The Foreign Service Journal, June 2005

Ardela Dingle, who did management, consular and most everything else. Miles was swollen with agitation, the buttons on his aged safari suit struggling to contain him. He summarized the situation. “During the night rebels took control of the Presidential Palace, radio station, air- port and brewery. Communications cut, all roads in and out of the country closed, flights cancelled — well, actu- ally, there weren’t any flights scheduled until next Monday.” “Still a gesture,” the ambassador pointed out. “President Kotazo and his Cabinet have been jailed. It was a bloodless coup — except for the monkeys, of course.” “Bastards!” Wally hissed. He had not left his resi- dence on the embassy compound even once during his year at post, and his lack of exposure to the sun gave his gangly frame a sickly pallor. His only companion was an orphan monkey he had found on the compound. He had named the monkey, who was subject to unexplained seizures, Mr. Jitters. Miles shuddered, thinking of the monkeys and rub- bing the stump of his earlobe. “Apparently the coup plot- ters were concerned that the monkeys that live in the trees around the Presidential Palace might have super- natural powers. They were advised by unnamed experts that the best way to neutralize those powers was to shoot them out of a cannon.” Ardela chimed in. “Mr. Ambassador, we fished a cou- ple of them out of your swimming pool. May want to give the filter a little time to work before you dive in.” “Very important,” the ambassador intoned. “Our emergency water supply in a pinch like this.” “Damn straight,” Miles agreed. “We lose regular water supplies and we can drink from the pool for a good long time. I remember one post we finished the pool and had to drink our own urine — purified, of course. Not necessarily our own, actually. We had a pool, so to speak. From each according to his ability — that sort of thing.” “Yes, well, needs of the Service,” the ambassador cut in. “What about American citizens?” “I talked to Debbie,” Ardela said. Debbie and Clyde Fishwater were missionaries and heads of the warden committee. “She wanted to know if we’d still have the regular Pictionary and beer night this week.” The ambassador stroked his forehead, pondering, then turned to the scowling Wally. Wally had been par- ticularly out of sorts since the ambassador had asked him to stop rebroadcasting the Armed Forces television pro- gramming on the antenna the Marines had left behind when they were withdrawn from the embassy. He knew how much Wally enjoyed the programming, so he hadn’t taken action until the third complaint by the local gov- ernment, when the Minister of Defense had demonstrat- ed the problem by turning on a military radio to hear nothing but “Baywatch” dialogue. “Walter, communica- tions secure?” Wally sighed with resignation. “See, the DTS net- work uses multiple settings for the same parameter in the network. There’s no dynamic routing protocol between Beltsville and the post router and we all know the WAN link isn’t reliable. But the real problem is there’s no routing over the X.50 network because the post router isn’t functioning as an Area Border Router. You ask me, we never should have converted to Network 10.0 locally.” There was a silence as the others took this in. Ardela ventured an uncertain guess at Wally’s meaning. “So we don’t have communications?” Wally rolled his eyes. “I think that’s what I just said.” The ambassador nodded. “Okay, then. Lloyd, inter- national press all abuzz?” Lloyd squinted uneasily. “Well, nothing on CNN, but it did get a mention on the BBC. The graphic they showed with the story was a map of Belize, though.” “Damn shoddy work,” the ambassador clucked. “Right country key to accurate international reporting.” F O C U S 38 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 0 5 Brian Aggeler entered the Foreign Service in 1990, serving in Europe, South Asia and Africa. He is cur- rently working in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. He is a regular contributor of cartoons for the Journal and State magazine. Miles had seen most things before in his career, and he was generous in sharing his experiences.