Letter to an old friend

Bumpy flight across the Andes

                                   

 By Pierre Diétrichsen                                                                               

 Pretoria, 11 July 1994

Dear Fred,

In the "decade of the students" when I finished school, we promised to keep contact. Well. I failed you on that one! But I remembered our conversations and here I am, about to make up for almost three decades.

Nothing came of my thoughts about becoming a journalist. Even less came of my family's wishes about medicine, although it was close! Teaching appealed to me, but probably largely because of the long holidays and the prospect of many young female colleagues. So I passed through Voortrekkerhoogte and ended up doing economics, political science, law and other such grand-sounding stuff which launched me into the Union Buildings. No, no, not the Archives, but something a bit more active and modern, the mecca of the pinstriped suit brigade at Foreign Affairs. I must admit that some of the "chiefs" reminded me of archives, but that was only until I had attended my first cocktail, if you know what I mean!

Fred, at this point you may consider skipping the next page or three if you prefer to go straight to the last paragraph where I give you news about my health and family. If you like the idea of getting confused about the sanity of an old friend, read on! For a start, I must confess that I studied South of the Orange and even liked it. Experienced a lot more than red wine and liberal politics!

My first days and weeks at Foreign Affairs brought all sorts of new concepts about management and organisation to the surface. Not to mention totally new shorthand peculiar to Foreign Affairs. Names and ranks took on a special place in one's thinking. If my memory serves me well, my rank, like that of Derek, Andre, Danie, Bossie and others, was FSO grade seven. They also called us cadets but relax, we didn't wear uniforms. The FSO was for Foreign Service Officer which I sort of liked because of the "traditional" sound to it. I found out that the really important people were the Third and Second Secretaries who had had one posting abroad already. They had smart cars and flashy clothes while the older guys, Counsellors and Under- Secretaries all seemed a bit distant, as if they were always watching the first floor!

I was let into the secret by my boss, who in a moment of weakness, explained that those middle-rankers with a lot of self-confidence would visit the men's room on that floor at strategic intervals in the hope of bumping into the Secretary, the big chief, with the hope of voicing their wishes, and especially the urgency of their wishes about postings, to the boss. Certainly an original in corporate communications!

I mentioned shorthand. This covered a vast field. At first I had to find out what was meant by "the bag". "a cable", "a note", "an OTP", "Brand", "Hans", "Boy" "Stoney", "Charlie". "an immediate", "a minute" and lots of others. Contrary to what you may think, the bag did not refer to a particular person; it was the diplomatic mail bag in really fancy language, the pouch we sent to Embassies abroad. A cable, a note and a minute had very little to do with ropes, money or time but everything with our peculiar way of writing letters to others or to each other. The "immediate" was a short letter that was already late, sent to an Ambassador abroad like a telegramme but on the "one time pad", or OTP, in secret code using a page of figures etc. only once.

I mentioned a few magic names. First names were normally used in whispered tones to imply a warm personal relationship with the Secretary, the Deputies or our own Under-Secretary. Not to mention the head of personnel and administration section. A most interesting practice still common and I fear that I am now also part of the crowd whispered about. Before I forget, I should mention the Cadet Action Committee (please avoid abbreviations, especially the Afrikaans one).

Cadets had a constant need to socialise and the Committee had a heavy responsibility to organize affordable and sufficiently exciting meetings and outings. Needless to say we frequently had "liquidity" problems linked to excessive consumer patterns! Long before the fashionable "bosberaad" was invented, we had them in Magoebaskloof, Fountains and elsewhere. Some people called our outings cadet training and, with hindsight, training it was!

Well Fred, this is warning number two. You may skip to the last page.  I shall never know.... if you are bored or confused. I am about to tell you about my first and other postings abroad. Stoney called me one day to tell me I had five weeks to get to Lima in Peru to open a new Consulate General. Now I had a pretty good idea where it was, but absolutely no idea why I was to go there. I was working with international organisations, money people like the IMF and atomic energy, so I had hopes of Paris, Geneva or Vienna. I even studied French. But I was soon warned not to expect such logic. After all, I was a bachelor and would probably understand the need to leam Spanish much sooner than married colleagues!

So I went. My first stop was Rio de Janeiro where, with some luck, I landed around Carnival time. I was as poor as only a cadet on first posting could be. My first colleague to introduce me to the wonder world of the Latinos, was the Consul, Rusty. Massive steaks were consumed with much "cerveza" (Castle in disguise) at 10pm Rio time which meant 4 am the next day for my system the first of many 20 hour days. I was most impressed with the ability of the taxi drivers to take a Beetle around a comer on two wheels while watching the local samba schools performing on the pavements in 35 degree weather with suitably absent clothing! Really confusing was the absence of colour-coded beaches or pubs.

The start of my real education: My arrival in Lima was something. After a most bumpy ride across the Andes in an old 707, I arrived in Lima at about 2 am. The drive to town convinced me that I was on the wrong side of the Sahara. Tourist brochures had not warned me about the desert on the Pacific coast, only promises about the Amazon and the lost city of the Incas. In due time I found both and I absorbed the long history of the nation of Incas and Spaniards. The offspring of the conquered and the conquerors. They had built impressive churches and museums and even preserved pre-Inca sites. I spent hours analysing values new to me.

I understood the industrial revolution but was confused by the Latin American revolution  ill-defined but a passionate subject at every get-together. Sometimes the enemy was a brother or the large Embassy around the corner or some other vague "big brother". But in between, I became absorbed by other passions such as "futbol", bullfights and the search for accommodation! Two experiences from those days are still rather fresh in my mind. Some three months after my arrival, I saw a picture in the newspapers of a ship sinking dramatically outside the port of Matarani after mild storm damage aggravated by paper pulp absorbing water rapidly and expanding. While staring at the picture, a restlessness grabbed hold of me until I realised why; that ship was carrying my few worldly possessions to Lima! Needless to say, I was even poorer than before - ever heard of an insurance company blaming you for "under-insurance"?

The other experience was far more entertaining. Due to a case of Lima bronchitis I was to receive a few injections. I soon found out that local practice called for the patient to buy the medicine and then to find a nurse or chemist willing to do the punishing. At the recommendation of the hotel I called home, I visited a nurse nearby.

While waiting for the process of sterilization of needles to be completed on an ancient primus stove, I got the impression that the "waiting room" of the "consulting rooms" was rather homely and that the other waiting "patients" knew each other rather well. A few minutes later I was required to expose my appropriate parts for some needle target practice. All efforts to have the experience on my arm failed, it had to be on the softer extremities of the lower body.

 I also failed to convince the "corporal" to have the exercise in a next room as it turned out to be the only room in the apartment. The other "patients" present turned out to be family and friends there for an afternoon snort. They got more than they bargained for and this was evident from the heated conversation that took place. The company I had included a number of sisters, aunts and nieces and to this day I wonder what exactly caused the heated debate. Maybe a small fortune exchanged hands as the town was known to have a fondness for gambling!

Fred, I have some more interesting stories to tell you about those days. For the moment family duty calls and I shall have to end here until I hear from you. As it is, you probably have an attack of irritation about my severe case of tunnel vision, something that eventually afflicts the FSOs  After all we all believe there is more to life than Loftus and braai. Let me hear about your few decades. My wife and three daughters are fine but I must hurry to start preparing our afternoon anti-malaria medicine, as it is, the Boeing has just passed over our abode!

Cheers

Pierre Dietrichsen