The Foreign Service Journal, March 2022

76 MARCH 2022 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Summer camp can offer a stable anchor in the FS child’s ever-changing world. BY T I BOR NAGY Tibor Nagy retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2003 after a long career, which included 22 years in Africa at eight postings, with two ambassadorships and three stints as deputy chief of mission. He returned to the State Department as assistant secretary for Africa in 2018 and re-retired in 2021. In between, he served as vice provost for international affairs at Texas Tech University. He continues to teach for Texas Tech, write regular op-ed pieces and lecture on foreign policy. His book (co-authored with Ambassador Greg Engle), Managing Overseas Operations: Kiss Your Latte Goodbye , won the 2014 Paris Book Festival award for nonfiction. I was delighted to learn that The For- eign Service Journal was planning a special summer camp supplement because watching our own children grow up overseas, and having myself spent many years in camping, I have long considered a camp experience an impor- tant option for Foreign Service families. First, a bit of background on how much my own camp experiences have meant in my life. Coming to Washington, D.C., as a political refugee fromHungary in 1957, my family not only did not speak English, but we were also penniless. That summer, our Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE) sponsor very graciously paid for me to spend six weeks at Camp Soles, in the spectacular Laurel Highlands of Western Pennsylva- nia, where I not only learned English, but also social and cultural skills that greatly contributed to my becoming “American” and did wonders for my self-confidence. I returned to the camp each summer, progressing through the stages of camper, counselor and senior staff member until I graduated from college (for which my camp employment helped pay). Along the way I learned skills in a variety of sports and other activities and gained an appreciation for nature. But, most importantly, I developed leader- ship and “people” skills and built lifelong friendships that endure to this day. In some of my current speeches, I mention that in my last job as assistant secretary for the Bureau of African Affairs, I had to supervise 48 ambassadors with high levels of self-confidence, but that was nowhere near as difficult as having to manage a group of college-age, but still maturing, counselors! Strangers in Their Own Land FS kids are not penniless refugees who need to learn English, but their child- hood journeys present challenges similar to my own, and they can equally benefit from a summer camp experience. We all know that uprooting and moving loca- tions every few years generates a long list of stresses—especially for our children, who must first leave behind the familiar and their network of friends, and then start over again with a new locale, a new culture and new people. The employee enters a known envi- ronment from day one, and an accom- panying spouse or partner will have a sponsor to help navigate the new terrain, but for the child, everything is unfamiliar. What a summer camp can offer in such an ever-changing world is a familiar anchor from year to year as the child grows—same locale, a known routine, a set of skills that can be expanded each SUMMER CAMPS FROM REFUGEE TO CAMPER TO DIPLOMAT W h y S u m m e r C a m p f o r F S K i d s