For the first time in a while, I have a break in travel and have been enjoying the routine of being at post for a bit. This month marks the beginning of the heavy transfer season that happens every summer in the Foreign Service. What this basically means is a large portion of the American staff at the embassy, along with their families will be departing post. Most will head to other countries across the globe or back to HQ in D.C. One of the primary reasons we switch countries every few years is to avoid clientitis. Clientitis is essentially a phenomenon where individuals start to identify more with their host country than their own, often referred to as “going native”. Whether or not this is truly a thing is up for debate, but it was definitely enough of a concern during the Nixon administration that since then, it’s pretty hard to stay at a single foreign assignment for longer than 4 years. Mandatory home leave between posts also plays a big role in making sure diplomats kiss the soil of the motherland and acts as a reminder of the country and people we represent.
What this practically means for my family and I is a lot of close friends we have made since arriving will be leaving. It’s a bitter sweet feeling, and to be blunt, nothing bonds people together more than living in a hardship post like Nouakchott. I’m happy my friends will be moving on, often to positions with greater responsibility (a testament to the quality we have here and the value the department places on good work in difficult places), but saying goodbye is never easy, and this lifestyle has a lot of goodbyes. This applies to everyone, including my daughter that will be saying goodbye to some of her closest friends at post.
While sad, so far the experience has also meant meeting lots of new and great people. The individuals that came to post during the winter cycle have been great folks, and I have no doubt this will continue into the summer. It also will give us a little taste of what it will be like next summer when it will be my turn say goodbye and head to another post. This is going to be an annual cycle that we are going to have to get used to.
One weird thing that I never considered would be a thing, is people departing post also often have a lot of things they would rather just unload, especially consumable food goods that won’t survive a transfer. This has resulted in this sort of weird feeding frenzy of officers trying to claim items from departing individuals. It was weird how excited I got when someone decided to hand over 2 liters of low sodium soy sauce, but that’s what the foreign service does to people. In a years time I guess I will be contributing to this circle of life.
Speaking of next summer, soon I’ll have my 2nd tour bid list and will have a little bit more clarity in where we will be moving. I’ll go into it more in another post, but basically by next month I will know where we are headed. It’s going to be nice to have a year long heads up to plan, versus the 6 weeks I had when moving to Mauritania. Interesting times. –Nick
