The Foreign Service Journal, July/August 2018

42 JULY-AUGUST 2018 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL and one FSN to make it easier to get through any red tape and to identify staff. Except for those who were doing the actual rescues under dangerous conditions, these teams had the most difficult task. What had been an office with 250 or so staff became a facility that housed nearly 500. As this was going on, we heard about the bombing in Tanzania and fears that there were possi- bly other bombs still out there. The RSO called for support from the Kenyans to help guard the USAID facility. We had already blocked off the entry to the road on both sides, with the main entry being controlled by our filled water truck. This meant that one of our drivers had to stay in the cab and move the truck back and forth for hours on end—a boring but absolutely essential job. In the time that followed there was so much to be done. The events of that day, and the days and weeks that followed, will stay with me forever. Despite what some might believe, one does not simply move on. Even four years later, when I was leaving post, the psychiatrist and I spoke, and we figured that probably one-third of the staff were still suffering seriously from PTSD. Nothing would ever be quite the same again. I see it in myself, in my colleagues and in my kids, especially the youngest of the three. I look back at those times and thank God (over and over) for the people we had at post, from our exceptional Ambassador Bushnell and our USAID leadership, to our U.S. and local staff across all the agencies who took on the many tasks required, some of which no one should have to endure, and for our friends at the British, Canadian and Australian embassies—as well as my exceptional FSN staff that worked tirelessly without question. The world does not stop turning even in the direst of circumstances. At 2 a.m. on the Monday following the bombing, I left the office for the first time to see and hug my daughter before she was rushed into surgery for an emergency appendectomy. Dr. McCoy (the regional medical officer) told my wife, Wendy, that she had no choice but to take whatever surgeon the hospital could find; and, just in case the job was botched, she would put her on the list for the medical evacu- ation flight that the military was setting up. I could not imag- ine what my daughter was going through—a new country, a strange hospital and an unknown doctor— but she was coura- geous throughout. Fortunately, we ended up with a wonderful surgeon. Meanwhile, my eldest daughter had to look after our son while my wife was at the hospital. I was so proud of all of them. The Things That Got Us Through Steve Nolan Management Officer Memory is a funny thing. Twenty years on from Aug. 7, 1998, what sticks in my mind is not just the sound of the bomb blast or the shock wave that ripped through our embassy in Nairobi. It’s that, during the Country Teammeeting that Friday morning, we had been discussing the topic of security briefings and how to instill an appropriate level of awareness in new arrivals without tipping them over the line to paranoia. Of course, we were thinking primarily about Nairobi’s notori- ous reputation for crime rather than terrorism. Osama bin Laden was then still a relatively obscure figure, except for a 1996 interview in Time in which he had declared his jihad against America. Little did we know that this was just the opening shot in a protracted war. Thus, my first thought after the blast was not “terrorism,” but rather that a fuel tank for a generator or something similar must have somehow exploded. That was my management officer’s mind searching for a logical explanation; the actual cause became clear as soon as I reached the ground floor. I found myself looking through a huge hole in the back wall of the embassy to a deep crater and tangle of steel where the rear gate had been. Part of the car bomb’s engine had been propelled like a cannonball by the force of the explosion through the gate, several walls and an elevator shaft, impacting directly on Post One where the Marine Security Guard stood watch. The Marine on duty was uninjured, thanks to the booth’s heavy-duty construction and no small measure of providence; but it was clear there would be casualties throughout the embassy. Time seemed to slow down, and I felt at that point as if I was entering a long, dark tunnel with no light to show where the end might be. I knew it would be a long time before we got back to anything that looked like normalcy. The scene in front of the embassy was chaotic. A crowd of thousands had formed in the street, clogging Moi Avenue and extending around Haile Selassie Avenue to the rear of the build- ing. Acrid smoke and dust filled the air. Mangled, burning vehi- cles and debris were all around. An office building next door to us, Ufundi House, was completely leveled, trapping people alive in the wreckage. Other buildings were heavily damaged, with shattered windows extending for several blocks in all directions. Most surreal of all, a television crew and photographers had already started recording the scene and sending pictures to news outlets around the world. I’m told the State Department Opera- tions Center learned of the bombing from a breaking-news alert,