Read Online Outpost: Life on the Frontlines of American Diplomacy: A Memoir by Christopher R. Hill - Free Book Online

Mother Teresa spoke softly but directly. She thanked me for the food assistance from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) that was to be given to the orphanages. She apologized for not having filled out all the forms, explaining that her main oversight indeed came from above, as she humorously pointed herfinger up in the air. She asked if when we took back our embassy from the Italians, would we continue to store her medications for her clinic. I wasn’t going to be the first person in the world to say no to Mother Teresa, and so I promptly agreed. Her assistant interrupted to ask if we would build a new gate in the back of the compound. “We can talk about that,” I responded. I then asked Mother Teresa if she could do me the favor of meeting one of our transport planes bringing in food for Albanians and personally accept a pallet of canned products for her orphanage. She agreed.
    The next morning I went out to the airport and met the C-141, a large, four-engine jet, whose cargo was being unloaded. I explained to the crew chief, based in McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, to expect a VIP. A few minutes later, a small white jeep pulled up to the plane. The aircraft crew stopped their activities and stared in disbelief as Mother Teresa, riding shotgun, slowly descended from the vehicle and approached the aircraft. All the crew members dropped to one knee in her presence. She went among them, giving small Virgin Mary medallions to each of them.
    The pilot, a diminutive woman in a flight suit, her red hair pulled back in a tight bun, invited her on board. Mother Teresa slowly climbed the three or four steps of the ladder, and on entering the aircraft looked at the enormous cargo bay, telling the pilot, “This plane is too big to fly.” The pilot assured her that was not the case, whereupon Mother Teresa said, “All the same, I will say a prayer.” She stood in the hatchway, clasped her hands together, and prayed silently. The rest of us, though somewhat less anxious about the plane’s capabilities, did the same. Never having seen anything quite like this in my life, and concerned whether anyone would ever believe me that this extraordinary moment which had many of us near tears had actually happened, I slowly backed out of the hatchway and took a picture from outside. The photo of Mother Teresa silhouetted in the hatchway of a MAC aircraft would later make its way from me to the USAID assistant administrator, Carol Adelman, to the office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, and on to many offices andpublic areas of the Military Airlift Command. It symbolized, in 1991, a more gentle and optimistic moment for the United States, when there seemed to be no end to the capacity of our country to rise to the occasion.
    What I was doing in Tirana, Albania, many of my colleagues were doing over the vast regions of the former Soviet Union, now being divided into newly independent states. From 1990 until 1992 more than a dozen new embassies had been established in places where there was virtually no infrastructure; even getting to these newly created countries, with their newly created national airlines, could be a lifetime adventure. Using a tired cliché from more recent times, it would be called a “civilian surge.”
    But the Foreign Service pulled it off. We found people who were prepared to go to these places, more often than not without their families and without any other creature comforts. Tirana had two restaurants plus one on the back balcony of the Dajti Hotel. Dining out in Albania was a culinary adventure then, the dimensions of which were sometimes not known until the middle of the night.
    A few colleagues were to join us as the weeks rolled by, but the real company was in knowing that what may have been unique for me was typical for the Foreign Service. We got to know the Albanians, one by one, the way a good diplomat does. It is always about relationships, not