The Foreign Service Journal, April 2008

Macias gave himself various names, including “God,” and commanded his citizens to worship him. Shortly after my parents arrived, a New York Times correspondent some- how managed to enter the country. Upon leaving, he published a feature article attacking the regime. The story quoted “a member of the small diplomatic corps that maintains a ner- vous vigil here,” who spoke of the frightening disappearances that were all too common. The president was apoplectic. American diplomats and their families were suddenly forbidden to travel out- side of the capital. When my mother or father left the residence or the embassy, men in suits followed them. Macias and the state media started to excoriate the United States daily. It was not so much communist or ideo- logical rants as hysteria. America was assigned responsibility for every ill imaginable, and many that were not. The government began sending pages of anti-American gobbledygook over the official wire to Washington, pages without grammar, punctuation or paragraph breaks. I was 2 years old at the time and fell victim to the tumbo fly, a parasite that lays its eggs on wet laundry put out to dry. When the eggs come into contact with skin, they work their way in and the larvae begin to grow. I cried nonstop, and Mother dug the worms out of my flesh. Santa Isabel had a hospital in name only. There was only one doctor on the entire island, if he could be found. Weeks earlier, the Nigerian chargé’s son had become sick, and died within hours. The boy had been my age. My father soon had yet another reason to worry. A French diplomat’s son, not much older than me, had pointed a toy bow and arrow at a policeman. The policeman seized the child on the spot, and took him away. The French government intervened, and the police finally returned the lit- tle boy to his hysterical parents. Father commanded Mother to never, ever let me out of sight, even around the house. At the beginning of August, little more than three months after our arrival, the regime began a massive wave of arrests throughout the island. Observers believed that Macias was wiping out the last ves- tiges of opposition to his rule. The police brought the prisoners to the main jail, across the street from the residence. Trucks and buses deposit- ed the prisoners after dark, and the screams of the victims being tortured kept my parents awake. In the mornings, Father and Mother saw dead bodies being carried out. It A P R I L 2 0 0 8 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 45