28 Jun Botswana — Fourth of July at the Embassy

At our embassies overseas Fourth of July falls, naturally enough, during the last week of June. Or, if the ambassador is otherwise engaged, the third week. Sometimes even, one hears stories, the second week.

This may have something to do with why foreigners seem to have developed the same healthy suspicion of our government that Americans hold, but there’s no way around it. The Fourth of July is a federal holiday and all the people grilling hamburgers for the guests, or sticking toothpicks into tiny hotdogs, or making their way through the crowd with trays of champagne, or crackers with little dabs of something or other dolloped on top, are going to be on overtime if the Fourth of July falls on the fourth of July. Nobody makes ambassador without having more sense than to pull a trick like that, so the festivities get moved up a bit.

Some embassies don’t even appear to pay for the little hotdogs and champagne, or the hamburgers and crackers and dollops of whatever it is that’s dolloped onto the crackers. At those embassies, guests are greeted with Golden Arches and Coca-Cola signs and the logos of whichever local businesses want to keep on the good side of America.

THIS FOURTH OF JULY BROUGHT TO YOU BY

McDONALDS

PROUD SPONSOR OF THE AMERICAN DREAM

Over 50 embassies served

or something like that. I forget the exact wording.

There’s a lot of security at these events. In Botswana, armed guards stand at high alert. Entire streets are closed. Lanes and alleys and sidewalks are filled with people you wouldn’t think would be armed because what you thought they’d be were street sweepers or vegetable ladies. Uniformed Security patrol inside the embassy compound, keeping a very visible eye on things. Plainclothes people you aren’t supposed to think are Security look at you over little triangle-shaped sandwiches with the edges cut off. Also, there’s Lawyer Luke.

Lawyer Luke is a big, prosperous-looking Motswana and very pro-American, at least on the Fourth of July. He is, in all probably, just as pro-French on Bastille Day, and pro-Chinese at moon parties.

Lawyer Luke has friends in high places. “Good friends,” he told me as he slipped me his card. “I’m expensive,” he gave me a knowing look, “but I’m worth it because I always win.” For a country with no tolerance for corruption, this was refreshing to hear.

Lawyer Luke also has connections with the Peace Corps or, at least he once had. “I got one of your volunteers out of trouble,” he told me when he found out that Peggy was the country director. “The scanner at the airport spotted an ostrich egg in her luggage.”

I could see where that might have been a problem, once. Ostriches were a big part of the national patrimony. At Independence the country had three things going for it. Lion sperm, ostriches and cows. The lions are the most robust in the world, don’t require any upkeep, and vials of their sperm go for tens of thousands of dollars at zoos. Given how easy it is to locate lions in Botswana, I’m guessing most of those dollars go to the cost of labor to collect the sperm. And, perhaps, to workers comp.

The cows are the tastiest in the world and don’t require much more upkeep than the lions. Mostly, they just roam around in the bush eating thorns, and the new country had a thirty-year contract to send pure, organic, thorn-fed beef to the European Economic Community. The ostriches were the finest in the world, too. Botswana wasn’t clear how to make money off ostriches, but the birds had a prominent spot in the country’s economic future, everybody knew that.

And, then, they didn’t.

Somehow, a clutch of ostrich eggs wound up in Texas and, if Botswana is ostrich country, Texas is ostrich heaven. It’s as hot and as dry as the Motherland, only better. There aren’t any lions in Texas. Like proud immigrants everywhere, ostriches loved their new home and, in no time, there were more ostriches in Texas than in the Kgalagadi and the bottom fell out of ostrich futures in Botswana. If Texans ever find out about cows, Botswana will be in real trouble.

When the government learned about the ostriches, they slammed the barn door. Nowadays, ostrich eggs are as highly controlled as ivory, maybe more so. A border post might overlook a bit of ivory, especially if you seem like you might be a Chinese syndicate, but not ostrich eggs. Get caught with an ostrich egg, and your visa’s going to get extended because you won’t be going home any time soon. You’ll be busting rocks in Botswana.

“She tried to tell the police the egg wasn’t any good,” Lawyer Luke said. “She’d had it on her windowsill for two years.”

“Two years?” the cops said. “That just makes it all the worse.”

“Besides,” she tried again, “they’ve already got more ostrich eggs than they can use in Texas. How could it possibly make any difference if I . . . ?”

“Don’t talk to us about Texas,” the police said as they slammed the door of her cell. Lucky for her, Lawyer Luke had friends in high places.

“I had her out within six months,” he said. “Expensive, but worth it.” Then drifted off in search of someone else who might be secretly considering smuggling a dead egg out of the country.

An hour or so into the celebration, the Marines marched in. The entire contingent, all four of them. And they were looking fine. There’s nothing like Marines in full dress-blue splendor, eighteen and nineteen and twenty-year–olds carrying Old Glory, and the Marine flag with a hundred battle ribbons streaming from the top, to make an American in a foreign country wipe away tears.

Then, off to the side, the National Anthem fired up. An African-American man from the south, Alabama, maybe. Or Florida, singing in the most resonant, the most moving, voice.

I’d never heard it sung that way before, or thought of it like I did when he sang. Not as an ode to a crazy, ancient war, but as a hymn to courage, to endurance, to making it through the long night, to still being there in the morning.

It made me think of the men I knew when I was a boy, of my teachers, the milkman, the barbers who’d clipped my hair and the clerks who’d fitted me for shoes, men who’d gone off to Europe and the Pacific so that, decades later, I could stand at one of our embassies in a foreign land, hearing our National Anthem still sung.

It made me think of my Uncle Robert conning a shot-up submarine, unable to submerge across thousands of miles of Japanese-held waters to safety in Australia.

It made me think of my cousin John who died near the Ch’ongch’on River defending South Korea from hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers Douglas MacArthur swore weren’t there.

It made me think of my college buddy Jerry Hunnicutt who disappeared over the Red River in North Vietnam, trying to bomb a bridge he knew was too heavily defended to ever be bombed.

It made me think of Margaret Boone who lost her husband attacking the same bridge and, forty years later, still hadn’t gotten over it.

It made me think of my nephew Luke in Afghanistan.

It made me think of Sid Gofarth and Gary Kinslow and Jason Cook and the men I served with in Vietnam.

It made me think of Peggy’s dad, force-marched through blizzards in one of the worst winters of modern times when the Germans wanted to get him and the other POWs away from Stalag Luft III before the Russians came.

I was still thinking about them when the ambassador launched into a short speech about the Republic of Botswana, and what an extraordinary country it is. She was right about that, and everybody knew it. Then she lifted her glass in toast to His Excellency, President Festus Mogae, and everybody yelled, “Pula,” and lifted their glasses and drank to President Mogae.

After that, the Minister of Foreign Affairs got up and he called America “First Democracy,” because we were, and “First Friend” because we were first in line to recognize Botswana when the Union Jack was lowered and the blue, black and white flag was raised. Then he talked about what an example we had been to the world, and a beacon of freedom, and lifted his glass in toast to His Excellency, President George W Bush.

Of the hundreds of people there, only fifteen or twenty lifted their glasses with him. Nobody yelled Pula. Not even our own diplomats, most of whom held their glasses steadfastly to their sides and their eyes as stony-faced as the eyes of the diplomats from governments who never drink to our president.

Maybe that said something good about our country, that we’re so free that even our diplomats on foreign shores can refuse to toast our president on the birthday of our nation, I don’t know. It certainly says something pretty surly about the diplomats who refused to drink to their own president, and I was ashamed.