The Foreign Service Journal, May 2021

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY 2021 85 “You can do that under one condi- tion: that you sign a piece of paper I’ve prepared, which will ensure financial support for the village chief’s wives and children as long as they live.” “I’m afraid I don’t have the authority to do that, even as a consular officer.” “Well, I strongly advise you to sign this piece of paper because if not, once the funeral is over, a large crowd will gather here, and we will be unable to prevent the lynching of this young man.” I asked the AG if I could use his tele- phone to call the presidential palace. In those days, it took at least 20 minutes to place a long-distance call from Sarh to the capital. I was finally able to get hold of one of President Idriss Déby’s closest advisers, with whom I had a good work- ing relationship. I explained the situation and asked if he or the president could intercede on our behalf. He told me that the way they ran things in the capital was to not , repeat, not interfere in local affairs, and that there was nothing he could do to help me. Luckily enough, there were no speaker phones back then, and I was the only one who heard this. Deciding to take advantage of that fact, I told the presidential adviser, in a voice that was probably louder than strictly necessary: “Hey, that’s great! Thank you very much. We’ll have him on the next plane headed north. I’m greatly indebted for your help on this. My best regards to the president.” I then hung up the phone. The AG looked shocked. I grabbed the PCV’s hand and signaled to Dorothy to hurry down the stairs immediately and into the waiting taxicab. We beelined to the dirt airstrip. As I looked at the sky, I thanked God that the red Twin Otter was circling and ready to land. Still, it would be a close call. Once the plane touched down and taxied to a stop, I ran up to the pilot and asked how long he planned to be on the ground. He said, “No more than 20 min- utes to refuel.” “How about two minutes?! And skip the refueling,” I said, pointing down the road to two army Toyota pickup-type trucks with soldiers clustered in the back. They were wearing red berets, carrying rifles and heading our way pell-mell in a cloud of dust. The pilot was able to take off in the nick of time, just as the trucks loaded with soldiers arrived on the scene. I prayed the soldiers would not open fire and bring the plane down in an explosion of flames. Once airborne, out of reach of gunfire and safely on our way to N’Djamena, my heart went from thumping wildly back down to normal. We radioed ahead so that the embassy folks could meet us at the airport and whisk us back to the compound. After hearing the story, the ambas- sador was concerned that I, as a U.S. Foreign Service officer, had essentially lied to a high-level Chadian official. Nonetheless, we got the PCV on an Air France flight out of the country early that same evening. I fully expected to be “PNGed”— expelled from the country by the host government, persona non grata—as soon as the next day. In the morning, I received the dreaded call frommy friend, the presidential adviser at the palace. “Pete, you have no idea what a bee- hive you kicked down there in Sarh,” he said. “It really caused a firestorm!” I waited for the fateful words and began mentally preparing to pack my bags. Instead, he let out a loud laugh. “ Mon Dieu, c’est quelque chose que nous aimerions même faire! (My God, that’s something we would have liked to have done!),” he said and hung up the phone, still chuckling. The African Affairs Bureau in the State Department (AF) was also concerned about the episode, at first. Eventually, though, the storm blew over. It was not the first time AF had encountered an unorthodox case in which an overly rigid adherence to rules and regulations might have played out in counterproductive fashion in the real world. (Note: The bureau has a good reputa- tion among “Africa hands” for being quite understanding about such things. The embassy country team, together with the Peace Corps director, also discussed ways in which Mission Chad might compen- sate the village for the loss of its chief.) In the end, I was paid one of the best compliments I’d ever received. It was from Dorothy, the Peace Corps nurse from Cameroon, who said to me with a smile, “ Eh bien, Monsieur Harding, vous êtes un vrai diplomate! (Well, Mr. Harding, you are a real diplomat!)” n Peter Harding, the U.S. political-economic-commercial-consular officer in N’Djamena, during a political and economic reporting trip along the border with Nigeria in 1997— months after the incident recounted here. The Chadian government provided Harding with an armed escort because the area was (and still is) dangerous. COURTESYOFPETERHARDING