CANDOER Retirement Group

Preface by the Editor: This four-part serial story is the story of Dick Kalla's life in the Foreign Service. It starts with his first assignment to Copenhagen and ends with a final assignment in Caracas. In between, it covers his assignments to Benghazi, Bonn, Lome, Santo Domingo, Seoul, Brussels, Malta, Geneva, Jakarta, and New Delhi.

Enjoy reading!

After spending the decade of the 80's in Europe, my family and I were transferred to Jakarta, Indonesia to begin the 90's. Europe was clean! Jakarta was exotic! Basic living conditions in Europe were similar to the U.S. Sure, there was usually the language thing, and customs in some European countries took a little adjustment; but you didn't have to worry about the different and dangerous flora and fauna that was prevalent in Jakarta.

Even going to work in Jakarta sometimes took on the feel of a safari. The Embassy compound consisted of a series of spread-out buildings. They had all been there for a while by the time the 90's rolled around. The Information Programs Center, where I worked, was located in the chancery building with most of the other substantive sections. The chancery was overrun with wildlife. The teeming population of rats, who we all understood were really in charge of the building, was an especially bad problem. They were kind enough to allow us humans to work during the daylight hours but they ruled the darkness. The Jakarta chancery wasn't a place you wanted to stay late and work in the dim light and solitude. If you were called in after dark it was advisable to crank up all the lights and make as much noise as you could to keep the rat hordes at bay.

There were periodic attempts to poison the rat population, but that normally just made them mad and culled out the old and feeble from their midst. Worse, the poisoned rodents would crawl in some inaccessible vent before dying where they smelled like dead rats for weeks. Believe me, live rats smell much better than dead ones. The healthy rats even took a liking to the rat pellets we left out and would eat them with gusto. Instead of killing them as advertised, I think it only made them bigger and smarter. We were growing a strain of mutant super-rats. Likewise, any food or snacks left out overnight were gone the next day. No matter how hard you tried to hide your goodies, the rats would find a way to get at them, unless they were locked up in a safe or bar lock cabinet. They even perfected the art of opening desk drawers. So help me - I'm not lying! This ability was demonstrated to me conclusively one day when I, as was my habit, took my candy dish off my desk before going home and put it in my desk drawer. When I came to work the next day, the drawer was open and the candy had been eaten and the wrappers were scattered all around the office. I had been the last person to leave the office that night so no human had opened the drawer after I left. A careful examination revealed that there was no possible way to get into the drawer without pulling it open. There was only one explanation - the rats had learned how to open the drawer to get at the candy. To test this theory, I put candy in the drawer a second night and, sure enough, they got it a second time. From that day on, if I wanted to assure that my snacks were untouched, I had to put them in the safe. I'm convinced that, in time, the rat population would have learned the combination to our safes and taught themselves to open them if the rewards were worthwhile. I left Jakarta before this happened, however.

One of my co-workers became particularly obsessed with trying to eradicate the rats from our office. He devised several clever traps to try to catch them, which worked with limited success. One of his more ingenious schemes was to try to electrocute the rat herds as they descended from the false ceiling each night to cavort (do rats cavort?) through our office. It was their habit to use the same path each time and they had nearly worn a groove in the wall where their claws had clicked their way down during their nightly procession. Across this path, our hero installed a metal plate. To each end of the metal plate he attached 110 Volts. Before going home at night, he would plug in the wires and the plate would be electrified. The hope was that any rat crossing the plate would be fried. It didn't work. He killed no rats but did manage to trip the breaker one night when, we could only surmise, a giant rat, too tough to electrocute, tried to cross over this killing ground. Mostly, the rat population deduced that their normal route was no longer safe and used an alternate route. As I think back on this incident, I'm surprised he didn't burn down the building with his electrified rattrap. While the electrocution method didn't work, he was able to catch a few rats with the standard industrial-strength spring-type rattraps provided by the General Services Office. Whenever he set them out he would always try to be the first one into the office the next morning so he could check his traps. No one else wanted this honor anyway so he had no challengers for this duty. Whenever he was successful, he would hang his catch up by their tails so we could all share in his good luck. I've never cared that much for rats so this dead rat display never thrilled me very much. It thrilled a couple of the others even less. Needless to say, this became a subject of some consternation whenever a rat from the low end of the intelligence pool became stupid enough to allow itself to be caught. For office unity, I convinced our great rat hunter that the others in the office didn't need to see his kill. Subdued but not beaten, our hero continued to hunt rats until his tour in Jakarta ended and he managed to cull a few more of the weaker animals from the herd, much improving their gene pool.

Rats were not the only wildlife overrunning the communications office. Probably a worse predator was the deadly concrete-eating termite swarm that inhabited our walls. To this day, I still don't really believe that termites can eat concrete but how could I dispute this fact in Jakarta where the concrete walls around our disintegrator were riddled with termite holes. When I was finally able to convince the right people to send a construction Seabee before the walls came down around us, I learned that termites had, indeed, done all the damage. According to the Seabee, there is a species of termites, in Indonesia at least, that eats concrete, as well as wood, and this is what had destroyed our walls. Maybe it had to do with inferior concrete and/or the salt-water the Indonesians had used to build the wall but, whatever it was, I was never again skeptical when hearing of the exploits of the wildlife of Indonesia.

There are more Muslims in Indonesia than in any other country. They are moderate Muslims however, and have adapted parts of their previous religions to moderate the stricter tenants of Islam. While in Jakarta we lived in Galuh, a sleepy street with 14-Embassy townhouses, all in a row, on one side of the block. One block over was the neighborhood mosque that provided for the religious needs of the Muslims living in our area. Because it served a well-to-do neighborhood, the mosque was very low-key and had a conservative sound system to call the faithful to prayer six times a day. Despite our closeness to the mosque, we soon became accustomed to hearing the prayers being broadcast in the background. Besides, with the doors and windows shut and the air-conditioning running, anything happening outside was only a low murmur. Then, on the day the mosque roared, that all changed. It all happened one fine morning just before Ramadan in 1992. It was just after 4 in the morning. I was sound asleep when the Hand of God shot me straight up in my bed and nearly blew out the windows of our townhouse. The gentle, low-key mosque had gone high-tech. Maybe some rich donor had died and willed a sum of money to the mosque or maybe the wealthier members of the congregation had tithed well that year - whatever the case, someone had made a decision to purchase a new sound system and the finest set of Bose (at least in my mind they were Bose) speakers money could buy. From that moment on, the mosque speakers drowned out all ambient noise in our home six times each day as the faithful were loudly called to prayer.

Before Ramadan, they must have been using a record because you could clearly hear the occasional pop and scratch as every tortuous but reverent moment rang throughout our residence. Then, during the month of Ramadan, a human voice was added and the melodious tones of Allah Akbahr … were heard even more vividly. The hue and cry of protest from the non-Muslim Galuh townhouses was instantly forthcoming and the Embassy quickly approached the mosque about lowering the decibel level. Eventually, the volume was lowered a bit but things were never quite the same as they were before those pre-Bose days. But, the Foreign Service is about learning how to adapt to new surroundings and we learned to turn up the volume on the TV during evening prayers and we even got used to the early morning wakeups with the guy shouting in our ears. We were not, however, unhappy to learn that when we left Indonesia for India, our new home did not come with its own mosque.

Long before I ever went to Indonesia, I heard that Bali was one of the most beautiful places in the world. The beaches and countryside, people said, were wonderful and the Balinese were delightful. Naturally, after we settled into our new home and job in Jakarta, my family and I made arrangements to visit this island paradise. Bali was about what we had expected. The beaches were beautiful and the countryside even more lovely than we had heard. The Balinese people were gentle and beautiful just as we had known they would be. What a great place. Of course we hadn't expected the hordes of low-budget Australian back-packers that swarmed through the streets of the capital city of Denpasaar looking for magic mushrooms and the next party, but they were mostly harmless and almost non-existent outside the cities. So, after checking into our hotel, my wife Pat, son Kevin, and I set out to look at the beach we had heard so much about. After a short walk, we arrived at a beautiful large sandy public beach inhabited by tourists and vendors offering everything from a massage, to bows and arrows for sale. Aside from the vendors, there were very few locals at the beach - just a few on the periphery. As we walked along the water's edge, Kevin, who was seven at the time, kept pestering us to let him go for a swim. Looking around, we saw we were equidistant between two red flags. In our hotel room, we had read that the undertow was bad on this particular beach and bathers should swim only between the red flags. Thinking we were in the right spot, we told Kevin he could wade out a little way but to not go into the deep water. We felt good that we were in a safe area but just a little wary at hearing that the undertow was close-by. At first, everything was fine. The water stayed shallow for a great distance and Kevin enjoyed the warm water splashing and playing the way 7-year olds do. Even though he was still in water no deeper than his waist, we noticed that Kevin had gone out a long way. Concerned, Pat started shouting at him to come in closer to the beach. At first nothing happened but soon we could hear him telling us that he couldn't, the water was too strong. I, in my ignorance, thought he was just playing around. After all, he was still in shallow water and between the flags in the safe water. Pat's motherly instincts told her immediately that things were not right and she made it very plain that I needed to go get Kevin. Still skeptical of this always over-protective mother, I finally decided I'd better do something to right a situation that seemed to be deteriorating. So, slipping off my sandals, I started wading out to convince Kevin to stop screwing around and come back in before his mother had a fit. To my surprise, I almost immediately felt the grip of the current as it tried to draw me out. As I continued to plow toward where Kevin was getting farther from shore, understanding began to dawn on me that I was getting into something that I might not be able to control. Sure I knew how to swim, as did Kevin, but neither of us was a real strong swimmer who could risk being carried out to sea. I might be able to reach him, and I was certainly going to try, but with the current getting stronger and stronger, I had real doubts about being able to return to shore when I did. All these thoughts, and many more, coursed through my head as I struggled to reach Kevin. Suddenly, out of nowhere, two surfboarders sailed past me directly towards the area where Kevin now found himself. The current had continued to pull him out and the water, by this time, was over his head. He had to tread water to stay afloat. Hollering at me to return to the beach, the surfers soon reached Kevin and pulled him aboard one of their boards. Overcome with relief and gratitude, I struggled mightily to make it back to the beach. Exhausted but elated, I finally managed to reach shore just about the time that the surfers brought Kevin back from his brush with the sea's awesome power. Later, we deduced that the flags had marked the area of the undertow, not the safe area. The two surfers, of course, realized this and supplemented their incomes saving stupid tourists from drowning.

And, Finally, Jakarta is where I learned that Americans smelled like cheese! Actually, I learned it indirectly, from Jerry Jennings. Jerry was a U.S. Navy doctor assigned to the Naval Unit (NAMRU) that was looking for cures for malaria and other tropical diseases passed by mosquitoes. Jerry learned this oliphactory information when he and another Navy doctor and their secretaries attended the annual Secretary's Day celebration at a swank downtown hotel. Prior to the ceremony, the mistress of ceremony mingled with the attendees and spoke briefly with Jerry in the course of her mingling. Then, during her welcoming speech, she asked Jerry and his colleague to stand up, acknowledging the fact that foreigners were attending the festivities. She told the audience that she had spoken briefly with Jerry and "knew he was an American because he smelled like cheese and, as everyone knows, all Americans smell like cheese". Political correctness was obviously a concept unknown in Indonesia at that time. Many of the Indonesians in the audience nodded in agreement, smug in their knowledge that this was indeed the case. For Jerry, the remainder of the afternoon was mostly a blur. But, only when he returned to work and the story made the rounds of NAMRU, did the full brunt of this incident hit him. NAMRU personnel rode to and from work on a bus. From that day forward, someone was almost certain to remark, when Jerry got on the bus, "Boy, it sure smells like cheese in here".

My family and I were assigned to New Delhi, India from 1993 to 1996. While deciding what to write about those three years in India, I was struck by one overriding recollection - India is the most exotic country in the world! Of course, this is just my opinion, I haven't visited every country in the world, but I can't imagine another one with such rich diversity. Nowhere, in any other country where I have been, have there been so many different types of landscapes and so many different types of people. Sure other countries had differences between city dwellers and those living a more rustic life in the countryside, but these were usually due to educational opportunities and the daily pace of life. I suppose the old Soviet Union was also pretty diverse, but I can't imagine that it topped India. No matter where I went in India, it was very different than everywhere else that I had been before. There was the stark desert with nomads on camels; there were the mountains with snow covered peaks and mountain people; there were the teeming cities such as New Delhi, Bombay and Calcutta with their rich past and promising future; there were the many game parks fully of huge herds of animals. The list went on and on. Even New Delhi was a city of contrasts. There were wide boulevards lined with modern buildings and then there was the old city of Delhi with people swarming the narrow alleyways. When people find out that I lived overseas for 33 years, they often ask me to tell them the best place to visit. Invariably, I say "India". "If you want to go somewhere that is completely different from anywhere else in the world and offers a never-ending variety of sights and sounds, go to India.

My India tour did not start out very well. After leaving Jakarta, my family and I had spent our home leave on the West Coast visiting family. Then, when our home leave time expired, we flew to Washington, D.C. for a few days before proceeding to New Delhi via Frankfurt. As you always do when you come to New Delhi from abroad, we landed after midnight. Because of the late hour, we were taken directly to our new quarters. With the excitement of arriving at a new place, the late hour and, I suppose, some jet lag, we didn't get to bed until after 0300. We had just started to settle down when the doorbell rang. Who would be coming to visit in the middle of the night, we wondered? Proceeding downstairs, I found the duty communicator outside my front door holding a telegram. My father, it said, had passed away while we were enroute to post and this was my notification. As you can imagine, there was no sleep that night as we got in touch with family back home. Although I wasn't able to get back in time for the funeral, within a couple of days I was back on an airplane heading west. New Delhi is almost exactly halfway around the world from the U.S. Hence it is usually faster to go east if you are heading for the East Coast and west if the West Coast is your destination. I spent a few days at home helping my mother and then headed back to New Delhi. Upon arriving, it struck me that I had traveled one and a half times around the world in less than two weeks. I suppose Couriers and some others may have similar travel schedules from time to time, but it isn't something I ever want to repeat. Of course, the circumstances surrounding my travel may have had something to do with that.

Despite the terrible beginning, New Delhi turned out to be a wonderful tour. Thanks in part to IMO Lyle Rosdahl, my family and I saw more of it than we would have had Lyle not been a closet tour guide. Seldom did much time pass before Lyle would plan an excursion to visit a game park or some other area of interest and ask if we wanted to go along. Usually we said "yes" and, when we did, we were always rewarded with a wonderful experience. In fact, it was at Lyle's insistence that, not long before we left India, we accompanied the Rosdahl's to the Jim Corbett National Park for a final opportunity to see a tiger in the wild. We had been on other Jeep safaris hunting for the elusive and quickly disappearing Bengal Tiger, at various game parks around India and, while we had seen numerous tracks, we had never seen a tiger in the flesh. This would be our final opportunity. Corbett, like many other game parks in India, has magnificent herds of numerous types of antelope, deer and many other species of ruminant and flesh-eating animals, large and small. It also has, or had, one of the largest remaining tiger populations left in India. That is why we had come. We had seen the teeming herds of other animals at other game parks. Now it was time to see a tiger in the wild. So, it was with great hope and expectation that we set out in our Jeep that first day in Corbett, only to return late in the afternoon with memories of large animal herds and a beautiful countryside, but no tiger sightings. The second day, however, was different. We had, as always, bounced our way over hill and dale admiring this wild and historic place with its magnificent animal herds and were fully prepared to chalk up another day without a tiger sighting when, my son Kevin shouted "what's that" followed by our guide's shouts of "TIGER, TIGER, TIGER," (over and over). Sure enough, a tiger crossed our path in partial view of our happy group of tiger hunters. Walking across the road, the tiger ambled up the hillside before turning around and looking directly at our jeep. It remained on that hillside watching us for several minutes before disappearing into the deeper jungle. We had done it! All our previous trips to the game parks looking for tiger had been worthwhile. We would now leave India having seen a Bengal tiger in the wild.

I hadn't intended for this article to become a travelogue. I could also write about our trip to the Pushkar camel fair; our pilgrimage to the Dali Lama's mountain stronghold in Dharmsala; the time we stayed at the palace on the lake or the many castles and forts we visited, but that's for another time. So, what to write keeping with the CANDOER theme? How about the chancery building which was, we were told, a work of art. Designed by a famous architect (I've forgotten his name, but I don't think it was Art), it had been classified as an artistic building at some point in its history. I suppose it blended well with its surrounding and met some other standards that allowed it to receive this certification. It was not, however, a practical building in which to work. The roof was open in the center of the building and offices were built around this central core. Directly under the opening was a shallow pool. It sounds good, huh? In the beginning, I'm sure it must have been really nice. Then the opening began to draw ducks and other aviary type wildlife in droves. They liked having a nice peaceful lake upon which to land. With the birds came the inevitable bird dung. Soon, the chancery began to smell more like a stable. To correct this problem, wire mesh was stretched over the opening. This prevented the birds flying into and around the pond but didn't really stop them from sitting on the wire and using it as a convenient outhouse. Still, the bird problem was now manageable and, in recognition of its past glory, someone periodically placed a wooden duck in the pond where it could bob around. It wasn't quite the same, however. It also became traditional with employees at the end of their assignments to New Delhi to wade in the pool before departure. I believe some departing Ambassador began this tradition. This was, they said, another reason to salute this wonderful building with its own indoor pool. Personally, I could never really get behind the idea of wading in the pool and getting your clothes wet. The pond was nice to look at (if not wade in) but the hole in the roof mainly meant that there were heating problems in the winter and cooling problems in the summer.

The chancery was connected to a second Embassy office building by a long tunnel. This building housed some of the administrative offices, the Consular section, the AID Embassy liaison, etc., to name a few. The tunnel was a good thing, I guess, because it obviated the necessity of going outside in the weather when visiting between buildings. Without the tunnel, one could be baked drowned or partially frozen, depending upon the time of year. Consequently, most people used the tunnel. The tunnel, then, was handy, but only after you had been in New Delhi for a few months and learned the route. Until that time, newcomers wandered around the bowels of the building trying to find the entrance. While stumbling around the chancery basement looking for the tunnel mouth, they would sometimes happened upon the Information Program Center (IPC) where I worked. In my experience, it is a bit unusual for the IPC to be located in the basement, far from the front office. Most embassies, where I have been assigned, had the front office and IPC located near each other and usually near the top of the building. There were advantages and disadvantages to being located in the basement. The advantages were better physical security and lower-key working conditions, being out of the public eye. The disadvantages included long cable runs to connect classified computer systems and all the problems associated with living in a basement, including flooding. Actually the basement only flooded twice to my knowledge. Once during a particularly rainy period just prior to my arrival. Apparently, the saturated soil could not hold any more water, so the water decided to join the guys in the IPC. I was told that a team had to be sent to help repair all that had occurred during this flood. Only a few high water marks on the walls were left by the time I arrived. There was another flood in the IPC while I was there, but it didn't originate from without but, instead, came from within. An air-conditioning line in the back room burst during the night and coolant poured from the system into the IPC. It took us several hours to clean up this mess but luckily there was little permanent damage this time. I only mention this incident because it caused me to realize the magnitude of the visa line.

When the early shift communicator arrived at the office a little before 6 in the morning, he immediately called me to report that the back room was flooded and coolant was running down the back room stairs into the rest of the IPC. I quickly put on my oldest clothes and came at a run. Since I lived just across the street in the Embassy compound, it was only a 2-minute journey. At that early hour there were already several hundred Indians lined up at the Consular section, which wouldn't open for another three hours. I knew that the Consular section in New Delhi was one of the busiest in the world but I had never before realized what that meant, exactly. There were obviously people in that line who had been there most of the night. I have been stationed at other visa factories, Seoul, Santo Domingo, etc., but I don't know if people started lining up in the middle of the night in those countries just for the opportunity to speak with a consular officer. As Americans living overseas, we can't really understand the hardships of the "locals". Everyone knows the story of Mother Teresa and the poor of Calcutta. There were clearly millions of desperately poor people in India. But, those people in the Consular line had to be people of means to qualify for immigration. So, why did they want to leave their family, their traditions and a life of relative wealth, for a life fraught with uncertainty in the U.S.? I won't pretend to know the whole answer, but I suppose it had something to do with "the American dream". Now that I'm retired, I'm reminded of those people lined up in the middle of the night every time I see how many Indians there are living in the U.S., at least in my neck of the woods. At some point in their lives they, or one of their immediate family members, were part of the New Delhi visa line (or one like it), hoping to convince a consular officer that they had the means and qualifications to immigrate. They left a land I found exotic and exciting to start over in a strange country, half way around the globe.

I would be remiss if I ended my tale of New Delhi without a brief mention of the Embassy compound, where my family and I lived. I have heard that it was purchased and built with Indian Rupees paid to the U.S. Government, by India, for the settlement of debts and loans. Since the Rupee was not a convertible currency, it could only be spent in India. I think there were several creative ways devised to spend some of those millions of dollars worth of Rupees and one of the best was the building of the compound. It is a self-contained oasis within the sprawling city of New Delhi. The compound has a supermarket, bowling alley, restaurant, swimming pool, snack bar, softball field and other amenities. It also has its own water treatment plant, a very useful thing to have in a country like India. The housing, while not spectacular, was nice. The Embassy is located across a residential street on one side of the compound and the school on the other. There were people, during my stay, who never ventured off the compound (except to walk across the street to work) choosing instead to hide out in this little slice of Americana. Thankfully, I wasn't one of them. I thoroughly enjoyed the many experiences that a visit to India provides. This was, after all, precisely why most of us joined the Foreign Service.

My final assignment with the Department of State was Caracas, Venezuela. For 33 years I had been trying to decide if I should make the Foreign Service a career. After each of my previous 11 postings, I checked with my family to see if we wanted to go somewhere "else" before moving back to the U.S. and settling into a "normal" lifestyle. The answer was always a resounding "yes". Well, maybe not always resounding, but "yes" nevertheless. So, here I was, at my 12th and final assignment, ready to retire, and I hadn't even decided if this should be my career. How could time have passed so quickly? Sure there were several indications that it was time to get on with the rest of my life, and accepting a 13th post certainly seemed to tempt fate. But how could it all be over before I had even decided that it had begun? Nevertheless, when I arrived in Caracas in October of 1996, I knew that this would be my final Foreign Service move. I would like to be able to say that my final tour was exciting and filled with wonder and magnificent accomplishments, but that would be a lie. Truthfully, my nearly three years in Caracas were rather mundane and average. There were some successes at work, to be sure. That made me feel good about my performance (I wasn't just playing out the string), but shouldn't more have happened? After all, this was the final go around. When I rode off into the sunset the summer of 1999, I had an extremely nice going away party and received lots of wonderful and unexpected gifts. People were all smiley and wished me well in my next life, but was that all there was to it? Shouldn't there be fireworks and grand pronouncements when someone calls it quits after a long career? I had seen many others retire over the years and never thought much about it. Normally, I just showed up for the free food and drink. Now, faced with my own retirement, it seemed like it was all ending too quickly. I'm not a person who usually likes the limelight, and I usually prefer to skip the inevitable farewell circuit, if given the choice. This, though, was a little different. This was the big one and it was ending too soon - before I had even decided that it had begun.

Actually, there was one incident that caused some excitement during my time in Venezuela. It was, however, an incident that I could easily have done without. I was robbed at gunpoint! Those who have had similar experiences will understand how much fun that can be. It all seems so simple and easy when it happens in the movies and on television. I'm here (thankfully) to tell you that it's not a bit fun. It happened one evening when, as was my custom, I took our large golden retriever, Sam, out for his nightly walk. Sam demanded to be walked twice each day so my wife usually took him out in the morning, while I was at work, and it was my duty to take him after work. This arrangement had worked very well during our two years in Caracas. Since Caracas was fairly close to the equator, it got dark about the same time each night. So, as usual, dusk was just starting to dim the bright Venezuelan day when Sam and I made our way down the short connecting road from our apartment. This narrow feeder road serviced a couple of large apartment buildings on our part of the hilltop but was normally not very busy. That was a good thing because it was narrow and bordered by high walls. It took a great deal of concentration to traverse this road with a large oblivious dog when cars were whizzing by. Thankful to see no traffic, I walked quickly towards the main road, which proceeded up the hill where Sam preferred to go. Out of the corner of one eye, I (sort of) noticed a car go by on the main road, but I didn't think anything of it. I also didn't think much about the two guys walking toward me, shortly thereafter. My main focus in these situations was to make sure that Sam was under control and didn't eat or scare those with whom he came in contact. In fact, I hardly glanced at them until they were right upon me. In hindsight, I probably should have been concerned. The normal Venezuelans that Sam and I had encountered in the past, had usually been afraid to approach him, and often chose to cross to the other side of the street until he passed. These guys were different, but I never thought about that until it was too late. Upon reaching me, one of them pulled a gun out of his pocket and stuck it in my face. I couldn't tell you the make or model but the barrel looked about three feet across. The bad guys quickly informed me that they wanted my necklace and I, just as quickly, took it off and gave it to them, making sure they knew I would cooperate completely. At this point, the robbery had been so successful that they looked around for more. Luckily, the only other things I had on me were a cheap watch and my wedding band (not much monetary worth but lots of sentimental value). They quickly relieved me of these burdens as well. Pointing me toward a wall, they told me to keep my hands raised and not to move until they were gone. I complied, only too eager to appear to please. Some of you may be wondering what Sam was doing. The dog that everyone he came in contact with feared, or so it seemed, simply milled around impatient to get on with his walk. I suppose he could have known that the bad guys would have shot him if he caused any trouble, but that most certainly was not the case. He couldn't wait to get on with his walk and, after the incident was over (it seemed like it took an hour but it was probably over in less than a minute), he started pulling on his leash to hurry me along. I, on the other hand, had other ideas. I quickly retraced my steps back to the apartment where I called the Regional Security Officer and filled him in on what had happened. Sam's walk that evening consisted of a short stint in the secure inner courtyard of the apartment complex.

Enter the cowboy commandos! At least that's how I think of them. As word of my robbery quickly spread throughout the area apartment guard forces, I was contacted to come out to the front of the apartment complex to discuss the incident. Telling and retelling my story seemed to bring about a purpose to the lives of the militia group charged with guarding the apartments in our area. Mounted on jeeps and with sidearms and shotguns flashing, they strode importantly around giving each other directions. Then, when one of the radios blared, they loaded me in a jeep and we roared down the hill to where they had captured someone, they said, who fit my description of one of the assailants. Screeching up, in a shower of gravel, the militia showed me a poor soul they had in their spotlights with his back up against a wall. His only resemblance to the robbers was his sex. Like them, he was male. I quickly explained that he wasn't one of "them" and, disappointed, my private army loaded me back in the jeep and we roared back up the road to my apartment. I don't think I want to know what would have happened if I had told the militia that the poor guy that they had captured resembled one of the robbers. Anyway, after much more milling and posturing by the guard forces, I finally was able to convince them that I was going back to my apartment. Visibly disappointed, they made a show of looking tough and, after several more calls on their radios, screeched off down the road with tires spinning and antennas waving.

In the aftermath of this incident, we learned that people in the vicinity had been warned, just prior to my nightly walk, to stay off the road - that something was going to happen. That something was, obviously, my robbery. Someone had noticed that I walked Sam at about the same time each evening and that I was wearing a gold necklace that sometimes crept out from under my usual T-shirt. I'm convinced that a guard was given a little reward to phone and report when I was on my way and the rest, as they say, is history. A couple of days later, I accompanied a Foreign Service National (FSN) from the Embassy security office down to a local police station where we filled out the necessary forms and received assurances that the culprits would soon be found and my property returned. I went along with the charade knowing full well that this was Venezuela where minor crimes were seldom solved and, besides, the robbers had made their way back to their waiting car and were long gone minutes after the robbery. I also learned that I had been lucky. A favorite trick of Caracas thieves is to return with you to your apartment. With you in tow, they can also rob your residence and whoever happens to be there at the time. Mostly the incident taught me that material items, no matter how sentimental, aren't very important when your life seems to be in the balance. While we waited at the police station, the FSN told me about his car hijack just a couple of week's prior. It happened on a Friday night when he was returning home from a Marine House function. On the way, he stopped at a downtown gas station. While filling his tank, an assailant walked up to him, in plain sight of the other people at the station, pulled a pistol out of his pocket and told him to get in the back of his (own) Jeep Cherokee. A couple of others, who had been lurking nearby, also jumped in the vehicle and they roared out of the station. At this point, it was lucky that no one at the station called the police. When the local police decide to pursue a stolen vehicle they tend to shoot first and ask questions later. The FSN explained that if that had happened, he wouldn't have made it out of the vehicle alive. As it was, the robbers called a contact on their way out of town and asked two questions. The first question described the vehicle type and model (it was apparently an uncommon model) and asked if it was needed. Assured that they had indeed acquired a vehicle in demand, they asked what they should do with their hostage. Thankfully, they were told to drop him at a town 100 miles from Caracas. Before dropping him off, they made him strip off all his clothes so he wouldn't be vigorous in his attempts to stop them. Eventually, he made his way to a police station where he was given clothes and driven back to Caracas. Stripping their victims is a common practice of Venezuelan car thieves. This happened to Embassy employees at least twice during my tour in Caracas. On both occasions, the hijackings happened to newly arrived U.S. military assistance group members who (unlike other Embassy Americans) were not prohibited from bringing Jeep Cherokees to post. They were warned that these were the vehicle of choice for thieves but chose to ignore the warning. Consequently, they soon found themselves wandering around town without their clothes and without their vehicle.

The one thing people who have lived in Caracas usually remember most is the good weather. Located in the tropics and in a mountain valley at approximately 3,000 feet meant that the temperature remained in the low 80's all year around. Sure there were tropical rainstorms from time to time but they mainly served to wash away the trash and grime that had piled up since the last rain. Of course there was the big flood that hit during a particularly extended rainy period shortly after our departure, but that was a "100 year event," made worse by the rapid unfettered growth of the area. Most of the loss of life and destruction of property was down the mountain nearer the coast. Much of the carnage happened in the numerous barrios built precariously on hillsides between Caracas and the Mediterranean. They were simply swept away in the resulting landslides. The loss of life and property was enormous but the sun is still shining and the weather beautiful. I'm also sure that many of the barrios have been rebuilt and await the next natural disaster to sweep them away.

Now that I think about it, I also remember the good times going fishing. Particularly catching Peacock bass at Lake Camatagua, a large reservoir supplying water to the Caracas area. Lake Camatagua is located 2 or 3 hours of white-knuckle driving from Caracas. What fun! There are few pleasure in life better than hooking an 8-pound Peacock bass and muscling it into the boat before the piranhas take their share. There were times when we dallied too much and wound up pulling in half a bass. Other times, the piranhas would strike our lure necessitating that we pull them into the boat and carefully (and I mean carefully) remove them from our poles. The lake piranhas were quite large and, we were told, did not bother humans. This was apparently true because there were always people swimming in the lake, though none of us "gringos" ever wanted to test this theory by falling out of the boat or going for a swim, something many of the locals seemed to have no problem doing. A look at the remains of a half-eaten Peacock bass that had only been on the hook for a minute or two convinced me, at least, that piranhas were not something to be fooled with and I treated them accordingly. But, the piranhas did nothing to dampen our enthusiasm for fishing at Camatagua.

I started writing this article about my final Foreign Service assignment with no real excitement. Sure it was my final tour but, as I said earlier, it had seemed to end all too quickly. In addition, I felt violated by the guys who stuck a gun in my face and took my stuff. Did I want to dredge up these memories again by putting them on paper? But, as I wrote about these feelings, a funny thing happened. Many other memories rose to the surface that I hadn't thought about in a while. Good memories. And, I think I now understand what makes a career in the Foreign Service so special. Memories: memories of past assignments; memories of people known and friends made; memories of sights sounds and smells that I wouldn't have experienced had I not had a chance to live in 12 foreign countries and visit many others, and, finally, memories of the interesting countries and events that helped shape the lives of my family and me and made us the people we are today. Every time I glance at one of the pictures or plaques on my Foreign Service wall in my new home, it reminds me of some story. Talks with old F.S. colleagues evoke similar memories. Do people who didn't have our advantage of travelling the world have these types of memories when they retire? Maybe, but somehow I doubt it. I know I wouldn't trade these experiences for anything and I now think I understand what the sum of 33 years and 12 different overseas assignments means. It means I have a world of memories to last me as I sit on my rocking chair during my old age. I can't wait!