The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2015

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2015 11 reasons at high-threat posts. Special- needs families are limited to posts that have quality care. Colleagues with medical issues are limited to posts that have adequate health care facilities or from which they can be quickly evacuated. We cannot order a foreign government to change; we can only advise and act as an example. Bidding is a negotiation, and there are positives and negatives for all posts. I am currently in Haiti after assignments in Algiers and Islamabad. I was married the entire time. Islamabad was an unaccom- panied post. In Algiers, the State Depart- ment pushed on behalf of my spouse, then offered to pay me involuntary sepa- rate maintenance allowance because of the country’s refusal to grant diplomatic accreditation to same-sex spouses. That gesture showed a willing- ness to take care of an employee and his family in the face of discrim- ination by a foreign government. I worked with the task force that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton stood up when the decision was first taken to make same-sex spouses eligible family members. GLI- FAA is not the only point of contact in the State Department for gay issues. Again, I wish to express my full support for the efforts of the Bureau of Human Resources team and the entire State Department leadership. Many others, I believe a majority of State employees, share my point of view. The department is a leader when it comes to LGBT inclusion in the workforce. I am honored to be a part of the Foreign Service and look forward to many future years of happy employment. Antonio G. Agnone FSO Embassy Port-au-Prince Empowering Women in Nepal There are many initiatives to help Nepal after the devastating earthquakes, but I would like to share a story that spotlights the State Department. Under Secretary of State Hillary Rod- ham Clinton, a program was launched to support female leaders around the world. These women are selected from developing countries to receive training for a few weeks during the summer at participating U.S. women’s colleges to advance their work back home. Last May, I was delighted tomeet the women leaders of 2014. Radha Paudel had been chosen fromNepal. Her English was not great, but she benefited tremendously from the training in project development andmanagement during the summer program. After the course, Ms. Paudel visited me in San Diego before return- ing to Nepal. I learned that she is a nurse who was selected for the award due to her selfless work to bring health care to women and children in the most remote regions of Nepal—Jumla and Karnali—through her nongovernmental organization, Action Works Nepal (www.actionworksnepal. com). She single-handedly reduced the high number of women dying in childbirth, set up the first clinic in the area and started classes on hygiene and empowerment for local women and girls. She also helped the women start a small tea-growing business. I visited Nepal again later in the year, and threw a tea in her honor in Kath- mandu to celebrate her selection for the State Department award. I invited the U.S. embassy’s USAID deputy and heads of some NGOs (which are run primarily by women of the highest caste). Ms. Paudel told me that they had refused to meet with her previously because her “skin was too dark.” Despite the tea and few attendees, she has kept working on behalf of women and girls without significant Nepalese or American support. This was all before the earthquakes. Thankfully, she finally responded to my emails. She survived both quakes, but no housing is safe in the village she is in. The people are in dire need of everything, and she is there trying to help as the only outside person on the spot. I consider her to be a true leader and heroine. Marilyn J. Bruno FSO, retired Former State Rep on the AFSA Governing Board (1997-2000) Oceanside, California Correction In “Diplomatic Security Triage in a Dangerous World” by Anthony Quainton in the May Foreign Service Journal, we printed an Associated Press photo of the front of Embassy Dar es Salaam after the August 1998 terrorist bombing. The caption identified the two men in the photo as a U.S. Marine and an FBI investigator, which is the information provided with the purchased photo. An attentive reader alerted us to the fact that the “FBI investigator” (in the maroon shirt) is actually Regional Security Officer John DiCarlo, now retired. RSO DiCarlo had arrived at post only days before the Aug. 7, 1998, attack, but noticed right away that the local guards were not operating the vehicle sally port Citizenshipand unwedbordermoms published by the american foreign service association april 2015 40yearsafterthefallofsaigon theForeignserviCeinvietnam