caribbean islands. And since the images conjured up in the novel are not all that positive, I hadn't expected to find a copy of the novel in Barbados. I had gotten accustomed to countries controlling reading material available within them. So I made sure I read the book before leaving for Barbados. I was surprised to find copies of the 1965 book for sale in grocery stores, book stores, hotel lobbies, and other stores that catered to tourists.

Image of cloudy skies by Mr. T in DC, via Flickr.com

The weather forecasts in both countries could reliably written weeks in advance. In Qatar that forecast would be for sunny skies and high temperatures. In Barbados, that forecast would be for cloudy skies with the temperatures in the 80s and a chance of rain. The contrast in the frequency of rain kept drawing me to the windows of the consular section for the first two months as the sound of rain hit the roof. I would end up standing at the window, staring at the rain with a big smile until someone caught my attention and reminded me there were applicants in the waiting room.

Another contrast for me personally was the difference in the amount of work and the scope of responsibilities. In Doha, I was the administrative officer with responsibilities that at a larger embassy would have been handled by at least five different officers - Admin, General Services, Financial Management, Personnel, and Security. In Barbados I was one of six consular officers, the Consul General, the Deputy Consul General, and four Vice Consuls, all of whom had equal responsibilities for handling non-immigrant visa applicants. And since the Deputy insisted that we be available at our interview windows from the moment we opened the doors, in spite of the fact that we wouldn't see the first applicant with a completed application in hand for at least thirty minutes, I spent time reading the Foreign Affairs Manual while I waited. Because I had to look like I was working.

Finally, in Qatar, knowing someone's family name usually conveyed a lot of information about the person because of the importance of tribe and clan in the middle east. I had thought knowing the last name of someone in Barbados would similarly convey information because the population was so small. But there really weren't many family names on the island, a likely consequence of Barbados' history of slavery where the family name of the owner was often passed to slaves. As a result, knowing someone's last name offered no clues since the cream of society and the inmates of the prison might share the same last name.

I had a lot to learn.

Day 217 - Keeping Secrets

Image of a secretary by Vin Crosbie, via Flickr.com

I learned the origin of the term secretary from Gloria - one who keeps secrets. Gloria did so much more than keep records, file documents, record minutes, and manage correspondence, the tasks I had previously associated with secretaries.

Gloria was unflappable. I received a phone call one day from a person who called to say that she would be unable to attend the reception at the ambassador's residence. Getting those invited to RSVP was a challenge, complicated further by various accents and invitation lists that weren't always alphabetized. In this case, it sounded like the caller's name was Jaxson, someone who was not on the ambassador's list of favorite people. She had been one of those enthusiastic about the idea of an American School opening in Doha until she understood the students might include non-Americans and naturalized Americans, like the ambassador.

I scanned the list of invitees to see if the ambassador had changed his mind about including Jaxson and her husband, but their names were not on the copy of the list I had. I wasn't too worried about not catching the name because we didn't rely on the numbers of those who confirmed they would attend. But I was curious, so I went up to Gloria's office, told her about the call, and asked if she had an additional list of those invited. The ambassador heard me say that I thought the person who called with her regret was Jaxson. He walked to Gloria's desk and told her to call Jaxson to tell her that she had not been invited to the event. He wanted there to be no misunderstanding. He didn't leave Gloria's desk until she had completed the call.

Gloria was unflappable.

Gloria had a series of colorful phrases that kept conversation lively. Alex's nationality and personality made him one of her prime targets. Gloria's usual characterization of him was that he wasn't wrapped too tight. That expression conjured up a lot of images for me, from Alex in a straight jacket to Alex in a caftan that needs a belt. Others Gloria described as not being the sharpest knife in the drawer or having an elevator that didn't make it to the top floor or being a few cards short of a full deck.

Image of chocolate mousse by abakedcreation, via Flickr.com

Gloria and I also spent a lot of time checking out restaurants in Doha. Because liquor was not served, the final bill was never outrageous, but the food was, in the best possible way. During Ramadan, the big three hotels, the Sheraton, the Ramada, and the Gulf, all served buffets at sundown, for iftar or breaking of the fast. During the rest of the year, the big three served Friday morning breakfast buffets. Gloria and I used our many opportunities at these meals in search of the best chocolate mousse. Hard as we tried, we just couldn't agree on which one was best. So what else could we do but keep up the search.

Gloria stayed on in Doha nearly five years after I left. I don't think she ever stopped searching.

Day 216 - Dressing for Dinner

Image of Bahraini flag by Frans Zwart, via Flickr.com

There were many levels of competition between Qatar and Bahrain in addition to the claim by both to Hawar and adjacent islands off the west coast of Qatar. Evidence of how seriously Qatar took that claim was the insistence by the Qatari Customs authorities that a shipment of T-shirts with the outline of Qatar on the front must have the islands added in magic marker before the Hash House Harriers were allowed to take possession. The competition spilled over into many other areas, such as the competition between the U.S. ambassador in Bahrain and the U.S. ambassador in Qatar. Since our embassy in Bahrain was much larger, the ambassador in Qatar was seen as lagging behind. His ambition to establish an American school and a church may have been sparked by the fact that Bahrain already boasted both institutions. His initial ambition that our local guard force be staffed by Gurkhas was another attempt to keep up.

Image of Qatari flag by Mohd Althani, via Flickr.com

History is a useful reference to explain the competition. For nearly 100 years, Bahrain's ruling family controlled Qatar as well as land on the peninsula stretching from modern day Kuwait to the south of Qatar. Other empires including Persian, Ottoman, and British ruled large portions of the Arabian peninsula as well as both Bahrain and Qatar. Both countries gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1971, Bahrain on August 15 and Qatar on September 3.

Qatar and Bahrain are separated by just a few miles of water. Their flags are the same except for the shade of the red and the number of saw teeth that connect the white with the red. Qatar is a larger land mass, but Bahrain has a larger population. There is evidence that both countries were inhabited as far back as 7,500 years, but only on Bahrain can ruins more than 100 years old be seen today.

Dressed for dinner

Many of our friends in Qatar eventually found their way to Bahrain for work, among them Pete and Lorraine and their children. Once they had settled into their new house, they invited us to join them and a few of their friends for dinner. They told us to bring formal clothing as we would be dressing for dinner.

The occasion for the dinner was that it was the same evening as a formal dinner at the Bahrain Equestrian Club. Pete and Lorraine decided the lack of an invitation to that exclusive formal event shouldn't prevent them from appropriately marking the occasion through hosting a smaller scale event in their home.

Alex and I flew to Bahrain for the weekend, bringing tux and formal gown with us for Thursday evening. Lorraine had arranged for the meal to be prepared in her kitchen and served at the table in the style of Downton Abbey dinners.

The only thing missing were the valet and upstairs maid to help us change.

Day 215 - Project Management Lessons

Image of blueprint by Mirandala, via Flickr.com

I had six months of training before heading to Doha. During that time, I contacted a number of offices to get familiar with issues I would have to deal with once I got there. One of those issues was a planned Public Access Control or PAC project. The project would be completed by a construction company, contracted by the Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS). The primary project manager, therefore, was someone in that bureau, a security professional, not a construction professional.

During the six months I was getting familiar with the project, I met with three separate DS staff members assigned to the project as responsibility was shifted often. The project had already been delayed beyond the original completion date. The security equipment which included a vehicle barrier and gate to improve the ability of the guards to keep vehicles out of the compound had been delivered more than a year before. The rest of the project involved hardening the wall between the space where the consular staff worked and the waiting room.

The first lesson I learned from this project is that I never wanted to work in an office responsible for building projects because no one ever saw the projects through from beginning to end. Instead, one person saw the beginning, another or more saw the middle, and yet another saw the end. And that seemed to mean that none of them really took responsibility for the whole project.

Those at the beginning of the project only worked on the plans through about the 35% level. This was too early to be sure that all the details were included. Then as the project moved forward into the middle stage, more details were added, but occasionally requests for changes would be rejected because it as already too late to include them. But since the project was still far from completion, most of those involved wouldn't press the issue since they wouldn't have to live with the result. Instead of insisting that the plans be reviewed and changed, the involved gave in. And that meant that when the project reached the final stages, it really was too late to make changes. In our case, the equipment was already on site. We were stuck with what was in the plans.

By the time I arrived in Doha, the DS project manager had changed yet again. Within a couple of months, that project manager scheduled a visit to inventory and inspect the equipment that was on site. He was the first of many visitors who seemed not to understand that our work week was Saturday through Wednesday, not Monday through Friday. He scheduled his arrival, along with representatives of the construction company that would complete the project, for Wednesday evening, Gulf Friday, and his departure for Saturday morning. I reminded him that would mean he would only be in Doha for the weekend. He thought that would be fine since he wouldn't then be disrupting us during our work week. It didn't matter to him that I would have no weekend. More than once I asked him if he would need anything special available during his visit. Each time he said he didn't need anything special. He would be able to do everything once he arrived.

Image of forklift by galeria_stefbu, via Flickr.com

On the Thursday morning when I picked up the project manager and the three people he traveled with, brought them to the embassy, and showed them where the equipment was stored just outside the back door of the building - we did not have a warehouse - the project manager's first question was "Where is the forklift?" I invited him to join me in my office so that we could discuss it without the others. When we reached my office and I closed the door, I reminded him, perhaps a little louder than needed, that I had asked him repeatedly if he would need anything to be on site for his visit and that he would be here on a weekend, yet he had never mentioned the need for a forklift. His response - he just assumed we would have a forklift. He hadn't thought it was necessary.

I called Mahmoud, one of the local employees, to ask him to come in to see if there was any way we could get a forklift and driver for the day. Mahmoud succeeded.

By the time the project was ready to start, the first project manager I had met in Washington had again inherited the project. And there were delays. Instead of beginning in the winter when the weather was pleasant, the start slipped into the middle of summer, the hottest time of the year. This was the source for my second lesson - project schedules should be set to begin at the worst possible time because if the schedule slipped, it would slip into a better time. And if the schedule didn't slip for other reasons, the project manager could then make a last minute change for the better time. Of course, this lesson would never be followed. Anyone who proposed such a schedule would be ridiculed. But time and time again I saw projects scheduled for the best of possible times slip into the worst of times.

When the contractor staff arrived, they told us the contract spelled out we would provide escorts so they could work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. But we did not have Marine Guards to be present during the work. That meant that we members of the staff had to be on site all those hours. Only a small number of the staff were entitled to get paid overtime, so the extra hours were divided up among them - Arnold, Gloria, and Jeff. Within a month, however, only Arnold was still in Doha. And that meant he worked 84 hours a week. The lesson I learned from this is that I should never have accepted those conditions. I should have insisted the Department send additional staff as escorts. Over time, the Department also learned that lesson. At my next small embassy, Chișinau, Moldova, the Department provided Cleared American Guards or CAGs when that embassy building had to be refurbished.

Image of fanby db0yd13, via Flickr.com

When I was becoming acquainted with the PAC project before arriving in Doha, I was annoyed by the constant rotation of project managers who all seemed to be learning about the project at the same time I was. But when the project was completed, we discovered the real pitfalls of rotating project managers. The consular waiting room, for example, was outside the reach of the building's air conditioning. That's what happened when the wall separating it from the office was hardened - there was no ventilation shaft through the hardened wall. The waiting room was like a sauna. And when we decided we would have to provide fans in the room to move the air around, we discovered there were also no outlets within the waiting room. Those were the little details no one noticed on the early blueprints. The best we could do was to open the windows, leave the door open, and then run an extension cord through the gap at the bottom of the ballistic teller window to plug in one fan in the waiting room. The same extension cord was used to plug in the vacuum cleaner at the end of the day when the waiting room was cleaned.

But we were so much safer than before the project.

Day 213 - Protocol

a diplomatic reception

The session during my orientation to the Foreign Service that was most troubling was the session on protocol. Protocol has been defined somewhat flippantly as behaving impolitely on purpose. But that only works because it requires rigid following of the rules. Some of those rules seemed arbitrary themselves. But mostly what struck us all was how important it was to sit at the right end of the sofa, to get into and out of a car in the right order, and to arrange for guests to be seated appropriately at conferences and dinners. Breaking the rules was the fastest way to insult someone. If the someone was the boss, there were career consequences. If the someone was from another mission, there could be political consequences.

Fortunately, most of the rules I had to worry about only had career consequences.

another diplomatic reception

One of the rules required that staff members stand whenever the ambassador entered the room. Since I had not worked at an embassy before, I hadn't observed the rule anywhere, but everyone around me in Doha made sure I knew about it because the ambassador took this gesture of respect very seriously. I knew the ambassador - any ambassador for that matter - would be the last person to enter a room for a meeting. Those who were invited to the meeting were expected to be there on time. No one could ever enter a meeting late if the ambassador was present. So I knew that when the ambassador stepped into the conference room for our weekly country team meetings, we were all expected to stand until he sat down and told us we could take our seat.

But I hadn't realized the ambassador expected us to stand up when he came into our offices to talk with us. When one of my colleagues told me he did expect it, I asked his secretary, Marge, if he expected her to stand up every time he walked into her office, something he did several times a day. She responded that of course he didn't. But she didn't realize he was making an exception for her.

another diplomatic reception

At a larger embassy, it would be a very rare thing for an ambassador to come into the office of a staff member. It would be much more likely that staff members would be called and told to come to the ambassador's office for a conversation. So it is likely people would have stood up if the ambassador entered someone's office at a larger embassy. One of our local consular section employees, Randa, had previously worked at the U.S. embassy in Damascus and she confirmed this was the case there. But our embassy in Doha was about the smallest in the world - the ambassador and six other Americans. The small size meant that the ambassador couldn't avoid entering some of our offices.

When he came into my office one day and I didn't stand up, he stated his reason for dropping in and then pointed out that I perhaps didn't realize all the protocol rules because I should have stood up when he entered my office. I told him he was right, I hadn't realized that, and that I would stand up when he entered the room in the future.

We grumbled about this a bit because we all suspected that at most embassies the ambassador would likely only expect the staff to stand when he entered the conference room for meetings or when there were others from outside the embassy present. Most ambassadors, we thought, would have told the staff to dispense with the formalities when we were alone. But our ambassador was not like most ambassadors.

another diplomatic reception

It was not only our staff that was small; our building was also small. It was so small that the lobby of the embassy had been cut up with partitions to carve office spaces within the room. And since the ambassador walked through the lobby to get to his office and then through it again whenever he left the building, he expected the two employees whose offices were within that lobby space to stand up when he walked through it. As he had frequent appointments, he walked through the lobby several times a day, expecting those two employees to stand up each time.

Another aspect of protocol that the ambassador reminded us of often was that when we were invited to his home for a representational event, we were expected to be there before any of the other guests arrived and we were expected to remain until the guests had left. This was not an exceptional expectation since this protocol was well understood and observed everywhere. The difference in Doha was that the ambassador held so many representational events at his home and he invited all of us to each of them. He thought it was good for morale. We weren't in a strong enough position to point out to him that it had the opposite effect. I didn't find it very morale boosting to be the only embassy staff member to be seated at the table with all the teenaged children of the guests at one sit-down dinner event.

But maybe I missed the protocol point being aimed at me that day.

Day 212 - The Souq

Image of entrance to Tehran bazaar
by basheem, via Flickr.com

Doha had more than one area referred to as the souq. The old souq was a wooden covered structure that reminded me of the Tehran bazaar, except for its size. While I was in Tehran, Iran Air undertook a public relations campaign to let the world - or at least the West - know how progressive Iran was. That 1976 ad campaign posed lots of questions, such as "It's predicted that in 1990 the USA, Russia, Japan and West Germany will be the world's four leading industrial nations. Who's tipped to be No. 5?" The answer to all the questions was Iran. One of those questions was "What country has the largest covered shopping mall?" No matter how much I enjoyed shopping in the bazaar, I never thought of it as a covered mall. It was something else.

The old souq was like the bazaar in many ways, but it was so much better. It was cozy. It invited customers to get to know the shop keepers, to establish relationships which made bargaining so much fun in contrast to the bargaining in Iran which seemed to be a matter of figuring out just how much insulting one another the two parties involved were willing to endure. But the old souq was made of wood and during the time I was in Doha, it burned.

There was a second traditional souq, not quite so old, but with lots of winding alley ways lined with shops organized so that all the shops that sold a particular set of items were together, a great convenience for the shoppers and incentive for the shop keepers to establish relationships with their customers. After all, if the shop next door sold the same items, staying in business didn't necessarily mean undercutting the competitors' prices. Customer loyalty was important in the souq.

Image of souq waif in Doha, a modern souq made
to resemble the old souq, by jemasmith, via Flickr.com

On one trip into this outdoor souq with friends, I purchased something at a shop very near where we parked the car. I hadn't realized that while I was taking out money to pay for my purchase, my Qatari drivers license fell out of my wallet and into a box that was behind the counter, just out of my sight. We continued shopping, and on our way back to the car a couple of hours later, we passed the same shop again. The shop keeper stopped us before we passed his shop in order to give me back my license. Using only gestures, he showed me where it had fallen. I thanked him and we were on our way.

Three weeks later, when I was filling out a mail order catalog order form, I looked for my credit cards in my wallet, but the holder I kept them in was missing. I tried to think of when I last used one of my credit cards - they weren't accepted anywhere in Doha - or where I had been where I might have removed the holder and forgotten to put it back. I retraced my steps over the previous three weeks, stopping in all the shops I could think of that I had been in and asked if I had dropped my credit card holder there. Eventually I remembered that my license had fallen out of my wallet in the souq, so I headed back to the same shop. Before I even got close enough to the shop to ask a question, the shop keeper reached down into the same box he had shown me when he gave me back my license and he handed me the folder with my credit cards. He gestured some more to let me know that the holder had fallen onto the floor of the shop, not into the box, so he hadn't noticed it until later. I was astonished first, that he had found them, second, that he had kept them, and third, that he recognized me after three weeks without my having to say anything. The cards did not have my photograph on them or any other way for someone to recognize that they were mine. But shop keepers in the souq develop relationships with their customers, even if the customers don't realize it. He wouldn't take any money from me for returning the cards so the next day I brought him a very large tray of baked treats that he could share with his other customers.

Image of dresses from the 1930s
by vintage stitches, via Flickr.com

There were also buildings referred to as souqs although I always thought of both souq and bazaar referring to open air markets - just one more reason that I could never think of the Tehran bazaar as a mall, even though it was largely covered. One of those souqs was a fabric souq we referred to as the 5 riyal souq because nearly all the merchants there sold their fabric at 5 riyals (about $1.35) a meter. This souq was one of my favorites. Gloria and I had found a seamstress who could take our purchases and turn them into fabulous items based on little more than a picture or a description. We would head into the five riyal souk to pick up several 5-meter lengths of fabric in one shop and just as we gave our first indication that we were ready to leave, the shop keeper would offer us something to drink - tea or a soft drink. They were developing relationships with us. The hospitality benefited everyone. Someone would pull out chairs from a back room for us to sit on, we would feel refreshed, and we would inevitably see just one more bolt up on a shelf that needed to be added to our bags.

The most practical reason for having clothes made in Doha was that the styles available in the west didn't always meet the modest standards of the middle east. Before leaving for Doha, I went in search of a dress that didn't leave too much of my legs, arms, back, or front exposed so that I could wear it to receptions in the evening. So long as I had only retail outlets to shop in, I couldn't find anything modest enough except for dresses with tags hanging from them which read as seen in Modern Bride. They were clearly not bridal gowns or bridesmaid's dresses. That left only mother-of-the-bride dresses which I wasn't about to accept since I still hadn't acknowledged I was closing in on the age where I could have had a child of marriageable age. The only shop I could find a suitable dress was one that sold vintage clothing. And that opened up the idea of having clothing made in Doha based on styles from the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.

Sandra with our Doha seamstress

But the real reason I had clothes made was that it was fun to see piles of fabric turned into dresses, suits, blouses and pants that couldn't be purchased from any store or mail order catalog. The price for most items was about 100 riyals ($35), a very acceptable price for tailored, one-of-a-kind items. Gloria and I would bring in bags of clothing with pictures or descriptions of what we wanted. Two or three weeks later we would return to see if anything was ready for the first fitting. On those occasions, we usually had more fabric to turn over, making sure our seamstress always had more to do for us.

One day our seamstress called us to let us know that she had finished everything we had brought in for her. What she didn't tell us is that the reason she had finished everything was that she was leaving Doha to return to the Philippines. So we brought in even more fabric for her to make up for us. She waited until we had explained all that we wanted before she told us that she was leaving so that someone else would have to make up the items for us. We didn't worry, however, because there was another woman in the shop we called Mom who always checked over everything our seamstress did for us.  Mom didn't do the sewing, but she was in charge.

Unfortunately, Mom's oversight wasn't enough to make up for the difference in the talents of the other seamstresses and tailors. It was fun while it lasted.

Day 211 - Gloria

Sandra and Gloria

In the spring, Gloria, the ambassador's new secretary, arrived. The Department had some challenges finding someone willing to replace Marge because word had gotten out that the ambassador was difficult to work for. The process for assigning a secretary to an ambassador is unlike the assignment process for other Foreign Service staff. An ambassador's secretary's tour length depends on the length of time the ambassador is in country. The expectation is that the two will remain in the country for the same length of time. It is very unusual for an ambassador's secretary to leave ahead of the ambassador. Marge's request for her tour to be broken early was therefore unexpected.

An ambassador gets to select his or her own secretary, but a political appointee ambassador doesn't have the advantage of knowing much about possible candidates. The pool of candidates is small and word gets around quickly. When an ambassador's secretary leaves early, people ask why. When no Foreign Service secretary could be convinced to consider the position, exceptional steps were needed. Gloria was a Civil Service secretary with a reputation for getting along with everyone, including some senior staff who were considered difficult. Gloria agreed to come as the ambassador's secrertary and the ambassador accepted her assignment.

Gloria shopping, one of
our favorite activities

Gloria was a breath of fresh air for me. All the other Americans at the embassy were men, most of them single so there weren't even many wives to be my friends. Marge had decided to leave even before I arrived in Doha, so I didn't take the time to get to know her. That was a poor decision, albeit perhaps not a conscious one, and therefore it was my loss. When Gloria arrived, she and I became friends quickly, spending lots of our spare time together as well as going with one another to official functions.

One event we attended together was a Qatari wedding. In a segregated society such as Qatar's, weddings had two separate venues, one for the men and one for the women. Gloria and I were invited to the wedding because the groom was one of our Qatari contacts. But we were invited to the women's event where we knew no one as it would have been inappropriate for us to attend the men's event.

Muslim marriages are concluded through the signing of a contract, not the performance of a public ceremony. The wedding ceremonies are just celebrations that the marriage has taken place. The women's event involved women gathering at a large venue - the one we attended was in the ballrooms of the Sheraton hotel - moving the chairs around into conversational groups while musicians and dancers performed as entertainment.

When Gloria and I arrived, there were rows and rows of chairs set up from front to back of the ballroom, facing the end of the room where the musicians and dancers performed. The rows were set up just as a fire marshall would prefer - with a wide aisle down the middle and even wider aisles on either side of the two halves. Gloria and I sat down in chairs about two-thirds of the way back. Since we didn't know anyone and neither of us spoke Arabic, there weren't other people for us to join.

We watched as more and more women came into the ballroom. Each woman would grab a chair from the neatly organized rows and move them forward so they could join a group of women they knew. The neat rows disintegrated into messy groups congregated in the front half of the room. It didn't take long until all the other chairs had been moved forward, leaving Gloria and me sitting in two isolated chairs all alone in the otherwise empty back half of the room.

Gloria being fitted for new clothes,
another of our favorite activities

Then we saw the ambassador's wife enter. The ambassador frequently reminded us of protocol rules that he felt we staff members either didn't know or ignored. One of those rules was that when the ambassador or his wife entered an event where we were already present, we were to go over to greet them and make sure that they were introduced to someone else so they were not left alone at any time. Gloria and I looked at one another, knowing that once we got up from our chairs, they would disappear and we would be left without anywhere to sit. But we had to greet her.

We walked to the ambassador's wife and escorted her to the area near the musicians as that was where we hoped she would recognize someone she knew since neither Gloria nor I would be able to pick out someone to introduce her to. That worked. Mrs. ambassador joined women she knew and someone among that group gave up a chair so Mrs. ambassador could sit. And Gloria and I headed back to where our chairs had been, hoping they would still be there. They weren't.

So we had to stand for the rest of the event.

Until that point, only guests and those hired to entertain guests were in the room. The bride and her family arrived much later. The groom, the bride's father and brothers and the groom's father may accompany the bride, but they remain for only a very short time. When it was known that the bride would be arriving with men unrelated to the guests, the Qatari women all grabbed their abayas, the black outer garment that covered women from head to toe, and wrapped themselves in them so the men wouldn't see them. What had been a room full of color and patterns and sparkling jewels turned black, as though the lights had been turned off.

Modern brides in the middle east wear white wedding gowns just as most brides in the west do. And the brides do get their opportunity to walk down an aisle of sorts. There is usually a raised platform more like a catwalk runway than an aisle in a house of worship which the bride walks along so that everyone in the room gets the opportunity to see her. After the bride, her mother and sisters have made their way around the room greeting the guests, the bride and the men leave the event, leaving the bride's female relatives with the guests for the rest of the evening.

At a time of the evening that always seemed way too late, the food would be served. For this event, tables lined the area outside of the ballroom where food was set out buffet style. Once all the food was in place, the hotel staff opened the ballroom doors, the abayas covered most of the women again, and the guests dashed for the tables where the mountains of food disappeared faster than I thought possible. And then the guests left.

Without Gloria, I would have missed so much.

Day 210 - Location, Location, Location

Image of houses by Fernando Stankuns, via Flickr.com

Before I left for Doha, my predecessor, Tom, gave me a choice between two houses as my residence, a two-story, three-bedroom house with a good-sized yard and a one-story, three-bedroom house with almost no yard except for a patio enclosed on three sides by the house and on the fourth side by a wall. The houses were under lease with the embassy for two employees, Tom who would be leaving a week before I arrived, and the economic/commercial officer who had already left. The lease on whichever house I turned down would be given up because it wasn't known when the successor to the econ/commercial officer would be named and arrive.

Image of minaret by dinesh_valke, via Flickr.com

The one-story house had been vacant longer so it was easier to get ready for me, but it was right next to the minaret on the housing compound where a recording broadcast the call to prayer five times a day. The two-story house was ideal for a family with children. Since I wasn't bringing a husband or children with me, the house with the yard that would need maintenance had little appeal for me. In spite of the call to prayer source right next door, I selected the one-story house.

Many people were surprised by my choice. They assumed the proximity to the minaret would eliminate my choice. And then there were factors others knew of that I didn't, like the decorating my predecessor's wife did to the house. All of the furniture had been recovered to coordinate the sofa and chairs with the drapes and carpeting. Those who had seen both houses thought the two-story house was a far better choice.

Others saw the house as it was while Tom's wife was there. But she and the children left a month before Tom. Very few people saw the house during the month between the rest of the family's departure and Tom's.

The embassy had about a month to get the furniture and appliances out of the other house in order to cancel the lease. It should have been a simple process of removing the furniture, cleaning up the house and then turning the keys back to the property manager. But the most senior local employee strongly suggested that I first go to see the house so that I would understand if it took longer than expected to complete the work.

Image of dirty dishes by edgeplot, via Flickr.com

There were rumors. . .rumors that my predecessor had used the house for parties during the month after his family left. Now I don't claim to know the rumors were true. All that I knew was that someone had been using the house for parties. Every waste basket in the house was full of beer cans, soft drink cans, and liquor bottles. The sink and dishwasher were full of dirty dishes that had been there so long mold had started growing on them. The refrigerator had food in bags, all of which was also moldy, milk that had soured and butter that was rancid. The pantry had cans, opened cereal boxes, moldy bread. The medicine cabinet had partial bottles of cold remedies, bottles of pills and other garbage. And food and drinks had spilled on the white upholstery and wall-to-wall carpeting.

I took pictures for the files, but I didn't show them to anyone. Perhaps I should have. I did tell a few people how disgusting I found the state the house was in. I think those who knew my predecessor's wife didn't really believe me. They knew that she kept the house immaculately. I guess they thought Tom couldn't have undone all her work in such a short time-span. I hadn't understood how much some disbelieved me until Marge, the ambassador's secretary, was getting ready to leave about four months after I arrived and she told someone else how hard she had to work to clean up her house because she heard how fussy I was.

It reminded me of a children's story about two men who fell into a chimney when they were working on a roof. The first man covered his face with his hands and the second man didn't. When they got out of the chimney at the bottom, the first man looked at the second man and saw soot all over his face, so he went and washed his face. The second man looked at the first man and saw his face was clean, so he didn't wash his face.

I should have shown Marge the photos instead of letting her rely on her memory of the house the way it was when Tom's wife was still in town.