Full Circle: The Adventure Ends

(Note: This post is my story of starting and ending a career in the Foreign Service and comes at a time when nearly 3000 (former) employees are living firsthand their own adventure-ending stories - nearly half not by choice. Given this was my third career, I came in older than most of my cohort. Therefore, I qualified for the minimum retirement age plus ten service years retirement program (MRA+10). This option was a relative luxury in comparison to other younger or newer employees who simply were fired mid-career. I elected retirement for many reasons I'll detail in a later post, but one reason was the hope that by removing myself from the rolls, I might save a spot for someone who didn't have another option. Please don't take the rosy tone of this reflection on my career as evidence that I am okay in any way shape or form with the manner in which the new powers-that-be carried out the RIF process. Behind these words, written only to highlight the motivations that brought me and my husband to start our Foreign Service story, is a healthy stream of obscenities about how we were treated and publicly portrayed in these final months. But more on that later. With that, here's my story:)

It was November 11, 2002 and I was waiting for my flight from Nairobi to Port Louis, Mauritius. Seven months into a solo trek around the world and frankly, I was bone tired, but also excited to be continuing east. 

Given this, you're led to believe that I'd actually BEEN to Nairobi. While technically correct as there I was in the airport, the truth was that just a few days before I was set to leave Tanzania for Kenya, I chickened out of visiting the city itself. Nairobi was meant to be my final stop on the African continent after backpacking my way up the southern and eastern edge from Cape Town, through South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Mozambique, Malawi, and Tanzania. This stretch of travel had been the most challenging thus far, but also the most rewarding. While I was gaining comfort in the daily rhythms of life, a little voice in my head was beginning to question the odds of my good luck continuing. So after nearly three months with only one illness, two minor thefts, and many, many scary (but survivable) modes of transportation, I lost the nerve for another risk - one nicknamed "Nairobbery" at that - and instead took a bus directly from Arusha, Tanzania to the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. 

There I sat, drowning my wimping out shame in some refrigerated beverage while soaking up a few hours of efficient air conditioning in the terminal before my flight. After months with rarely either of those two, this felt like a luxury. Seated near me was a family of four: two parents and two young children, a girl and a boy of maybe five and seven years old. I watched them for a bit, imagining their story. They sat quietly, even the kids, but looked anxious and tired and I guessed this was their first time in an airport. My curiosity got the best of me and I started a conversation with the father, the only one among them who spoke any English. They were Sudanese and headed to Winnipeg, Manitoba. Seated near them, but not engaged in our chat, waited a Canadian woman with a folder of paperwork in the crook of one arm. Their refugee minder, I learned. The father told me of their resettlement plans, how they were going to stay in Winnipeg for a short time and then hopefully move somewhere less... cold. They wore flimsy winter jackets against the airport's A/C that I predicted would barely suffice inside the Winnipeg airport in November, much less once they stepped out through the automatic doors and into their new country. The father told me his children were born in the refugee camp in Kenya and knew no other life. Our conversation quickly ran out of vocabulary and so I wished them well and let them be. 

As my wait continued, I kept thinking about the family and how their lives were about to change. How the children would be educated in Canada, would soon be fluent in English, would know four seasons, rocky mountains, Tim Hortons, hockey. I then observed their minder and imagined what her job was like. Was she accompanying them the whole way, or just getting them onto the plane?  How involved was she personally in their case and did she know their names without looking at their paperwork? What happened in their family history to bring them to that camp to begin with? Did she imagine for them what I had imagined? I knew right then I wanted a job like hers. Something where I could merge my insatiable curiosity about lives I haven't lived and my ingrained drive to make things better for others. I just didn't know what that could be.

In 2011, I would find out. 

But first, in May 2009, my husband stumbled upon an ad in the Seattle Times for a State Department recruiting fair coming to town. Hmmm... let's check it out, we decided. Since we'd met, we'd shared a long term goal of finding some type of life or job that would let us live overseas. I wanted to be someone like the refugee minder I'd observed in the Nairobi airport, and he pictured a life like he experienced as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Central African Republic. I'd heard of the State Department, absorbing the name as one does via the news running in the background. I knew we had embassies and ambassadors and helped American travelers... and that's about it. Let's just say that U.S. history and government was my first period class in high school and the information absorption rate was not great. But during the course of the recruitment fair, composed of a panel of speakers from across all Foreign Service career tracks and an impressive buffet spread, I instantly decided that this would be my path. My husband didn't see himself in any of the jobs described, but thought the life sounded pretty cool and encouraged me to go for it. 

On the car ride home, poring over the Foreign Service Officer Test (FSOT) prep booklet they handed out, I decided to take the test in October and started making my study plan. At age 43, even if I had paid attention in high school twenty-something years earlier, I certainly hadn't remembered anything I'd learned about government, history, economics, or international treaties -- just about every subject on the study list. But I stuck to every point in that prep booklet and to my study plan and damned if I didn't pass the FSOT that October.  

And then I passed it the following October for the second time, as my initial application was not strong enough to move forward in the assessment process. Or, as I like to remember it, I received the "you suck" letter and had to start again from scratch. But I wasn't bitter; I just kept studying. Meanwhile, for the heck of it, I also applied to be Foreign Service Office Management Specialist (OMS) as it closely aligned with the work I was doing. 

In March 2011, I was sworn in as an OMS and our Foreign Service adventure began. Giddy with first day excitement, I took a photo of myself with my little flip phone in the Harry S. Truman building women's room mirror in my best suit, newly-minted Department badge in hand. I'd made it. I was proud, my husband was proud, and my mother was over the moon. Three weeks later, our class had our flag day. First stop: Bogota, Colombia!

Incredibly humbled to be included as part of this whole big place. 

Flag Day #1 with some of my FS specialist cohort. 

Skip forward to July 2012, I was sworn in once again. The second application and FSOT had born fruit and I was invited to attend the A-100 orientation as a consular officer this time. Our Foreign Service adventure would take a turn, but would continue. Six weeks later at our second flag day, we learned the next stop would be Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. 

Flag Day #2, now with my (upside down) Consular Affairs pin proudly on my lapel. 

The hundreds of posts on this blog have detailed what happened next, the following 13 years of this career and our lives, inexorably entwined. But on March 8 of this year, I decided it was time for another chapter and filed my retirement paperwork. There is still ink in the pen, blank pages to fill, and that insatiable curiosity for another life not yet lived running strong in my veins. So now it's time to see what's around that next corner. I am forever grateful to the Department for deciding twice that I had the stuff to represent our country overseas. 

My last assignment brought me full circle, back to the Foreign Service Institute's Orientation Division where we all start. I leave the Department with the names, faces, backstories, career hopes, and personal dreams of hundreds of new colleagues still fresh in my mind as I got to know them during the first leg of their own journeys. The Department is in good hands with these folks as our base and I will be cheering each of them on from the bleachers. I wish them all the adventures, insights, friendships, puzzles to work through, smells, tastes, sounds, crazy-looking birds, scary driving, and professional frustrations and triumphs that I know are coming their way as they came ours. There's no stronger feeling of being alive than having to rely on all your senses to figure "it" out afresh every few years, and these good people are up to the task. 

I also leave with detailed memories of the incredible people - both local staff and Americans - I worked alongside over the years. Funny, sharp, full of ideas, full of insight, often full of themselves - you all set a high bar for me to aspire to reach. You taught me immeasurably about diplomacy and consular work, about writing, about leadership, about inclusivity, and about generosity. Perhaps unbeknownst to you, you each mentored me in different ways as I observed and absorbed.  

Thank you all for reading, for humoring me in listening to my stories, for being interested in the career, the life, the people, and the places.  It's been worth it. 

Once again at the Departures terminal and heading out on the next adventure. 

A Change of Plans: Breaking an Assignment and Finding Another

When we last left off, the four of us were looking forward to our next assignment to Lusaka, Zambia where I'd be Consular Chief in a small section. Okay, truth be told, the non-Tabbies didn't yet know they were ever going to leave their beloved Salvadoran house garden after four years, but at least my husband and I were enthusiastic about the idea. I'd tucked three Zambian guide books (travel, culture, and birds) under the Christmas tree for him. We'd gotten congratulatory messages from friends who knew the country and were excited for us to get to know it, and others who started planning their Zambian vacations. We began receiving welcoming messages from the embassy and questionaires about our housing preferences. We were imagining life in our new city, and were considering options for buying a right-hand drive car. Essentially, it was all systems go on this new destination. I began to negotiate my transfer timing between what's referred to as the "losing post" (San Salvador) and the "gaining post" (Lusaka) for later this summer.  

Meanwhile, something was not sitting well with me. I heard myself dropping bits of unidentified, nagging anxieties into conversations, making light of my concerns by expressing them with a chuckle. I'd gauge my husband's, friends' or coworkers' reactions to see if my fears were off base. I secretly wished someone would say what I was too afraid to say myself: "You don't HAVE to go there, you know."  I considered the odds of some sort of divine intervention making the decision for me.

Was it Zambia? No! We weren't trepidatious about living there at all. We were excited to meet the people and explore the country and region. 

Was it the job? Not entirely. I had only heard the best about the post and people in charge. Great ambassador - I was told I would be very fortunate to work with him and a friend thought we'd get along well. From my interview, I really enjoyed the Deputy Chief of Mission who would be my direct boss and was looking forward to stepping up and being part of the Country Team. 

So why the turning stomach? 

It started almost immediately after receiving my handshake when I began in earnest to research the travel to post. Negotiating the timing of our departure and arrival was a bit contentious, as is often the case, with each post wanting me to stay the longest and arrive the soonest. Balancing this meant most likely we'd be flying from our west coast home leave location to Zambia with the cats, an itinerary of three flights, two of them overnight, and close to 30 hours of travel. I began to imagine the worst case scenario for them during transit and the worst case began to snowball. 

Then came the realization that should I need to come back home for whatever reason, I'd have to repeat that trip (sans cats) all the while juggling my responsibilities as Consular Chief with only one other American officer in the section to handle affairs in my absence. The belt began tightening around my waist. 

Yes, I was getting to the heart of my qualms now. 

We lost my/our mother a year ago very suddenly, but fortunately I was able to get north to see my family with relative ease. When my father died a few years back, we were in DC which made it even easier to catch a direct flight to the west coast a few times over his last six months. Being only a few time zones away made for easy communication, too. In addition, there were two other serious family health issues where forces were mustered to help out. Being in El Salvador left much of this burden to the geographically closest siblings, something I regret. And let's face it, none of us is getting any younger and the chances of wanting or needing to be physically present is only growing. This simply wasn't the time to be half a world away in a stressful, highly responsible position. 

But I'd actively bid on and accepted the position, so now I had to make the best of it, right? In an effort to imagine what life was going to feel like in my new role, I started quizzing friends who are Consular Chiefs in similar-sized sections. "What is the stress load like? Do you have time for family? Are you enjoying the work?" All were kindly supportive, as good friends are, giving me assurances of "Of course you can do it!" I began to psych myself up with a chorus from The Little Engine That Could. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can! All the while, their assurances didn't settle my nerves because I hadn't been asking the right questions. I didn't need an answer to CAN I do it, but do I WANT to do it? Or really, do I NEED to do it? That answer could come only from me. 

So over one weekend, after the drumbeats of my dropped hints were getting louder and louder, I just said the unthinkable out loud: I need to break my assignment to Lusaka. No sooner had I declared this than my husband said he'd support my decision 100 percent. I tried to back-pedal: but our plans, but the guide books, but another adventure in the chapter of me and you, but, but, but... He held firm in his support. 

The instant we agreed, it felt as if I had taken off the tighest, most binding pair of pants and shoes you could imagine. Like that moment when you come home from work, kick off the pinchy shoes, strip naked just steps inside the front door, and pull on your favorite sweats. That's how releived I felt at making this decision. 

Now, it's important to add some context about breaking an assignment.  First, as Foreign Service employees we swear from day one to be worldwide available. To uphold this, there is a strong culture of service, pride in taking one for the team, buck up buttercup this is what we all go through, not everyone can go to Paris, you know...  I don't point this out as an intrinsically derogatory feature of the profession, mind you. We need to be made of sterner stuff to serve around the world, and the harder the post, the greater the (financial) reward. Further, I pride myself on NOT being a whiner. My husband and I adapt well to local environments. We are not motivated by doing just what increases our comfort, or trying to export an American lifestyle to Timbuktu. It's just not us. Plus, keeping committments is a really, really big deal to me. I will put myself out first, before doing so to others.  

Therefore putting myself first took a lot, first to accept and then to enact. I faced the doubts of "Am I not up to the work?" or "We all have had hard times - that's just life, get over it" and the shame of not being willing to simply soldier on. Perhaps these are only my own whispering demons, but they are likely shared by others as well.  

Then I had another realization which has come into sharper focus with each passing decade. Simply put, why accelerate my car towards a destination I don't necessarily want to reach? My new assignment would be a big career step and would likely lead to promotion. But was that really the desired destination? What exactly is the exchange rate for limiting my ability to take care of myself and family, and stressing the hell out of our cats? As is, my career has a maximum life expectancy of eight more years before mandatory retirement. In the end, being mentally and geographically available to those I love is so much more important than the nursing-home bragging rights of saying "...and I retired from the Foreign Service as a mid-level manager..." to a big round of eye rolls from the audience. 

So that's it. I explained my reasoning to those who needed to know and the future boss I was looking forward to working for was just as supportive and understanding as I could've hoped for. My assignment was broken and I was on the market again - for a domestic job this time.  

After some weeks of searching, I believe I found the best fit. The next stop on this adventure will be a familiar one: back to the DC area and the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) where I will be a Deputy Coordinator with the Orientation Division. I will be on the team conducting the six-week "A-100" generalist and specialist orientation courses for all new Foreign Service American employees. I'm really excited about it! It combines everything I naturally gravitate towards: teaching, facilitating conversation, organizing, sharing experiences, mentoring, and feeding the energy of bright shiny pennies as they begin their own new career adventures. And - I'm a direct flight away from family. I can do this, no chest-thumping affirmations required.  This is a two-year assignment, after which, who knows? I would rather cross that bridge as I get there than try to predict where the turns in the road will bring us. 

In the meantime, it feels as if I'm wearing the most elasticy-waistband, softest, brushed cotton pants with fluffy, supportive slippers.  

Now that's a good fit.