Only 177.5 days to go. Not that anyone is keeping track…
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Today I went to a local high school and spoke about the American Revolution. Schools and organizations in Kyiv regularly reach out to the embassy for guest speakers and this is one I volunteered for as I have an interest in American history.
I’m just now getting around to mentioning it, but we had another VIP visit last week. Actually, we had several, but I was only involved with the big one. VP Dick Cheney was in town (along with the missus) to illustrate America’s support for Ukraine and to indicate Russia should back the hell off already. Well, I don’t know if Cheney actually said that…but I think it was implied.
It seems rare these days that the Foreign Service gets much positive press. When something is screwed up, the media is all over it, but the day-to-day actions of our diplomats is often under appreciated. I was pleasantly surprised to see this opinion piece in The New York Times today.
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On August 7, 1998, the U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya were bombed by terrorists associated with al-Qaeda. More than 200 people were killed and at least 4,000 were injured, most of these local Africans who either worked at the embassies or were just unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity at the time. To many in the Foreign Service, 9/11 was not the wake-up call. Our wake-up call had already occured three years earlier.
The Department of State finally received a little extra funding that can be used toward hiring. A State cable (or telegram…yes…we still use telegrams) came out recently announcing how the Department will use some of the funds it received from the Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2008. The good news, especially if you’re looking to join the Foreign Service, is that some of that money will be used to hire 140 new Officers above attrition rates.
Life After Jerusalem has posted an interesting article about the selling of ambassadorships. The general public probably isn’t even aware that only about two-thirds of the ambassadors representing the United States come from the Foreign Service. The other third are “political appointees,” many of whom are being rewarded for their work for the political party currently in power.
One aspect of Foreign Service life that you have to quickly learn to accept is that people are always on the move. Newcomers are arriving at post, others are departing post. In between the two there are shipments constantly arriving and being packed up. You get used to meeting new people one day and then scavenging through your colleague’s left over pantry the next to see what you want.
I noticed recently that when one does a Google search for “foreign service blogs,” this blog is the second entry that pops up right behind the Associates of the American Foreign Service Worldwide (AAFSW). It makes me feel more than a bit guilty that there were probably people out there coming to this blog for information on the Foreign Service only to find it hadn’t been updated in months. Hopefully, it will be better now.
This week I was the volunteer to assist in the classified pouch run. Every so often the embassy sends and receives a batch of classified material. This requires some American officers with security clearances to go out to the airport and meet with a Diplomatic Courier who arrives with the incoming and departs with the outgoing.
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