Juramos

One of the things I like best about public service is the commitment we all make to a set of ideals and principles. We're a country founded on ideals, which is fairly unique around the world. And the first day when we join the government in service we swear an oath to defend those ideals. We don't swear loyalty to a king or queen, to an ethnicity or a creed, but to an idea... a set of principles.

It's a word we don't use as much anymore, oath. For me, it conjures up images of knights or fantasy novels or something vaguely British. But I'll tell you what it means to me. It means that my wife and I have pledged our honor to this country. There's really no turning back now. And we will serve the American people to the best of our ability by always remembering the founding principles of our country while doing our work. 

I've taken the oath at least four times for my various positions in the government. Every time, every time, I tear up a little. A few times that was because I was in the presence of many other people taking the oath with me and all I could think about was how honored I was to be in the company of so many people who also believe in service to their country. Enough to swear an oath at least. Other times I was just a little awed by the power of the words and the universality of the oath. With only very minor variations, everyone swears the same oath, be the person a janitor, an FSO, or the President of the United States. And that's a truly powerful testament to our ideals and the rule of law. 

So last Friday, these are the words I (and the rest of my classmates) said:

I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

I meant every word.

Vale la Pena

Today after work I went to see a flower that supposedly smelled like a corpse.

It didn't really. But it was a gigantic flower and it looked cool. And going to the National Botanic Garden allowed me to take a nice walk to my apartment by way of the mall. And the proximity to the Capitol prompted me to think a bit about some of the lessons we're learning in A-100.

It's an orientation program, for sure. So there's all sorts of sessions on HR and how to work with and in the State bureaucracy. It's also a time when we learn about the history of diplomacy, the type of work that we do, and the potential jobs that we could be doing soon. And of course there's the bidding process, which is probably enough material for a whole other post.

But I think the most important lessons that we're learning are the ones that don't come from our courses. We're learning to act as a cohort, how to socialize amongst our peers, and what it means to be a diplomat "24/7." We're also remembering why we're here and what it means to serve.

When my friends who work at consulates and embassies around the world are asked about what they do they tend to say that they are in the Foreign Service rather than that they're diplomats. I think there's something to be said for including the word "service" every time that we introduce ourselves. It's a little reminder that the work that we do is in service to the people of the United States. It's in service of our ideals. It sounds corny, but it's principles like freedom and justice and sacrifice of personal gain for the common good that keep me going.  And if using the word "service" moves the perception of the profession from one of effete elites drinking scotch and smoking cigars with foreign politicians equally out of touch with their own people to the reality of a Department filled with dedicated public servants who hold the well-being of Americans abroad as their highest priority, so much the better. In what other profession do we get to remind ourselves of our principles every day.

It's worth it. 

Arrived!

A week ago I was still in Juarez. I was mostly packed, due to my wonderful spouse. But I was still working, still driving everywhere, still crossing an international border fairly frequently for mundane reasons, and still sleeping in my own bed.

I'm not there anymore.

After a bit more than a year away, I have returned to DC. Things are different here. I walk to the grocery store, to restaurants, to the metro (!!!!). There's a great library system here. My inner transit nerd is rejoicing about how much I don't need a car. I'm getting a bikeshare membership. And I'm officially in the Foreign Service. 

There are drawbacks, of course. Arriving so quickly means that there's been numerous difficulties with IT at work and getting my apartment all set up at home. It's always fun to arrive in the middle of the night on a Saturday and arrive at a furnished apartment that doesn't have towels. There have been Metro to Target runs and grocery shopping trips in the middle of the night. And my lingering cough from Juarez has not liked the fact that you can't really take sick days during training. Saddest of all is that I'm likely facing over a year apart for the person I want to spend the rest of my life with.

We'll see each other approximately once a month, starting in August. It won't be enough, but we will maintain our relationship the best we can through modern technology. These are the sacrifices we make so that both of us can have a career. Hopefully on flag day, we'll have a good idea of when the next time will be when we actually will be living in the same location. 

I know that all (or at least many) of my A-100 classmates are going through some of the same things that we are. What do you tell your friends and family when they ask how long you'll be in DC after you tell them you're moving there? "I don't know, I'll find out five weeks after I arrive there?" I can't imagine how you'd communicate that level of vague to a child. But orientation is not a time for anything other than complete flexibility. 

Maybe after this weekend I'll feel a bit more coherent. I'm running low on sleep and high on uncertainty.  The only thing I know, from observing the experience of my spouse's class, is that it gets better. So for now I'll just hang on. It's going to be a crazy ride.

La Lingua de la Familia

Ever since I encountered someone who didn't speak English at home (probably in Kindergarten) I've been fascinated with bilingual families, immigrant or otherwise. In a way, my inner drive to join the Foreign Service stems from two factors relating to this fascination: 1) the urge to be the first person to welcome immigrant families to what I consider one of the greatest clubs in the world, American Citizenship, and 2)a somewhat less altruistic goal to understand what the heck all those people are saying right in front of me in a language I can't understand. Over time I think my motivations have moved more from motivation 2 (lets call it the Nosy Norman phenomenon) towards motivation 1 (the Welcoming Wilma that I think should live within all Consular Officers).

When I was a child, Nosy Norman was definitely a huge part of my personality. My first best friend was Indian-American, and Nosy Norman manifested in my constant questioning of his culture, the history of his parents, and what the lyrical words of Gujarati that he would reel off to his parents meant. Were they talking about me right in front of my face? Turns out, generally no, people mostly talk about the same things from day to day, regardless of language. Gossip yes, but usually what my friend's mom was telling him was that he needed to do his homework or what they were going to have for dinner that night. Nosy Norman's interest was constantly being evoked, however, when my friend would tell stories of how boring it was to go to the Hindu storytime sessions that his father would hold for the local Indian expatriate/immigrant community. I had to be careful not to let Jealous Jimmy take Nosy Norman to the extremes, even though I would have this irrational moment of anger that basically said "how DARE you not recognize how awesome and unique this cultural experience is in our really, really white bland little mountain town, and why don't I have an awesome immigrant father who can tell me stories from the old country?!?!?"

Throughout U.S. history, immigrants have had to strike that balance between integrating into/adopting the dominant culture and maintaining their individual ties to and cultural memory of the "old country." In my case, I think that my great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents consciously made the decision to minimize their Italian and German heritage, probably as a result of World War I and II. So by the time I was growing up, my "immigrant" experience was limited to half-remembered stories and a fondness for Pasta Fagioli. All that is to say that I'm happy that we're not really living in pre-1960s America, where the goal for many families seems to have been "be the blandest, meat and potatoes, Cleaver family that you can possibly be." Over-generalization, I know, but I do feel glad that we're living in an age where being different or having a different set of cultural touchstones is celebrated, rather than condemned.

And so we turn to Welcoming Wilma, who I hope will become a larger and larger part of my personality as I move forward in my career. Oh I'll still continue to have that secret thrill when I overhear someone speaking in X language that I know and I can smile to myself and think "I KNOW what you're saying!" But even if I'm serving in a place where I don't have a clue what people are saying (entirely possible in my line of work) it's still going to tug at my heart each time I'm able to say, with full sincerity, "congratulations, your visa has been approved. Welcome to America." Although I know that not every consular officer feels the same, almost every one that I've met has had a heartwarming story about reuniting families or approving that one visa that they knew would make a difference in people's lives. Especially if I'm going to make this a long-term career, I hope that Welcoming Wilma will stick around for the duration. I know that an open attitude is what makes this a career worth having. 

Stories That are Mine to Tell

Joining the Foreign Service, or really any government position, occasionally feels like joining a really exclusive club. One where you occasionally get to do REALLY COOL THINGS, usually do very mundane things, and sometimes have to do not so great things because the law says so. But the reason that I call it an exclusive club is that even though we are doing the public's work, there's so much of what we do that we can't talk about in public. Things like the privacy act, HIPAA, classified stuff (usually not as "secret" as it sounds), and operations security make it difficult for us to talk about our jobs, whether we process claims for Medicare, or research cures for cancer, or negotiate labor deals, or find ourselves abroad interviewing people for visas to go to the U.S. This leads to a couple of interesting consequences. One: because we're often prohibited from broadcasting what we do at work without going through the "proper" channels, we tend to blog more about our personal lives, feelings, travels, etc.  Which, combined with the clearances for dissemination to the public being so slow leads to number 2: The public really, really doesn't get what we do.

Theoretically, it's really easy for people to put themselves in the shoes of one type of public worker, a soldier.  I don't want to get into how frequently off the media's depiction of what the modern military actually does, but suffice it to say that every American has had a pretty well-rounded exposure to what the military does, good and bad, through education curriculums (particularly history), movies and TV, publicity campaigns by the military branches themselves ("be all you can be" or your local military recruiter), and personal interactions. But other government branches don't always have the positive press nor the universal exposure that the military has. And it shows. 

 In modern times this has lead to an almost constant assault on public workers, at all levels. You don't have to look very far to see it, from the demonization of teacher's unions to the sequester. And so much of it is because politicians, in there infinite wisdom, choose to rabble-rouse rather than take a principled stand to support the good work that public servants do. Us in the bureaucracy, we make this very very easy, by becoming insular and taking the easy way out. Rather than tell our stories we stay silent, because it's to difficult to find the stories that are the stories that strike the balance between political and private. We don't take the time to distill the stories until they are general enough that they can become public. And because we are public servants, we try to stay out of those political battles (even though we definitely have an opinion).   So the public at large never hears the stories on the front lines of the immigration debate from the point of view of the consular officers making those life-changing decisions, because that would infringe upon privacy rights and put us in an advocacy role. Nor, unless we resign, does the public hear the rigorous debates about U.S. Foreign Policy as it applies to country X or Y that occur behind closed doors. 

Upon taking office every person who works for the government takes the following oath:

"I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter."

To me this means that I will always do my best to serve the people of the United States. And I will try to do the work that they are paying me to do with their best interests in mind. In the meantime I will seek out the stories that are mine to tell.

New Beginnings

It seems cliche to say that no one really knows where the world will take them. But in my case, this saying is absolutely true. I've decided to start this blog to talk about my life, my travels, and my thoughts.  I'm beginning writing at a time of transition. I've been trying for 9 years to join the U.S. Foreign Service, and today is the day that I finally got the offer to join an orientation class. Oh internets!  I cannot promise you that I will always be able to tell you what I'm doing or be entirely frank about how much I hate/love X about the people in Y country, as the State Department is pretty strict about these sorts of things, but I will try to make this blog something worth reading.

I think I'll probably end up writing some retrospective posts introducing myself over the next little while, but the short story is this: I'm in my late 20s, currently working at the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico... one of the most dangerous cities in the world, right across the border from El Paso, Texas... one of the "safest" cities in the U.S. I'm here because my spouse is also a diplomat serving a tour here to fulfill the State Department's requirement that an entry-level officer work for a time doing visa/consular work. Before coming here I worked in D.C. at the State Department and the Department of Labor. Before joining the Foreign Service, I developed budgets, catalogued letters from Saul Bellow's mistresses, audited and paid millions of dollars of freight bills weekly for a major tech company, researched the development of democracy in colonial possessions, learned Ottoman (a dead language), fell in love with transportation planning, and married the love of my life, who I met while studying abroad in Morocco. And more. 

And so, I'm happy to finally put this disclaimer on my blog and join the growing ranks of FSO (Foreign Service Officer) bloggers. May I not disappear:

The views expressed in this blog are those of the authors and not those of the U.S. government of any agency or department of that government.