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.