Abroad for Her Country: Tales of a Pioneer Woman Ambassador in the U.S. Foreign Service

Preface

Preface The following thoughts are said to have been drafted by Bishop Ken Untener of Saginaw, Michigan, and first spoken by John Cardinal Dearden of Detroit, though they are often incorrectly attributed to Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero. These words have become a prayer (“The Long View,” cited in part below). It reminds us of how little can be accomplished in life without our Creator’s assistance. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete. . . . . . . . . . . This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that will one day grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities. We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in knowing that. ix This enables us to do something and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results. But that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future that is not our own. ——— To tell the story of one’s life and work is obviously a highly egocentric, if not egotistical endeavor. I shied away from it for those reasons, and because I never took myself that seriously nor felt that my professional experiences were of such timeless significance they needed to be part of the recorded history of U.S. foreign relations. Nonetheless, I was persuaded by friends to take pen in hand, or rather to try to master the computer. These same supportive friends seemed to find many of my experiences amusing and worth telling as a part of the continuum of U.S. social and diplomatic history in the twentieth century. I know I dined out on many of these stories, enjoying the hospitality and generosity of good friends, even strangers. So, taking Bishop Untener’s sage advice, I stepped back and took a long view of my past. I realized that I had played a minor but catalytic role in pressing for justice and peace in a number of professional circumstances , as when I challenged the consciences of some leaders in Central America on human rights abuses, or jiggled other consciences at the United Nations when it seemed to some that gaining power and narrow control of financing were more important than programming and delivering actual development projects to needy countries. My most important accomplishment in Africa may have been in advocating and gaining acPreface x ceptance of a more understanding and humane change in U.S. policy toward southern Africa during the liberation struggles for independence and majority rule there in the mid-1970s. This change helped the United States move beyond the largely rhetorical to a sounder, more realistic course of diplomatic interaction. I also took pride in being a symbol of social equality that helped enable many highly capable African women to move into government and positions of leadership while I was in Africa, even in the diplomatic service— though it may have taken Zambia another twenty-five years to appoint a woman ambassador to the United States. I derive special pride and satisfaction from helping to implement U.S. foreign policies on economic development in the poorer nations, particularly in Africa and Latin America. Mine was never a solo performance; work in the Foreign Service is always a collaborative, team effort. Instinctively we followed Untener’s counsel. We tried to do the job well, and we recognized that our work was only a beginning, never complete. We liked to think, as Untener suggested, that in our life and work we might have been prophets of the future, however insignificant our endeavors and remote our assignments. The main purpose of these chapters is to inform and entertain and perhaps incidentally to show how government—to which employees swear allegiance and whose Constitution they swear to defend—deeply influences its employees’ personal lives, at least in the era of my service. I found Bishop Untener’s reflections helpful in informing the...