The Foreign Service Journal, December 2011

O ver the course of my Foreign Service career, I lived in quite a few places most folks have never heard of. I’d never heard of some of them either, before being told that such-and-such would be my home for the next two or three years. I would arrive there, knowing no one…and eventually come to feel that it was the very center of the world. There was loneliness at first, of course. Viewed objectively, some of these places were strange and off the beaten track—even, perhaps, fully de- serving of the obscurity in which they existed and, in some cases, continue to exist. But I had heard a story soon after arriving at my first Foreign Service post, Helsinki, that seemed to fit my own experience at each successive post. A few months before my arrival in April 1962, the Finnish capital had cel- ebrated a great anniversary of its found- ing. There was a week of celebrations, to which notables and dignitaries from throughout Finland, Scandinavia, Eu- rope and the world were invited. Among the guests was a white- haired Lapp chieftain from a nomadic, reindeer-herding family in northern- most Finnish Lapland. He had never even been to Rovaneimi, the capital of Lapland, before going to that city’s air- port en route to the festivities in Helsinki, I was told. He stayed in Helsinki throughout the week, and appeared to enjoy him- self immensely (although it is said that it is sometimes a bit hard to tell with a Lapp, since they are supposedly even less expressive than the Finns). Be that as it may, a reporter from Finnish Radio interviewed the chief while he was waiting for the plane that would fly him back north. “How was the week?” asked the re- porter. “Not bad,” said the chieftain. “How were the festivities?” “Not bad.” “And the food?” “Not bad.” “And the drinks?” “Not bad.” “And the women?” “Not bad.” “And the city itself?” “Not bad.” “So would you like to live here?” asked the reporter. “No!” the chieftain answered em- phatically. “But why not?” “Too far away from everything,” he replied. Through the ensuing decades, such cities as My Tho, Mogadishu, Reyk- javík, Bridgewater and Port-of-Spain— as well as Arlington and Buffalo Gap, Va. — each became the center of my world for a few years at a time. And as a consequence, everything else during those years was “too far away from everything.” I remember my frustration, for ex- ample, while vacationing in Europe one summer, at not being able to find any news of what was going on in Grenada, St. Vincent, St. Lucia, An- tigua, Dominica or St. Kitts/Nevis — countries which, while working in Bar- bados, I was following daily. Every place, my friends, is some- one’s center of the world. And every- where else is simply “too far away from everything.” C. Robert (Bob) Dickerman was a For- eign Service officer with the U.S. In- formation Agency from 1962 to 1992. Among many assignments, he was deputy chief of mission in Port-of- Spain. This story is one of many recol- lections in My Daddy Fought the Cold War: Not Entirely Serious Tales of a Foreign Service Career (Augusta Free Press, 2011). R EFLECTIONS Too Far Away from Everything B Y C. R OBERT (B OB ) D ICKERMAN 112 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 1 He stayed in Helsinki throughout the week, and appeared to enjoy himself immensely. iStockphoto.com/PaulAnthonyWilson