Some time ago someone asked me to describe a day of my life as
a Foreign Service Officer. The idea being that clearly our lives are riveting
behind those high Embassy walls. They are, I assure you! With the risk of
millions deciding to take the FSOT immediately upon reading this, here it goes.
I wake up at 7 am in my excellent paid-for apartment with
zero daylight, poorly built windows which allow any given amount of noise and
dust to creep in all the time and cause constant allergic outbreaks for the
Diplomat and sore throat for me. The Diplomat is typically already out,
playing tennis at the American Club since 6 am. Some people are weird like
that. While I try to pretend that I can actually sleep until 7.15 am, Son
arrives and throws himself on top of me screaming, “MAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMA”
gleefully. In the face of so much love and demand, I rise. Cranky, slow, half-asleep,
eyes pretty much shut, I debate whether to make him breakfast like a decent
mother would do or to go about my own business and let the nanny do that once
she comes in at 7.45 am. My bad-mommyness prevails and I go to brush my teeth instead.
While I rinse my teeth with the wonderful Bangladeshi arsenic-laid water, I
start to feel bad and go into Son’s room and choose his clothes for the day. I
dare him to come and get dressed in my bedroom to see who will win and get
dressed first. Son is all about winning these days, so that is a priceless
method. While I get dressed, he chases me around the room trying to smack my butt
while I pretend to be angry. Ahh, nothing beats quality mother-son time in the
morning.
At 7.45 am our lovely housekeeper waltzes in, fresh as a
cucumber, and soon Son is being spoon-fed his breakfast while I am not watching.
Then when I walk by and grumble about it, she hastily pretends to scold him and
makes him eat by himself while I am still around. It is a battle I have long lost. The Diplomat then
comes back, and tries to convince me that he will only be 10 mins and so I
should wait for him to go to the office together. As a result 25 mins later, I stand
in the corridor, looking and feeing exceedingly irritated. Finally, he is ready and as we close the door on the way out, Son starts screaming that he hasn’t
said good-bye and rushes to us. Because we are already running late, we plant
superficial kisses on him, while he plants a really nice oily post-breakfast one
on my clean dress. I leave in consternation.
A dusty 5-minute drive later through the diplomatic zone, we enjoy sights like endless construction, a stray cat, 4 men peeing in the
gutter, women raising massive clouds of choking dust in the air while doing
something that might be mistaken for sweeping the streets, and a bunch of construction
workers in various stages of nakedness washing their teeth and bodies with
water sprouting from a rubber hose whose origin is better left unknown. I know
that in some more colorful posts in Africa, officers play bingo on the way to
the office – checking off chickens, goats, peeing men and similar fauna. If we
get stuck in the traffic which collects literally a block away from the
Embassy, we leave the car and walk. My high-heeled shoes are never amused. The
heaps of rickshaw-wallahs and general random bystanders, however, are. At least
someone is.
We flash our Embassy IDs and enter the compound at the
entrance where all visa applicants line up. We are stared at intensely by the
hundred or so people gathered there. Awkward. We stare back for good measure
which creates confusion. We then go inside our awesome consular section, where we
are greeted with a blast of freezing A/C air and the chatter of our local staff
doing intake from the visa applicants. I happily greet my colleagues and plant
my butt on my particularly non-ergonomic chair, ready to face an awesome day of
issuing visas. At various points during those first 30 mins at work, we all procure
coffee, tea, soda, fatty breakfasts and finally settle down to some incredible
admin work before the visa interviews begin. ADMIN WORK. Man, if there ever was
good entertainment that is IT. OK, I am lying.
Finally, it is TIME and we all head to the interviewing
windows. This is my favorite part and has single-handedly allowed me to get to
know Bangladeshis as a nation and as individuals. I recommended consular work
to everyone – it gives you the opportunity to talk to people every day, to
learn their culture, norms and styles, and to speak the language on a wonderful
street/village level. At 12.30, we take a brief but satisfying lunch break in the Embassy
cafeteria, where we get to meet our equally erudite colleagues from the other sections
and exchange playful, intellectual banter about world affairs – you know,
diplomat stuff. OK, I am lying again. Typically we discuss our latest diarrhea issues,
internet and electricity outages, the outrageously dugout diplomatic zone by
the water company, trashy shows that we watch on Hulu, various sporting results
from college basketball or football games no one gets to watch now, or how
cheap we managed to buy this or that. After this refreshing interlude, I rush
to the interviewing window invigorated and ready for some more. OK, not
invigorated. More like struggling not to fall asleep after eating a huge mound
of overly buttered rice and some other fried substance that went with it. Once
we are done interviewing, we go to our desks to work on “projects” and for some
more fantastic admin work. If I am lucky, I can go to a student outreach event,
or give women-empowerment talk to high schoolers, or even write a
well-researched, pivotal, thought-provoking and policy-setting cable that will
be read by at least 7 people in the entire Department of State. OK, maybe 4 on
a slow day.
On some days, I go to teach English to the Embassy drivers
and cleaning staff. If you ever get an opportunity like this in your Mission, I
strongly urge you to do it – few things are more rewarding than teaching eager students
for free and learning bits and pieces of their lives. On others, I will run to
the Commissary to replenish our wine supplies. I generally do not shop there
for groceries even though I consider the place quite well stocked. I always
feel like I am cheating on an exam if I do that – in other words, if I am told
to live in Bangladesh, I should try to live off the local markets. Unfortunately,
as ambitious as that sounds, it is also kinda impossible so I do break down and
buy really nice American stuff from the Commissary (think Italian pork sausage!).
But I draw the line at milk and bread. I just can’t bring myself to buy a box
of funny-tasting milk for $5 or eat bread that has been frozen for who knows
how long and tastes just as papery as the local stuff but is 3 times more
expensive.
Finally, I am on my way home. Since the A/C in my car is broken again, I would have to navigate the dusty dugout streets of the dip
zone in the late afternoon 110-degree humid heat with my windows rolled down. My
driver, bless his heart, knows not to talk to me as I relax in the back and
swear audibly at the incompetence of the other drivers. Somehow we navigate the massive
holes dug out practically by hand by hundreds of workers carrying out some
insane modernizing project of the water company. Again, I remain amazed at the
extent of manual labor – not only are the massive gaping holes dug out by hand
(imagine three men holding a huge metal poke pointed at the asphalt of the
street, while a forth one is pounding it with a heavy hammer – slowly, the
street covering is broken down and torn apart by hand; you can’t believe it
until you actually watch it), but they are also later on filled by hand, one
jute basket of soil at a time.
I come home, ringing the bell madly because I want to hear
the scrambling feet of Son who lets out a real Apache shriek and jumps into my
open arms. It is tough to perform this in 5 inch heels but fun to try every
day. My housekeeper flashes her usual 24-carat smile and ensures me that Son has
been “reel gut boy too-day, madam!” and then continues on to give me a full account
on his eating for the day – key information given that Son looks like a mosquito
and wears pants 2 sizes smaller for his age. After these pleasantries, she
promises to come back in 3 hours to babysit while the Diplomat and I go on to
yet another party or event. Yup, this day has only just began.
