Ed, Management Officer
I'm Ed and I'm a Management Officer.
It was my first tour and I was assigned to Duala, Cameroon, in West Africa. And I was a Management Officer…and it was pretty interesting because I'd been in the job for a year, and as a Management Officer, you do a whole bunch of duties, but a big part of my job was as, was handling shipping. I get a call from the embassy saying that I was going to get a shipment from the Smithsonian in Washington, and it was supposed to be a statue, and we were to return it.
And I learned the story here, and it belonged to a traditional society in the rural part of western Cameroon in the grassland area near the Nigerian border. And it belonged to a kingdom and a king — it was a traditional king — from a former country called Kom, and this object was called the Afo-A-Kom. It meant that it belonged to the Kom — this is where the traditional king got his authority, his cultural authority. So the deal was we had to return this to the king of Kom. So, I put it all back together and the next day, I had a consulate vehicle and myself, my wife and the Consul General and a driver. We took off for western Cameroon… and as we all get close to the village of Kom, we start seeing the road lined with all these people. And people are drumming and they're singing and in every village, there were a couple of guys with homemade muskets made from the driveshaft of a Peugeot 504, which is partially hollow and filled with black powder and set off great noise and a lot of smoke. There was a big celebration that the Afo-A-Kom was coming home. The whole region was turning out to see it.
And the fawn received us, and we were still a ways away, and some of his envoys came up and whispered to me that this is a patriarchal society and only males can be in the immediate surroundings of the king. So, I went up to see the king. Now I was forbidden to touch him, so I didn't shake hands or anything, but I made a little speech. "I'm proud to be here on behalf of the United States government, and return this important and sacred object to you."
And so, he was very pleased at this, and I was instructed that I would get to drink schnapps from the hand of the king. Okay. Couldn't touch him. A bottle of schnapps came out and somebody poured it into the right hand of the king, and it dribbled out, and I had to drink the dribbles — which I did, and not very much.
And the king and the rest of us went around to the front of the palace and there was my wife and the consul general, who were waiting the respectful distance away. And I was told I was to be honored by the king and made an ambassador to his court.
And I thought that was pretty special " and I also thought it was pretty special that after just one year in the Foreign Service, somebody decided to make me an ambassador.