Foreign Service Life outside Washington: In Paramaribo

Part 4: Making the best of life in Wonderland--if you want a friend, get a dog

Harry Truman was always one of my favorite presidents when I was in school. He did not always make the best decisions, but he stuck by them, and he was not one to complain about the consequences. His one-liners stuck with me. The buck stops here (in the Oval Office), he famously said. And he worried little about what others thought of his decisions. If you want a friend in Washington, he quipped, get a dog.

Living in Suriname reinforced the wisdom of Truman’s advice for me. I did not mean to get a dog when I arrived, but the commissary manager—spouse of a junior political officer—prevailed upon to me to adopt a mangy street mutt, a sweet puppy that Tami and Daryl found wandering the streets in their neighborhood soon after I arrived. Tami wanted me to buy American dry dog food from the commissary. My penchant for Russian names soon led to her new name—Raskolnikov—and her inevitable shorter nickname, “Kolya,” even though both were male names. And she became the best friend this temporary bachelor ever made in Suriname, once she started filling out and growing up. More on Kolya’s exploits later …

Last time, I told readers how I ended up as administrative section chief in the U.S. Embassy in Paramaribo, Suriname—a backwater setting, like an imaginary universe, that I soon began to refer to as Wonderland, in homage to the other world Alice fell into on the other side of the looking glass. Nothing was quite what it seemed; ordinary rules may still have applied, but the outcomes were never straightforward—and often wildly illogical.

I have previously recounted for readers much of my two years in Paramaribo—the burnout pace of my ordinary workday, with 60-to-80-hour workweeks not uncommon; and my brief attempt at a vacation on Devil’s Island next door, in a futile attempt to “escape” the mundane on my 40th birthday; and the night I was convinced I was about to be abducted and “disappeared” by the fearful Surinamese military for walking too close to the home of the dictator’s ex-wife.

I did have one refuge: my house, probably the nicest Foreign Service residence I had in more than a decade of living overseas. But it was accidental. When I arrived, I was shown to the house my predecessor had selected—a strange, modern place with far too many rooms, including a living room with a nearly circular couch and what appeared to be a built-in platform for dancing (“suitable for entertaining,” my head FSN proudly told me); a very peculiar master bedroom with mirrors on the ceiling; a large faux-stone master bath with a central toilet on a built-up floor, like a throne; and outdoors, a huge garden with flowers and plants that required the attention of a full-time gardener, according to the owner (a service for which I was expected to pay, privately). It was expensive, and worse, located in an out-of-the-way part of the city, more commercial than residential, nowhere near another U.S.-owned or -leased house, or even the Embassy.

Frankly, it gave me the creeps. To me, it looked like a bordello, and after a couple of nights there, I said nope, not on your life. Soon as you can, preferably before my household effects arrive, move me out. I don’t know what had possessed my predecessor to lease it—probably the fact that it was “off the grid” and hopelessly impractical—but my first request to the budget office was to terminate the lease and pay it off; it was of no further use to us. (I am not sure the budget FSN, Pieter, ever forgave me—he and most of the FSNs liked the house—but I was the boss!) My replacement house—a comfortable, air-conditioned three-bedroom, two-bath bungalow with a garage, maid’s quarters (!)—which I used to house TDY officers—and a six-foot cinderblock wall around most of the yard, was within walking distance of two other USG residences in an older Suralco neighborhood. The owners were eager to lease it out at a reasonable rate Even our (American contractor) guard service liked its garage—appreciably cooler than the broiling Surinamese sun.

My designated guard became quite fond of Kolya, who moved in shortly after I did, and had the run of a big yard. She became a beautiful big mutt, very good-natured, even slept with me when my wife was not there. But as female dogs always do, she soon went into heat—and somehow the guard missed the neighborhood’s canine Lothario mutt climbing my six-foot fence and catching poor Kolya unprotected. Two months and nine puppies later, I was the proud owner of Paramaribo’s largest private zoo, the first one born beside me on the couch when I came home for lunch, and the rest born in two groups later that day. They cost me a small fortune to get the proper shots, and when they were finally weaned, a couple of weeks to find free good homes for all of them. (I loved dogs but 10 was way too many; Margaret would have kept a couple, but she was only visiting for short periods, not there to look after them.)

But then I learned two dreadful things. After adoption, I never saw any of them again. First, fat, healthy puppies were a rarity in Suriname—and they began disappearing from their new homes, their new owners told me, apparently being kidnapped by—or worse, I suspected darkly, sold to—a small sub-community of Korean shrimp fishermen, whose culinary delights included cooked canine meat, a delicacy I found positively revolting.

Worse, when I decided to have my baby Kolya neutered—spayed—the vet looked at me quizzically and shook his head. “We don’t do that here,” he insisted. My jaw dropped. So what do you do? Put them on birth control, he said, in all seriousness. I was adamantly opposed to that—daily pills were too impractical for a big dog, over 40 pounds by then—and he grudgingly agreed to perform the surgery, which cost another bundle in non-black-market guilders (I could not legally pay for it in U.S. dollars; think, 5 or 10 times as much as in the States …). But as it turned out, the real reason no one there did it was because they apparently did not know how to administer anesthesia properly. It took her a long time to wake up after I drove her home … Poor sweet Kolya eventually recovered, but was never quite the same after that—too much anesthesia apparently tends to destroy certain brain cells.

I was now saddled with a lovable, slightly ditzy best friend who started killing (poisonous) frogs in my yard and occasionally frothed at the mouth for her efforts. She even tried chasing the huge storm-sewer-dwelling iguanas down my street but got scared off by their angry response. (Don’t ever corner an irate iguana!) I made many friends at the embassy, yes, and occasionally ate out—Ted Andrews and Elizabeth Ewing or Dom and Louise Ramirez were always willing to share, and semi-bachelor Stan Myles, the DCM, invited me over for cards and sandwiches.

But I preferred to entertain only when Margaret occasionally visited, before finally moving down for the last six months. So goofy or not, coming home to Kolya and my TV set and a pizza made from a box after a long day at the office was usually my favorite reward. A cold Par’bo beer was often welcomed—although the occasional overdose of formaldehyde at the factory sometimes promised a lingering headache the next day!

* * * * * *

About five months after I arrived, the worst possible disaster that could happen on a U.S. embassy’s watch—aside from war, attack by terrorists, or a natural disaster—put the whole embassy in an uproar. One of Surinam Airways’ two leased jets crashed in the middle of a fog-ridden night, after a long trek from Amsterdam, while trying to land, after circling the airport unsuccessfully, with nearly 200 people onboard. SLM’s Flight 764, on a DC-8 owned by Tower Airlines and named “Anthony Nesty”—in honor of the country’s local hero—clipped 100-foot-tall trees in the jungle surrounding the airport while struggling to reascend after an aborted landing, flipped over, and crashed upside down before exploding—with the only bit of real luck, far away from the terminal.

It was the deadliest crash in South American history to that point. Nothing like this had ever happened in Suriname, and the inept government was woefully ill-prepared for such an undertaking. All but a handful of those aboard died, including the ill-fated crew and members of a popular soccer team—how anyone survived at all, in fact, was a miracle—but the aftermath was even more surreal.

Few Western countries could have proved less capable of dealing with such a disaster. Suriname had very little refrigeration capacity for storing such a large number of bodies—more than 170 were killed outright, plus a handful of survivors who later died of burns and injuries. (Fewer than 10 passengers survived, most after being thrown from the airplane, strapped in their seats, before it exploded.) For no good reason, all bodies removed from the wreckage by first responders were stripped of all clothing and identification, then laid out in piles—an indignity beyond any Western imagination, making initial identification almost impossible—until they could be transported to a makeshift morgue.

Dark humor masked national morning, as the crash was soon dubbed “Anthony Nesty’s last dive.” (At least only his name was on the plane.) But as we Americans dealt with the aftermath, including a quick visit by the NTSB investigative team, we learned that the American crew members—as I recall, the only U.S. citizens on board—had their own dark secrets. The 66-year-old U.S. captain was ineligible to fly by U.S. standards—U.S. pilots are generally prohibited from flying after age 60—and had apparently been banned from SLM flights for poor previous performance, but ended up back in the cockpit regardless. The first officer was a shadowy younger figure whose real identity and age were obscured by falsified certification papers; the flight engineer, another U.S. citizen, was also well over age 60. All three worked for a Miami-based company, Air Crew International, that supplied pilots on weekly contracts to SLM and other airlines in sudden or regular need.

After a long delay in Miami, the trio first flew to Amsterdam, where the Paramaribo leg of the flight was 12 hours late in departing. Fatigue was probably a crucial factor—any sensible airline would almost certainly have changed crews in Amsterdam, but SLM had no backups—but one other fatal wrinkle awaited Flight 764 in Paramaribo. The instrument landing system (ILS) on the designated runway—which could guide the plane down to within sight of the threshold—was technically out of service (since December 1988, though weirdly, still operating); the runway retained the capability for a VOR/DME approach [radio beacon combining a VHF omnidirectional range (VOR) with a distance-measuring equipment (DME)].

All this, the pilots knew in advance. What no one on the ground knew, however, was that when faced with unexpectedly sudden low visibility in heavy fog—from 6 kilometers to under a kilometer, making it impossible to use VOR/DME—the pilot would attempt to short-cut the situation and use the defective ILS, anyway. His attempt failed miserably. His last words, reportedly, were “I am dead” or “We are all dead” as he clipped trees that appeared out of the fog before he could pull up for his second circle and approach.

The smoldering debris-ridden crash site of SLM Flight 764 after sunrise on June 8, 1989. Photo courtesy ANP/AFP.

Interested readers they can find out much more about the crash in a very detailed article at ( https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/contract-to-kill-the-crash-of-surinam-airways-flight-764-828979c7efe2 ).

A nearly-surreal, modernistic monument today guards the remaining wreckage of SLM Flight 764. Photo courtesy Olaf Kraak

I did not know any of the crew members personally, but came to know them posthumously a little better than I would have preferred. Together with embassy colleague Elizabeth Ewing, I was asked to inventory their personal effects—at a still-vacant hotel room they had shared at the Torarica Hotel, during their regular layovers in Paramaribo—in preparation for returning the effects to their next of kin. It seemed a bit ghoulish, but it had to be done. Almost everything we found was, in fact, returned to their families—except for perishables and a couple of pornographic magazines, which we discarded—and the more we learned about SLM and its practices, the less any of us was inclined to fly on that airline if it could be avoided.

It was not the only international airline serving Zanderij, but the only one that offered regular flights to and from Miami. One other reasonable—and infinitely more civilized—option did exist: taking a daytime flight to Cayenne, French Guiana, and from there, taking Air France to Miami via Port-au-Prince and the French West Indies islands, Guadeloupe and Martinique. Cayenne itself was not large but very comfortable—like stepping into continental France after the nagging discomforts of Paramaribo—and Air France was generally superior at that time.

But on one flight, when I was serving as the embassy’s rotating courier to Miami, I discovered one of the hidden dangers that greet any unsuspecting tourist on Haiti, during the provisional presidency of Ertha Pascal-Trouillot, after the fall of dictator Baby Doc, a chaotic period. During a refueling stop—no passengers were being allowed to board—I was required as courier to stand underneath the aircraft during any stops, to make sure that no one tried to sneak the large, orange-clad diplomatic bag out of the cargo hold. I considered stretching my legs by walking around the aircraft on the tarmac—before I was collared by one of the pilots, taking a smoke break under the stairs.

“Don’t dare step out of the shadow of the plane,” he whispered sternly. Okay, I said—but why? Look up at the roof of the terminal building, he warned, which I did—only to see soldiers manning machine guns aimed at the plane, apparently determined to keep any would-be refugees from attempting to sneak onto the flight. We’ve been told they are trigger-happy, and will shoot anyone who makes a break for it—and you might get hit.

Needless to say, I never made it inside the terminal, and was relieved to head back up the staircase to my seat. Welcome to Port-au-Prince—my first and last visit to that island. By then, I guess the thought of unnecessary travel must have been burned out of me, for I did not take any of the South American side trips I should have considered—to Caracas, served by Dutch KLM—or Rio de Janeiro, served by Brazil’s Cruzeiro. An old college friend of mine and her husband even begged me to visit them on vacation in Buenos Aires, which I should have done. And though invited, I did not even feel like making a quick trip to Georgetown, Guyana, just to say I had been there. Suriname was the continent’s smallest country—but the only other part of South America I saw was French Guiana, which was smaller, but not even a country … still, visiting Cayenne was almost like stepping into Paris … with fresh French bread, clean sheets, and French movies.

I did go to Miami a couple of times to meet Margaret. And I did relent on my no-fly rule long enough to take a business trip for admin section chiefs to Mexico City, via Miami—but then ended up missing my connection—when SLM left several hours late—and sleeping in an uncomfortable chair, next to my chief budget FSN, in order not to miss the first flight out the next day. American Airlines unexpectedly upgraded us to first class just to shoehorn us into that flight—but I had no way of updating my younger cousin in Dallas, not to bother coming out to DFW airport to see me during a plane change on my earlier scheduled flight—as I had written herthe week before. But someone who did see the sign she held up told me, later, that he sure wished his name had been “Ben.” (Nan was a stunning, 5-10, 18-year-old blonde coed!)

* * * * * *

I have recounted, in earlier posts, most of the routine-to-bizarre workday events that kept me almost completely occupied during my two years in Paramaribo. I worked hard, stabilized the admin section—despite being without a general services officer (GSO) for almost half of those two years—and apparently made a good initial impression on the ambassador, who signed off on my EER and got me promoted to FS-3 in October 1989, eight months after I arrived. If I could hold and survive the rest of my tour, maybe I could resume my quest for a transfer to USIA—and finally land the kind of job I had wanted to hold when I started out.

I will say one thing about being an admin section chief. There’s rarely a dull moment. But what I had earned, the hard way, in Copenhagen was now reinforced, in spades, in Paramaribo. Management in government bears little—actually, no—relation to management anywhere else in the private sector—and all my years of hard-won business skills in running my family’s retail firm were essentially worthless. A large part of this is due, of course, to the lack of a profit-driven approach, which encourages efficiency and discourages waste. Yes, I know it is probably never going to be possible to run an embassy like a business—too many factors cannot be controlled, especially with poorly-written regulations and a sore lack of management skills by those who call the shots in Washington (and sometimes, at post)—and will not make exceptions or consider alternatives. Orders are routinely given that make no sense, yet must be obeyed without complaint—while administrative input from the ones who know the rules best is often just plain ignored.

At times, life in Suriname was something like being suspended in Wonderland with Alice, waiting for the Red Queen to execute us. We had a small Marine detachment, perennially shorthanded. An incoming Marine was denied entry by Surinamese military guards at the airport, after his transfer from Baghdad (before the First Gulf War), because he lacked a proper visa, which he could not obtain in Baghdad or during his brief transit in Amsterdam, sleeping overnight at Schiphol airport. Of course, the Foreign Ministry knew the story, that he was en route—but when he arrived, no pleas were heeded to call the Foreign Ministry, whose staff were probably afraid to confront the military, anyway. Back to Amsterdam, footlockers and all, where the poor guy got a two-week (much needed) vacation while the Surinamese embassy there sorted it out—and we were one Marine down for the duration.

But the Surinamese weren’t the only ones with brain farts. Witness the time when a full, heavy office desk was shipped in a U.S. diplomatic pouch—by an agency who certainly should have known better—and its weight required many hours and much FSN brawn—despite the “Secret” labels—to retrieve from the airport in the middle of the night, then unwrap at the embassy and move upstairs to the secure third floor before daylight. Soon afterward, a brand-new shipment of government-owned household furniture, long awaited in Paramaribo, was suddenly diverted from us to nearby Georgetown, which was deemed even more desperate, apparently—to replace their container which mysteriously “vanished” off a ship en route. Georgetown got ours; we were promised the very next shipment, but a year later, we were still waiting.

And even Mother Nature took her occasional weird turn, inundating Dr. Sophie Redmondstraat so quickly and thoroughly during one summer monsoon that water soon poured onto the ground floor of the embassy, even with sandbags inside the glass front doors. Sometimes she sent bats to infiltrate the embassy warehouse—or even some of the attics in our leased housing, evidenced by the guano leaking down the inner walls. Bats were apparently a protected species in Suriname … maybe because they were smarter than the bureaucrats …

By the time I left Paramaribo in the rear view mirror, I had begun to wonder which was the crazier organization: the hapless government of Suriname or the befuddled Department of State, which should have known better than to ignore our perennial problems—but instead pretended we were making them up. Dumb, meet dumber. Thirty-odd years later, looking back, I still don’t know which was which.

Next time: More tales of North Carolina’s 19th-century African American legislators