So last Friday I was invited to a "very casual" dinner at the Ambassador's Residence along with a few embassy staff. Ambassador Harrington has been in country a couple months now after a (shock!) long, drawn out confirmation process not-so-helpfully "facilitated" by those obstructionist GOP losers in Congress.
The Ambassador's residence happens to be right next to the Prime Minister's house (not sure which came first), and just down the street from the huge project that is building a new Lesotho State House - courtesy of the Chinese (they're taking over, I tells ya!). The residence and grounds are certainly nice enough, although I still prefer my newer/more "mod" house I've already bragged enough about (I live about 3-4 blocks away). There was a lot of discussion/disparagement during the evening of the furniture in the house. Apparently, it's quite a THING to update furniture in an Ambassador's residence, and supposedly can't happen except every 18 years. There was some debate, however, if one of the very ugly, very floral, very dated couch/loveseat combos was even THAT new.
Dinner itself, and the evening in general, was nice enough, although rather unremarkable on the whole. We had a "Lesotho style" dinner of beef stew, salad, and either rice or pap. Pap is the local concoction I just can't eat - it's too bland. It's basically a maize meal porridge or gruel cooked in water. Seriously, gruel? Pap? Why would I want to eat anything named like that? At least it isn't as watery and disgusting looking as most of the gruelesque porridges they often ate in China (shudder). For dessert, there was chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream.
During cocktail hour, dinner, and after, talk was mostly about travel, State Department kvetching, and any other random, shared experiences. Besides me, Debra (the Peace Corps Dir. of Programming & Training) was there, so I wasn't the only "non-Stater" - but the other 6 folks were. I was definitely the "noob" in terms of Africa travel so couldn't contribute much there, and there was also a lot of DC talk, since even Debra had lived/worked there for some time. Finally, there was also a surprisingly long discussion about Arizona, of all places. The Ambassador spent a fair amount of time there (his ex wife and kids are there now), other folks had happened to live and/or work there, etc. It was kind of weird as the talk went Safari, cheetah, Arizona, DC restaurant, Swaiziland, Lion, Flagstaff, DC neighborhoods, Kruger, and so on.
At the end of the day, while it was nice to go and schmooze, I would rank the evening as pretty much smack dab in the middle of average compared to other dinner parties I've been to - which means kind of a let down since I expected just a wee bit more from an (ooooh) ambassador's dinner.
In other news, this past week I had my first "confrontation" with local authorities when a Sheriff and Lesotho Mounted Police officer presented themselves at the PC Compound, demanded to see the Director of Mgmt. & Ops., and told me they were there to serve legal papers. I politely informed them that they needed to serve any/all legal papers to the Embassy, at which point the Sheriff told me he'd been to the Embassy and been directed to us. This was for a lawsuit from a third country national Indian Doctor who had agreed to lease us his former residence as office space, but then dragged his feet for a year on making it available until PC HQ in DC finally put the kibosh on it and told us to look elsewhere. Even though he has no legal standing, he found a star-humping local lawyer who thinks he can get big bucks from the U.S. gov't. Not gonna happen. And due to the convoluted diplomatic rules here, even though PC is semi-independent from the Embassy, we are still "technically" part of the Mission, and thus any legal proceedings need to go through the Embassy/State Department.
ANYWAY, this Sheriff wasn't having any of it and informed me that he was authorized to confiscate four of our vehicles. Honestly, it was very hard for me not to laugh at the whole thing. Not at this Sheriff, who was very serious, but just at the idea. I thought, "Oh, sure, let me just go get you the keys so you and this one other dude can drive off with four of our vehicles." So I politely but firmly tell him I can't turn over any vehicles, which he ignores and proceeds to rattle off the plate numbers of the vehicles he's definitely going to confiscate.
It was one of those moments where time slowed down. As he rattled off the numbers - 21, 23, 24, and 26 - I was thinking, "Oh, you're definitely not taking 21 (our Rav4), that's my favorite; hmmm, nope, 23 is Wendy's favorite (the Country Director), oh please, you can have 26 (our little beat up pick up)." But all I said was, "Look, I know you're just doing your job, but I'm just doing mine and I'm telling you right now that I am not letting you take any of our vehicles." Our (unarmed) security guards are watching all this with a mixed look of "Wow" and "Are we supposed to really stop the armed Sheriff?" and "This is pretty exciting/scary!"
Finally, the Sheriff says, "We will go back to the Embassy, as they suggested, at 2:00 p.m., but if we receive no satisfaction, we will be back to confiscate these 4 vehicles." When I told him they wouldn't be allowed back in the compound to get them, he stated they would then "look for them on the street" and confiscate them there. I then instructed the guards to not open the gate/allow anyone in the compound until further notice, and that the particular vehicles listed were not to leave the compound under ANY circumstances while I then repeated the same to our General Services guys/fleet manager.
I then called the G.S. guy at the Embassy and whined about them not doing their job/"protecting" us and to his credit he admitted that, as he was new, he wasn't aware of the whole story, but would see about straightening it out. The next day, Sheriff and cop are back at the gate, but the security guards were true to directions and wouldn't even let them in the gate/compound. I reiterated (through the phone at the guard gate) that they needed to go to the Embassy. They said they would, but then proceeded to go down the street a bit and wait on the corner and see if we'd leave with one of the vehicles. When I had to go out later on an errand with our General Svcs. Asst., we were sure to take a different vehicle (#11 - a Land Cruiser), and while they glared at us as we went by, they saw the tag and did nothing.
Long and short of it, the Embassy finally got the Ministry here to pull off the Sheriff, after an exchange of comically formal letters back and forth full of diplomatic niceties and formal protocols about how these things need to proceed, etc. So no exciting firefight and attempted confiscation. Too bad. :)
