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 309 - Preview Of Yemen

by  ~W~ 

When it was time for me to bid on my next job, the important criteria were first, that the job be in the middle east, as close to Abu Dhabi as possible, and second, that the job involve Arabic language training because I would need Arabic in order to be a credible candidate for a different job back in the U.A.E. later. The latter was important because we believed Alex would be able to continue working for Lucent until he was ready to retire. It didn't turn out that way, but we couldn't know that in advance. It was the plan. Plans change.

According to our plan, if we wanted to continue living together, I would have to bid successfully on a job at the same or higher grade in either Abu Dhabi or Dubai after my next job. Since I was leaving the most senior level position in the administrative function, I would have to bid on a job outside my specialty as head of the consular, economic, or political sections or even as deputy chief of mission in Abu Dhabi or consul general in Dubai. The latter four positions required Arabic language competency and there was no way I would be a credible candidate for the jobs if I didn't already have the language. The Department didn't send out-of-specialty bidders for senior jobs to language training because there were too many uncertainties and too much time involved. Since it had been years since I had done any consular work, I wouldn't be a credible candidate for the head of the consular section whether or not I had Arabic language competency.

There were two possible administrative positions in the region that were language-designated which meant I could get the language training before going there - in Damascus and Sanaa. The Damascus job was a higher grade and Damascus was just that much further away that it would be more difficult to get away to the U.A.E. to spend time with Alex, putting two strikes against Damascus. Whether I wanted to go to Yemen or not (and I didn't), the job in Sanaa was the only one that both met the criteria and I had any hope of being assigned to.

And that is what happened - I was assigned to Sanaa via one year of Arabic language training in Washington. And Alex planned to remain in Abu Dhabi.

At one point, I considered requesting approval to study Arabic in Sanaa so that Alex and I wouldn't be separated by such a great distance. One of the State employees in Abu Dhabi had done that. But I realized my reason - that I wanted to be closer to my husband - would be seen as a personal reason and the Department never approves arrangements for an employee's personal benefit.

by  CharlesFred 

We decided to make a trip to Sanaa from Abu Dhabi to see what I was getting into. The administrative oifficer in Sanaa, Howard, made arrangements for us that an official visitor would have reason to expect, but we were unofficially there. He picked us up at the airport, put us up in one of the embassy's leased apartments, and brought us to the embassy to meet people as well as traveled with us outside of the capital to see some of the countryside. This was much more than we had a right to expect.

When we arrived at the airport, things looked chaotic. It was our first view of the traditional Yemeni dress with men wearing what would be described as dresses or skirts, scarves on their head, sports coats worn over the ceremonial knife, the jambia, worn around the waist, with rifles over their shoulders. It was an intimidating introduction.

Typical scene in Yemen cities in 1999

Once we got out of the airport and into a vehicle, all we could see was garbage. The roads were littered with trash. Not just paper, trash. The sides of the roads were full of trash. When we got into the city itself, it wasn't any better. Most houses had high walls around them, so we couldn't see what the grounds near the houses were like, but outside the walls, there was trash.

We hadn't gotten very far before Alex announced that he wasn't coming back. 

At the embassy, we met the ambassador, Barbara Bodine, and the deputy chief of mission, Margaret Scobey. We talked about the possibility of my coming to Yemen for my language training. That might have been a way for me to make the case - if the embassy requested that I attend one of the language schools in Sanaa instead of going back to Washington. But it also raised my suspicions that I would end up working at the embassy and not get in the amount of studying I needed to master the language - the primary goal for bidding on the Sanaa job.].

While meeting with the two of them, Alex announced that he didn't see that there would be anything for him to do in Sanaa.

Village outside of Sanaa

Howard took us to a village about a half-hour's drive from Sanaa to see the sights and do some shopping in the souq. This village was well known for the number of school-aged children who could converse - and bargain - in multiple languages. They spoke English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, and probably Russian and a couple of other Slavic languages. The children would approach tourists, figure out which language the tourists spoke, and then lead the tourists down the narrow alleyways to the shopping area, providing commentary on the traditional architecture along the way. There wasn't much special in the souq, but the children provided entertainment worth the trip. Sadly, embassy staff members no longer can travel outside Sanaa without permission and armed escorts due to the deteriorating security situation in the region.

All along the way, there was garbage on the roads.

Alex in a village outside Sanaa

We went to dinner with the regional medical officer - the same medical officer who had Abu Dhabi as part of his regional responsibility - and his wife at a fish restaurant where the fish were swimming around in a tank, ensuring our meal would be fresh. The fish is baked in a clay oven right alongside the flat bread that is served with the fish. And we talked about the garbage that we just couldn't ignore. The RMO's wife said she had started going outside the walls of their house each day to sweep up the trash in front of the house. Initially she was greeted with stares from her neighbors. But one day she noticed another woman on her street outside the walls at the same time, also sweeping up the trash. There was hope.

Howard also took us to Sanaa's old city, the UNESCO heritage site the gates of which are one of the most recognizable of Yemen's views. As we made our way through the very narrow and twisting alleys, we popped into several of the shops where Howard introduced us to the shopkeepers. We weren't interested in buyng anything yet, but at one point Alex did announce to a shopkeeper that he would be interested in looking at one of the items later, when we returned to Sanaa.

We still couldn't ignore the trash. But we began to see beyond it to the adventures we had to look forward to.

Day 308 - Interns

Each summer we had college students who came to Abu Dhabi to work as interns. Most of the interns were assigned to the political or economic sections because that is where the substantive, i.e., really important, work was done. And the interns who arrived with strong international relations and political science backgrounds did well during their stays. They got exposed to diplomatic life, got a taste of what working at an embassy was like, and had lots of fodder for resumes or job interviews. Many of their assignments were more like research papers which the interns wrote up as telegrams that could not be sent without being rewritten because they were always too long. Still, the interns were assigned to those sections.

But the administrative and consular sections could easily assign tasks to the interns that needed to be done. If only those who assigned interns thought our work was important.

Sean, his wife, another guest, and Sandra
at their wedding reception

The summer we arrived, only one of the interns, Sean, was still in the country. He had been assigned to transfer all the paper biographic files into a database. When he was done, he invited all the Americans to a demonstration of the database. In spite of the fact that all his work was done for those in the political and economic sections, the only person who came for his briefing was me. I think that is why he kept in touch with me, even inviting me to his wedding four years later.

The second summer, there was one intern who didn't adjust very well. I saw him most days at lunch where he sat alone at a table, rocking back and forth in his chair, looking very uncomfortable. A second intern, a woman, was assigned to a house we weren't planning to keep in our housing pool, but it was located within walking distance of embassy and the lease hadn't expired yet. None of the other embassy employees lived near that house, so her neighbors sort of adopted her when they realized she was living in the house alone, something they couldn't imagine for themselves. They invited her to their home for meals, brought food to her house when she couldn't join them, and took her shopping for clothes they felt were more appropriate for her to walk to and from work in. I think she had one of the most successful internships as it was meaningful both professionally and personally.

The third summer there were several interns, but one, Meredith, was special. I don't recall which section she worked in - it wasn't the administrative section because we were always the last to be considered. But we ended up spending a lot of time with her anyway.  

Sandra, Alex and Meredith at Alex's bar

Half way through her internship, we needed the apartment we had assigned to her for a TDY employee the bosses decided shouldn't be put into a hotel room. But we didn't want Meredith to have to stay in a hotel either. So we offered our second bedroom to her. That way she could get to and from work with me and I knew she would eat right - or as right as Alex and I ate.

When Meredith moved in, she told us that the newest of our cats, RF, was one she had hoped to take back to the U.S. with her. She had brought him home to her first apartment, but when she told her parents she was planning to bring home a cat, they weren't pleased. So she brought him back to the vet's office where I found him a couple of days later.

Meredith in the desert

Alex took Meredith and me out into the desert so she could see the dunes and oases. In spite of the number of people who had four-wheel-drive vehicles, almost no one from the embassy had been out into those off-road locations. Alex had to drive into the desert every day, so he was willing to take us. 

We left Abu Dhabi shortly after Meredith. I spent the next ten months in Arabic language classes and Meredith lived in Manassas, one of the beyond-the-beltway cities. During that year, Meredith and I had dinner together a few times. She was studying Arabic so I invited her to the iftar event I organized for the students in the Arabic program. And when it was time for me to go to Yemen, we asked Meredith to house sit for us because I would only be away from DC for a year, not long enough to arrange for someone to rent our house. It also meant I didn't have to pack up everything.

When I returned from Yemen, I didn't see Meredith often. But I did run into her several years later in the departure lounge of the airport in Port au Prince, Haiti. I had been in Haiti for a week doing volunteer work with a school run by a Lutheran organization and Meredith had completed a business trip for the USAID contractor that she worked for.

It is a small world.

Day 307 - I Just Need Your Signature

by  ben g 

It wasn't just in Abu Dhabi that I heard that phrase as a paper was handed over by someone who obviously expected me to sign it without looking at it first. But it happened more often there. Initially I decided it was another example of the difference between military regs that spelled out the steps that must be taken vs. the civilian regs that spelled out what should be done.

It happened a lot in Barbados, too, but then the requests came from first tour officers in the consular section who hadn't been acquainted with the full range of government regulations yet.  I know the consular training drilled in the responsibility that only a consular officer has to decide whether an applicant is eligible for a non-immigrant visa, but perhaps the training overstated how only a consular officer has this level of personal and professional responsibility. I am sure no consular officer would accept a form shoved under his or her nose by an applicant with the statement, "I just need your signature." After all, evaluation and deliberation by the consular officer is required.

Yet, when the form was a request for a petty cash reimbursement, no one seemed to think my signature required any review, evaluation, or deliberation.

But things got a mite more complicated in Abu Dhabi.  My first year there, 1996, was the year that ICASS, or International Cooperative Administrative Support System, was introduced. ICASS was the successor to FAAS, or Foreign Affairs Administrative Support, which was the successor to SAS, or Shared Adminstrative Support. Each of those systems was an attempt to come up with a fair way for all the agencies at posts to get services from State and pay their fair share of the costs to State. Each version started out as a good and fair system, but over time the lines between what we State adminstrative staff must provide and what the agencies expected got blurred. And because the calculations for determining each agency's costs were based on workload counts during a predictable period of time, some agencies would make sure no requests for sevices were submitted those weeks or months to keep their costs low.

Even that manipulation of the calculations wasn't the worst aspect of FAAS, the system in place when I began with State. The worst aspect of the system was that the final decisions about the distribution of costs were made during annual conferences held in Washington where State compromised with other agencies when those agencies' representatives were more persuasive than State's reps. The bottom line was that we did the work overseas, we had to justify with every agency head at the embassy every workload number that went into the report sent back to Washington - always a contentious scenario - and in the end, neither we nor the agency reps knew what the final dollar contributions were.

 by  isafmedia 
Image of a Council with military and
civilian representatives

ICASS was intended to solve some of these problems. First, all the agencies at post had to form their own ICASS council which would make decisions about what services were required and what the performance standards for those services should be. Each agency at post would then determine what level of those services they needed - 100%, 60%, or 30%. All workload counts for each service were to be agreed upon up front. And no side deals would be allowed. It was the side deals that spelled the death of FAAS because they were the reason so many compromises had to be made in Washington.

My predecessor in Abu Dhabi predicted ICASS would be a catastrophe with the military agencies dictating everything. His prediction was based on the numbers - 9 military agencies vs 7 civilians agencies. Each agency got one vote in the ICASS Council and the head of the largest of the military agencies was elected to serve as ICASS Council Chair. But my predecessor's predictions were not realized. It was rocky to get ICASS set up, but it was far from catastrophic.

So what does all of this have to do with that statement, "I just need your signature"? ICASS changed the rules. That's what.

Before ICASS, there was little clarity concerning just what we in the administrative section could and could not do for our other agency colleagues. It is likely that getting that signature took longer than the requester thought was necessary because the signer had to do some research to be sure the signature was proper. It is very likely that signatures were provided when they shouldn't have been - not for any devious reasons, just because the situation wasn't clear. Those military regs sometimes gave them impression that once steps 1 through 5 were completed, the signature, step 6, was automatic. But civilian regs allowed for some variations which left that final signature as the one that affirmed all the steps up to that point were proper. 

My bottom line: if you just need my signature, I just need the time necessary to review the paperwork to be sure it is complete and proper.

With the introduction of ICASS, we had to create a document that spelled out each of the services we would provide, within what timeframes, based on being provided correct and complete information needed for that step. And then we would only be able to provide those services to employees of an agency that had subscribed to that cost center at the level that included that service. I needed a flow chart to figure out when I could sign the form and - and this was the biggest difference - when I couldn't because the agency had not subscribed to the service.

Most people were not used to being told we couldn't do what they asked. And we had to get used to explaining - sometimes in excruciating detail - why we couldn't.

Here is an example. One agency did not subscribe to leasing and residential maintenance services because they discovered they could save money at post (but not for the agency overall) by providing their staff with a Living Quarters Allowance (LQA) instead of leasing residences. The cost for leases came out of their operating budget. LQA was an allowance paid out of the agency's Washington-based personnel budget. I argued that this savings would cause hardship for their 3 staff members because they would have to negotiate their own leases and work with the landlords directly to have repairs done. We, the administrative staff, would not be able to help them if the agency did not subscribe to those services.

Two of the first three of their staff members ended up leasing apartments in the same buillding where the embassy had other leases. So the landlord knew if something needed to be done, he would hear from the embassy. We made sure embassy staff members knew they had to bring their concerns to us first because sometimes what was a concern to the employee was a personal preference which we would not require the landlord to address.

So when one of the two members of the non-subscribing agency had a problem and brought it to the attention of the landlord, he ignored it, assuming that if it was important enough, the embassy would call.  But we couldn't.

ICASS is still around. In fact, I work for the Washington office of ICASS one day a week. It is a good system. I just happened to be in Abu Dhabi during the teething phase.

Day 306 - More Us Vs. Them

  by  id-iom 

In spite of my expectations that my assignment in Abu Dhabi had everything going for us, both personally and professionally, there were challenges. I experienced my most troublesome supervisory challenge in Abu Dhabi, but I did learn a good lesson from this same employee.

Let me put that lesson into perspective.

Part of the explanation is the military vs. civilian cultural differences and the lack of trust that resulted. When there is so little trust among colleagues, it is easy to slip into the frame of mind that assumes the worst of them. So those who felt they were not getting the service they deserved were quick to complain. If the service they weren't getting was the responsibility of someone who reported to me, I got the complaints. If the service they weren't getting was my responsibility, or if I didn't respond as expected or quickly enough, my boss, the deputy chief of mission, got the complaints. It was an uncomfortable situation many days.

One other factor was that a number of the people assigned in Abu Dhabi were in the business of gathering information from whatever sources could be found, analyzing it, and drawing conclusions from it. It was their job to do so since it wasn't likely that they were going to be able to sit down at a cocktail party and make small talk with those they were interested in learning more about. I understood that. But now and again the information gathered was an overheard statement by an employee in another office and the conclusions drawn were acted on as if they were true. And if there was a complaint rolled into those conclusions, someone would hear about it.

For example, because someone overheard me or someone else talking about the fact that both local employee salaries and American cost of living allowances are paid from the same fund (as were many other items, not just those two), the conclusion jumped to was that I had decided to use that fund to pay for local employee salary raises and not increases in COLA. And that, of course, invoved a complaint. Which went to my boss. Which resulted in a phone call asking me to come to his office to explain myself.

The irony in that example is that if our retail price survey submission resulted in an increase in our COLA, there was nothing I could do to prevent it from being implemented - it was done in Washington even though the money came from our budget. But the embassy had complete control over whether all, some, or none of the local employees' salary increase would be implemented. But I digress.

I got a little tired of being called into the boss' office and confronted with accusations of what others misunderstood. So I took the lesson from that employee with whom I had a challenging relationship to heart and would have liked a few others to learn it as well. That lesson was so simple. He asked me to ask the persons with complaints on the other side of my desk if they had already asked him about the problem. If they hadn't, he asked me not to listen to their complaints, but to send them to him for the discussion. Only if they had already asked him and not gotten a satisfactory answer did he want me to listen to their complaints.

While he was part of us civilians in Abu Dhabi, he had previously been in the army, so he probably understood the military culture better than I. On reflection, there may have been many other lessons I could have learned from him.

Day 305 - Us vs. Them

There always seems to be an Us vs. Them going on in life. In childhood, it was us cowboys vs. them Indians or us cops vs. them robbers. A few years later it was us Moorheadites vs. them Fargoans, then us Concordia Cobbers vs. them Moorhead State Dragons.

by  Randy Levine

  by  Randy Levine 

In Abu Dhabi at the embassy the Us vs. Them divide was between the military agencies and the civilian agencies. There were 16 agencies represented at the embassy, nine of them military. So we civilian agencies often felt beat around the head by the military agencies. We each had our versions of "the regulations." The funny thing was that each set of regulations started from the same laws, but the military agencies seemed to write regulations to provide step-by-step instructions for how things must be done, i.e., the regulations were to be followed to the letter, while the civilian agencies wrote regulations to provide guidelines for how things should be done, i.e., allowing some flexibility so long as actions followed the spirit of the regulations. And that led to some folks in the military concluding that we civilians were just a bunch of wishy-washy bureaucrats who couldn't make a decision and stick with it.

There was one aspect of being with the civilian agency of State, however, that the military really wanted - our diplomatic status. Those military members assigned to the embassy were not granted diplomatic status; instead they were granted administrative and technical status. We civilians with State were issued black diplomatic passports. Those in the military serving with the embassy were issued red official passports. Those of us with diplomatic status had duty-free importation privileges for the entire time we served in the country. Those with administrative and technical, or A&T, status could only import items duty free for the first six months. Those of us who had diplomatic status had diplomatic immunity. Those with A&T status had no immunity, but felt they should. Every time someone with a military connection ended up in a fight in a bar downtown that resulted in an arrest, we heard about how unfair it was that those of us with diplomatic immunity would not be arrested, while the military members were. But to my knowledge there were never any cases of someone with diplomatic immunity getting into a fight in a bar downtown to face the possibility of arrest. Sometimes it seemed as though the military thought diplomatic immunity was a magic wand that could be waved to erase all sorts of misbehavior.

We, the civilian agency reps, kept making the case that the relationship of military members - those under a commander in the field, not those working at the embassy - and the local government was a matter for a Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA. The basis for Diplomatic and A&T status is the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, not U.S. regulations or handbooks. So while the military saw us as wishy-washy bureaucrats on the one hand, they saw us as obstinate and stubborn, unwilling to compromise on the issue of privileges and immunities. It always came down to someone thinking it was us vs. them.

We also tried to convince the military members that if one of them was arrested for just doing his or her job - the basis for diplomatic immunity - we would take all possible steps to get that member released. Diplomatic immunity is not intended to excuse poor choices or poor judgement in a diplomat's personal life. It exists to protect diplomats who must meet with people the host government would prefer they not meet, actions that are in the nature of diplomatic work. Diplomatic immunity is not a get-out-of-jail-free card; the U.S. government will waive a diplomat's immunity if the grievance against him or her is for actions taken outside of official duties and/or is irresponsible and reprehensible, such as if a diplomat is involved in a death as a result of an accident while driving under the influence. Diplomatic immunity is not a magic wand.

There were times when the differences between military and civilian cultures seemed greater than the differences between American culture and the many different cultures our local staff represented. Maybe that's the Cultural Guide we should have tried to compile.

Say 160 - Independence Day

Independence Day image by Watson
Media, via Flickr.com

Celebrating Independence Day overseas is very important at U.S. embassies. Each country observes a national day. July 4 is ours.

During my 22 years as a Foreign Service Officer, how embassies observed July 4 changed, reflecting the change in security situations around the world.

American citizens overseas seemed to believe they should all be invited to these events, but that isn't the purpose of the funds used to pay for them. They are formal, official, and representational. Many embassies schedule a second, informal and unofficial event for Americans resident in the country to observe July 4.

My first July 4 overseas as a State Department employee was in Germany in 1986 where we celebrated at a reception in the afternoon at the Consul General's home. Most of the guests were Germans or representatives of other diplomatic missions in Stuttgart. All the staff of the embassy or consulate are on duty at these events; they are not entertainment for staff. They are work.

Two years later, in 1988, I was in Doha, Qatar, where we had planned the reception at a hotel on July 4, but then, the day before on July 3, the USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Gulf that has two names, on the Bandar Abbas-Dubai route. We spent July 3 calling everyone we had invited to let them know the event was being postponed until later in the year. Instead of observing Independence Day as our national day that year, we observed the date in September that was the anniversary of the signing of the Constitution.

The following year, 1989, we observed national day early, in June. Some countries in the Middle East held their national day receptions in February, around Presidents Day, when the weather on the Arabian Penninsula was mild enough for the receptions to be held outside. Temperatures in July were often well above 100 degrees, making an outdoor event dangerous as well as very uncomfortable. June was too late for an outdoor reception, so the reception was again in a hotel. The ambassador couldn't use the explanation that it was too hot to observe national day in July. I always thought the reason we held the event in June was that the ambassador knew he would be leaving Qatar before July 4.  His term was ending on June 30.

In 1990, the U.S. Embassy in Barbados held its official reception on July 4 at the Ambassador's residence. The weekend before, the North American community resident in Barbados observed both Canada Day and July 4 at a hotel on the beach. That event turned out to be memorable for a very different reason. The owner of the hotel was an American who was under indictment for mail fraud. His arrest was scheduled for the following day, postponed because of our event. He had done his research and found there was no extradition treaty between the U.S. and Barbados, so he thought he was safe there. His research wasn't thorough enough, however, since an existant treaty between the U.S. and the U.K., signed before the U.K. granted Barbados its independence in 1966, applies between the U.S. and Barbados. The day after our beach party, a photo of the owner of the hotel, handcuffed, being escorted out of the hotel was on the front page of the newspaper.

In 1993 and 1994, when we were in Moldova, the number of resident Americans was limited to just those of us at the embassy, the staff and the construction workers in the country to ugrade the buildings on the grounds of the embassy compound. We held official events for our Moldovan contacts and other diplomats. And, like in Stuttgart, we held a separate, informal, event for the staff and American workers. At one of those events, the ambassador posed for photos with some of the workers, sitting in the side car of the motorcycle one of them had bought to get around town. She was quite a lady.

July 4, 1996, we were back in Washington, D.C. We observed the fireworks on thr Mall that year from the 8th floor of the State Department building. We not only saw and heard the fireworks from that vantage point; we felt them.

We were in Abu Dhabi from 1996 to 1999. We arrived just after bombings of Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, and we lived through the aftermath of the east African bombings. July 4 observations seriously changed after those events. Even the informal, just for Americans residents in the country, events featured walk-through metal detectors at all entrances. Guards were posted everywhere. No one was allowed into the venue without presenting an invitation and identification to prove the invitation was theirs.

My final national day celebration overseas was in Sana'a where we observed the event in a very unorthodox way: we painted a school for children with disabilities. The ambassador had established this pattern previously. She felt that the several hundred dollars needed for food and drinks to be consumed in an evening would be better spent doing something to improve the lives of Yemenis. She received approval to spend the representational funds on paint, brushes, and other supplies and on the day, we staff members who would have had to work at a reception got our hands dirty doing a different type of work.

We didn't need walk-through metal detectors for that one.