It Happened on the Way to War: A Marine's Path to Peace

Nairobi.

Part I

CHAPTER ONE

The Grenade

West Greenwich, Rhode Island

My father was the main reason I was a Marine. He was a warrior, and the war that defined his generation lived on with a vividness and an immediacy that I neither realized nor had the capacity to comprehend as a child. He barely slept and would grunt when I tiptoed to the bathroom in the dead of night. After a neighbor’s home was robbed, Dad added dead bolts to the doors and created barricades with two-by-fours and metal hooks. He positioned a baseball bat next to each door, formed a neighborhood watch, placed lights on automatic timers, and rotated our clunker cars through different locations in the garage and front yard. When we walked through the woods behind our house, he spotted details I rarely noticed: animal droppings, faint footprints, feathers, and hunting stands hidden in the evergreens. He taught me to shoot, to hunt, and to fight at a young age. He warned me to be careful and to anticipate danger when I least expected it, and he was the most defensive driver one could imagine. At least once every five minutes he laid on the horn, flashed the high beams, and shouted names at drivers that my friends found hilarious, such as gumball, dipstick, and swineherd.

My father made decisions and then charged into them until he finished the deed or became exasperated, in which case he quit as dramatically as he had started. As a sociology professor, he valued rigorous and rational thinking. Yet at times his mood changed so abruptly that he appeared impetuous and put everyone except his battle-hardened friends on guard. Dad, whose firm Prussian appearance was accentuated by a thick black mustache, often came across to others as confrontational when he didn’t mean to be. Yet as intense as he was, and as outraged as he could feel at perceived injustices, I never saw him become violent. He always managed to contain his frustrations, often releasing them through competitive, injury-inducing sports. While my father may have had many of these characteristics before Vietnam, I believe the war cemented them and made them more salient.

Few military artifacts were in our home, but the ones I discovered captured my imagination at an early age. Dad’s dress blue uniform hung with its Bronze Star and Purple Heart in a storage closet next to his Mameluke officer’s sword. The faded olive-green duffel bag was tucked away in another closet. A plaque from the Third Reconnaissance Battalion hung near the entrance to his basement den with the inscription SWIFT–SILENT–DEADLY in Latin and the image of a skull punctured by a tight triangle of bullet holes.

And then there was the smoke grenade. Coated by a heavy wax preservative, the rusty, old grenade blended into a bookshelf behind the plywood desk where my father graded term papers and wrote research articles. Its cylindrical body had once held a fuse and a firing pin. A bullet hole through its core prevented it from ever detonating. When I first discovered it as a boy, I tried to visualize my father at twenty-four, leading a platoon through a Vietnamese jungle. When the ambush happened, the smoke grenade strapped to his flak jacket in front of his heart intercepted a Vietcong bullet. At the same moment, a bullet tore through his cheek, and another ripped into his leg.

That rusting grenade exerted a force over me. When I ran my finger over the shredded exterior, time seemed to stop. I closed my eyes and was transported to a still place of light without sound. The force had a dark quality that would take decades and a war for me to sort out. I never spoke with Dad about the grenade or the darkness behind the light. As much as I loved and admired my father, he was intimidating, and I could never figure out a way to talk about it. Though it was a filter for many of his judgments, Dad never said much about his war.

My father’s response was subdued when in high school I accepted a full Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) scholarship to our nation’s oldest public university, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), in return for a four-year active-duty and four-year reserve service obligation in the Marines. His lukewarm reaction bothered me until I realized that it came back to the Vietnam War, a war that he believed was so misguided by generals and politicians that it was criminal. His combat experience made him eternally skeptical of any institution’s ability to protect the best interests of individuals, and he was especially conflicted about the Marine Corps. My father was glad he had served our country, and he had formed his deepest friendships in the Marines. His best friend included me in his inheritance after he passed away. Lieutenant Colonel R. J. O’Leary, his former ROTC commander when Dad was a midshipman at Miami University in Ohio, landed me my first real summer job in high school as a hand on a cattle ranch in Wyoming. These relationships were things to live for, and they happened because of the Marines. Yet at the same time my father chided the hubris of the brotherhood, and he believed that many militaries throughout history too often destroyed more than they protected. He thought American foreign policy was excessively militarized, and he distrusted war-prone politicians who had never served a day in uniform. More personally, he knew the horrors of combat and dreaded the possibility of my death or severe injury pursuing a service he had encouraged, however subtly.

My mother was far less ambivalent in her views about the Marine Corps. She believed the military squelched the type of reflection and critical thinking that was so important in her own profession as an anthropologist and professor of nursing at the University of Rhode Island. She detested violence and the possibility of killing. Mom, whose easy smile and gentle appearance led some people to underestimate her, believed our military did more to incite violence than to deter it. Her entire body shook with anger when we listened to pundits on the evening news praising new weapons systems and military tactics in the Gulf War. And yet she never openly discouraged me from joining the Marines. That would have been against her deep-rooted values of freethinking and free choice. She was less judgmental than my father, and I knew that she would support any career decision I made so long as I was kind to people and did my best to help others.

Mom first encouraged me to study Swahili when I went off to college. She knew that before I graduated I wanted to return to the continent that had helped me get on the right track when I was floundering through adolescence. I didn’t know where in Africa I might end up. I simply knew that I needed to go, and that I would probably conduct some type of research in order to give back. My mother, who rarely gave strong advice, told me that I should prioritize Swahili if I intended to return to Africa. She believed it was essential for anyone who wished to conduct research in a foreign country to know some of the local language. Research, she warned me, could be seen as being simply extractive, and it was essential that it be approached with humility. Learning a language was a sign of genuine commitment. It needed to start there.

The first and only trip I had taken with my parents to Africa was far more transformative than we had anticipated. On graduation day from junior high school in 1993, as a fourteen-year-old, I had held a camping party in the woods behind my house. Unbeknownst to my parents, my buddies and I stashed bottles of hard liquor at the campsite. One of my friends drank so much gin that he went into seizures and had to be emergency evacuated in the middle of the night while I was lying in a pool of vomit. My parents had saved for many years so that the three of us could take a monthlong trip that summer that would culminate with two weeks on safari in Kenya. After the camping fiasco, they grounded me for the summer and contemplated canceling the trip.

Maybe he’ll realize how lucky he really is if he sees other parts of the world, my father finally concluded.

When our airplane touched down at midnight in Nairobi, we were disheveled and sleep-deprived. If our body language didn’t tell people that we were tourists, our outfits certainly did. Mom, who kept her wavy, dark hair back in a ponytail with an elastic band, carried a dog-eared copy of Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa. She wore scuffed-up hiking boots and a fanny pack stuffed with travel documents. My father carried a Swahili phrase book and a backpack. His gym shorts exposed his massive calves, calves so thick he had to cut the elastic band from his athletic socks to prevent loss of circulation. On his suggestion I brought a copy of Hemingway’s The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, a story of big-game hunts in the Masai Mara that instantly captured my imagination. We would soon be on safari in the same exotic lands Hemingway had written about. It didn’t dawn on me then that I was not dressed for the bush. I wore Nike Air Jordan sneakers, a dirty white Boston Red Sox baseball hat, and a T-shirt that draped like a skirt over my baggy jeans.

After a short ride in a beat-up taxi, we arrived at the Norfolk Hotel and parked behind a Bentley. A dozen tourists sipped gin and tonics on the Lord Delamere Terrace, a perch at the entrance of the hotel named in honor of one of the most famous white settlers and land barons in Kenyan colonial history. Legend had it that the Norfolk was a favorite watering hole for Hemingway himself. Colonial times, however, had long passed, and Nairobi had developed a criminal reputation. Nai-robbery, some expatriates called it.

Had he been aware of its reputation, my father would not have suggested the following morning that Mom and I take a stroll to the Masai Market while he made the final plans for our safari. By the time we found our way on foot to the market, the place was bustling with hawkers peddling colorful beadwork, clothes, and ebony carvings from small open-air stands. Our attention turned to the spectacle at the bottom of the hill. There before us was a scene like no other.

Hundreds of cars clogged the arteries and battled each other to get ahead in one of Africa’s largest roundabouts, a place called the Globe. Matatu minibuses flashed neon lights and thumped American hip-hop and African ghetto rap. Drivers laid on their horns; sirens sounded. A matatu jumped the sidewalk to get ahead, nearly sideswiping a pedestrian. The patch of dirt the size of a small park in the middle of the roundabout appeared to be a dump with fires smoldering on top of heaping mounds of refuse. Small creatures glided between the burning pits. We walked down the hill for a closer look.

The burning garbage released a sour odor that mingled with diesel fumes and the nauseating stink of sewage. Dozens of soot-coated children camped inside the roundabout’s circle. They picked through the garbage with plastic bottles hanging from their mouths like pacifiers, feeding their lungs the fumes of toxic industrial glue. There were no adults. A small girl with an infant swaddled to her back in a colorful kanga wrap darted up to cars stuck in the roundabout’s enormous jam. A glue bottle bobbed from her mouth. The infant on her back appeared to be crying. I had never witnessed such wretched squalor.

Mom, I’d like to give this to that girl, I removed my wallet and took out some cash that I had earned mowing lawns.

A group of teenage boys paced toward us with bottles in their mouths and yellow, frozen eyes.

We better go now, Mom said hastily.

She led me quickly back through the market. The teenagers trailed off. Afterward, Mom consoled me. It’s okay, she said. It’s natural to feel bad. There’s a lot of pain in the world, and it’s good to help when you can.

By the time we returned to the Norfolk, I was overcome by profound sadness. I thought that I might have felt better if I had been able to give some money to the girl with the infant on her back. At least I would have been able to help in a small way. Yet I wasn’t able to do anything, and the feeling of powerlessness in the face of desperation was something that I didn’t know how to process. That night, lying sleepless in the plush confines of the Norfolk, I thought about that girl and the infant, and for the first time in my life realized how fortunate I was to be an American.

The following day we went on safari in the Masai Mara at a camp called Rekero, far from the diesel-choked streets of Nairobi. We delighted in seeing the wild animals of the Great Rift Valley, the tectonic fault line that reaches from Mozambique to Lebanon and hides many clues to evolution’s puzzle. We watched lions stalking and dik-diks grazing with zebras and Cape buffalo. We drove alongside galloping giraffes and stampeding wildebeests, absorbing their thunderous energy and marveling at the beauty of the land. It was exhilarating. Somehow, though, I had anticipated these sensations. What I didn’t foresee was my interest in the local people.

On our last day our Masai guide Jackson Ole Looseyia invited us to his village, where he welcomed us into his house, a smoky mud-and-wattle hut. I was amazed by his austere lifestyle. Looseyia told me about his culture and patiently answered my many questions. Afterward, while my parents took a nap, Looseyia led me with his long, rhythmic strides up a steep path to the escarpment behind the main camp. I was panting by the time we reached a slab of granite jutting into the air like a tilted tombstone. Looseyia stepped to its edge and surveyed the landscape below.

I caught my breath and asked Looseyia about his ambitions. He looked at me curiously and replied that it was a very American question. After a pause, he told me that he wished to guide for the rest of his life because it was his main talent, and because he respected the tradition of passing knowledge on to others.

And you, what do you want to do? he asked, facing me.

In the third grade we had an assignment to identify whom we wanted to be like when we grew up. Every night my parents and I watched the evening news with Tom Brokaw. Brokaw reminded me of a friendly uncle, and I liked that he had an impact on how people viewed the world. I wrote an essay on being a news anchor and appended a glossy photograph of Brokaw in the newsroom. However, explaining who Tom Brokaw was to Looseyia seemed out of place, so I told him the truth.

I don’t know. I want to do something significant.

Everything we do matters. Don’t take what you have for granted. You can do something significant. But you know who makes that possible?

What’s that?

It’s your parents.

Oh, yeah, of course, I replied.

No, you’re not getting me. You have more opportunities than I can even dream. You have these because of them. You should treat them with more respect.

I was at a loss for words. What he was saying resonated deeply. I had taken a lot for granted.

The following morning Looseyia accompanied us to the dirt airstrip. I gave him one of my baseball hats and we exchanged addresses. It had only been four days, yet it was difficult to say good-bye. My father handed Looseyia his cane in an impromptu gesture of appreciation.

For me? Looseyia asked in disbelief.

Sure.

Really?

Of course, Dad said. We’re grateful for all you’ve done for us.

In our culture a man’s walking stick is the most significant gift. It’s given from a chief before he passes to the next chief, or to his son.

Well, I don’t plan on croaking anytime soon, but I do hope you’ll be a chief. My father laughed, though I could tell he was deeply moved by the meaning his gift conveyed. He asked Looseyia to join us for a final family photograph.

As our plane lifted off, Looseyia stood on the savanna holding the cane above his head. My father, peering out from his window, saluted him.

Five years later I was in my first of four Swahili classes at UNC. The language had a smooth sound and a rhythmic flow, and I enjoyed studying it even though the class itself was one of the most polarized I had ever been in. A dozen male athletes and a few guys looking to complete their foreign-language requirement with as little work as possible sat in the back rows. Separated by a no-man’s land of barren desks, the rest of us, about eight students, sat in the front.

It wasn’t a classic geek-jock divide. The students with me in the front rows were an eclectic and adventurous group. A friend to my left studied the plight of child soldiers in Uganda. The student on my right aspired to be a missionary in Tanzania. For those of us in the front, Swahili directly connected to our life plans.

Professor Alphonse Mutima did the best he could teaching the bifurcated class. With his stocky build and infectious laugh, one could easily have mistaken him for a man who had lived a comfortable life. But few comfortable lives came out of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and his was not one of them. Professor Mutima didn’t speak about his upbringing in class. He was reserved and didn’t want to feel pitied. We captured only glimpses of his former life when he explained certain words with unique cultural meanings and applications, such as kangas, the colorful wraps that hung on walls or were worn as skirts, baby carriers, and shawls. When Professor Mutima spoke of such things, the elevated, engaging tone in his voice conveyed the longing he felt for the home he had never returned to. I found him to be fascinating and often walked with him across our wooded campus after class.

Professor Mutima devoured what little news came from press coverage of Central Africa. When we came to difficult subjects, he made light of the ironies that emerged from insecure lives, such as the absence of obesity in many parts of Africa. His laughter veiled a pain and anxiety so deep it would cripple most men. Professor Mutima dealt with the boys in the back rows, but he had little respect for them, or for anyone who he believed took the great gift of a university education for granted.

With time, Professor Mutima told me about his home in Goma, a city perched on an active volcano at the Rwandan-Congolese border. Goma earned notoriety as home to the largest refugee camp in the world after the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Professor Mutima recommended I read a book about the genocide by a writer named Philip Gourevitch, and he pointed out a vivid excerpt from the book that described Goma as one of the most bewildering spectacles of the century, where bulldozers had to be brought in to dig mass graves and plough the bodies under. Picture it: a million people, shifting through the smoke of cooking fires on a vast black field, and behind them … the Nyaragongo volcano had come to life, burbling with the flame that made the night sky red.*

I had also been told about the book by an army officer who served on a humanitarian assistance mission to Rwanda. The officer predicted that my military career would be dominated by American responses to ethnic conflicts that threatened to destabilize entire regions, as had occurred with the Rwandan genocide.

For winter break that year my mother and I took a short vacation together. I spent the first two days engrossed in Gourevitch’s book. Its cover featured an intriguing photograph of a lawn chair in front of a foggy lake, and its title was the longest I had ever seen: We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families. The author’s photo was equally striking. He looked off to the side with a devilish smile, heavy bags sagging beneath his dark eyes, his hair whisking up from his forehead as if he had just stepped off a motorcycle.

I vigorously circled and underlined entire passages of the book. It was a habit of interactive reading that I had learned from my father. Returning to some passages a half dozen times, I read many excerpts out loud to my mom. It was baffling. In Rwanda more than eight hundred thousand people were killed in one hundred days. I recalled watching the evening news as a fifteen-year-old when a segment aired with footage of a group of Rwandan boys murdering a wounded man. They used machetes and clubs spiked with nails. This was my first realization of humanity’s capacity for great evil, and I found it and my reaction to it as fascinating as it was repulsive. I wanted to battle the forces that created such horrific frenzy, and yet, at the same time, the darkness itself held some attractive power that I didn’t understand but could not deny.

How and why genocide happened were the obvious questions, and they went unanswered. They were disturbing enough, though beyond them, a more personal question lingered. If I had been born in Rwanda and was confronted with the ultimatum of killing an innocent person or being killed, would I kill? While I wanted to say that I would resist, in truth I didn’t know, and that uncertainty made me all the more curious.

Gourevitch’s book with its lucid meditations reawakened these thoughts and emotions. As enlightening as his writing was, so many elemental questions about good and evil remained. By the time I put down his book, I knew I wanted to go to Rwanda to understand for myself the elements of darkness that I could one day be called on to battle as a Marine.

During our last night of vacation, I told Mom about Swahili class with Professor Mutima. We talked about anthropology and her former academic adviser at UNC, James Peacock, a beloved anthropologist with long, salt-and-pepper eyebrows and a kind, unassuming presence. I had reached out to Professor Peacock after growing bored with my first semester of freshman classes. He had invited me to his office in Alumni Hall, the building on campus where my parents met as graduate students in 1969. I was anxious about the meeting until I walked into his office and found him sitting cross-legged on top of his desk, shoes off, listening to Indonesian hip-hop. After our meeting, Professor Peacock had let me join his graduate-level anthropology seminar on globalization. The theory was over my head, but I had enjoyed the small group discussions. When I chose to write my term paper on the Masai in Kenya, Professor Peacock had introduced me to a graduate student named Jennifer Coffman. Jennifer focused her fieldwork in southern Kenya and generously helped me navigate my first major research paper.

Mom listened eagerly as I told her about how Professor Peacock’s class and my conversations with Jennifer had opened my mind to anthropology and the power of ethnography.

I’m so glad to hear this, Mom responded. I could tell that she was relieved that I had shaken my teenage apathy.

But, Mom, there’s something else. Unsure how she would respond, I had saved it for the end. I had enough to keep me busy with a demanding course load and ROTC commitments. Yet I felt that I needed to do more. I needed to go to Rwanda.

Rwanda? Her voice cracked.

Yes, Mom, I want to go. I need to go.

Oh, my. She paused. Are you sure?

I had wanted to return to Africa, and Rwanda seemed to be the right fit. I explained to my mom that I could learn about ethnic conflict there, develop my Swahili, and make a real contribution with research. After an hour or so of discussion, my mom told me that she understood and would support me. Although I had anticipated her support, her words felt great to hear. Mom, too, was an explorer. As a young nurse she had lived alone for a year in a village in Peru. She knew about the drive to go to places where many others would not venture. It was part of my inheritance, as was my middle name—Mead—in honor of the legendary anthropologist Margaret Mead.

Mom and I spent the rest of the night talking about Rwanda. She helped me think about how to get there safely and in a way that would not jeopardize the security of the local population. Weeks later, she sent me a handwritten note with one of her favorite Margaret Mead quotes: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

Change the world. It sounds cliché to me now, but it didn’t back then. The phrase spoke to me throughout college and, before that, adolescence. It had connected with me ever since one day, as a boy, when I fell through the ice into the pond behind our home. Something extraordinary happened that day. I was with Peaches, our golden retriever whom my parents had named after their favorite tree in our backyard. Peaches was my most loyal playmate. She slept in a hay patch in our barn, and I could often tell where she was by the jingle of the miniature cow bell that my parents hung from her collar. That day we were playing catch with her favorite tennis ball when the ice gave way beneath me. Engulfed by the frigid water, my head smacked a piece of ice when I tried to come up for air and escape. Trapped, I panicked. I thought I might die.

Kicking violently, I inhaled a gulp of water. Not until my head collided with another piece of ice did my body relax, and I detected rays of light filtering in through the hole that had swallowed me. I swam to it, hoisted myself out of the water, and gasped for air. Peaches barked then licked my face.

Although Peaches often ran ahead of me, that day she stayed by my side. I shivered back home across frozen fields and collapsed into the shower with my clothes on. The steaming water cascaded over my head, slowly replacing the bitter chill with a numb, tingling sensation. As my body warmed, my mind expanded with euphoria. I had survived. I had faced death, and it was exhilarating.

Curious to return to the spot where the pond ice had collapsed beneath me, I trudged back out over the snow with Peaches that afternoon. A thin layer of ice had formed over the hole by the time I returned. When I raised my walking stick to break the ice, Peaches barked. She dropped to the ground, paws out. Her cow bell stopped jingling. The wind died. I froze and looked around for an animal or a person approaching us. There was nothing, and then, suddenly, there was everything.

The force swept me into its embrace. It felt like I was floating outside of my body. I heard no words and saw no form or shape. All I could see was light, just as when I had touched the grenade that saved my father’s life. This time, however, the light lasted longer and came with a sense of clarity. It was warm and glorious. I was a believer, but never before had I felt God. Never before had we communicated directly.

That day at the pond made me realize that life could be cut off at any moment. I don’t really know why, but I started believing that I wouldn’t live past thirty years old. When I told some of my closest friends about my premonition, many of them thought it was a morbid idea, a death sentence, a noose. But I found it to be liberating. I didn’t think about having a career in a profession that would take me years to learn. I didn’t imagine getting married or having children. From that point forward, I had a new sense of purpose and time, and there was an awareness that I was alive for a reason that was larger than myself. What I sought was a short, intense life that would make a bold impact and live beyond me.

Years later, at some point near the beginning of high school, I realized that my greatest fear was an ordinary life. The Marine Corps was the answer, and although I had been groomed and guided to it implicitly by my father and his closest friends throughout my childhood, it felt like a revelation.

With my mind made up, I started wearing a USMC T-shirt, cut my hair into a high-and-tight, and bought an American flag for the antenna of my old Ford Ranger pickup truck. Football became my sole sport, and I used my off-season to lift weights and bulk up so that I could compete as a defensive tackle against linemen twice my size. I watched war movies such as Platoon and Full Metal Jacket so many times that they influenced my language. Take the pain! and What’s your major malfunction, numbnuts? were among my favorite lines.

Acquaintances often looked surprised when they first learned of my career choice. Rhode Island was such a liberal place that many people I knew in the affluent community of East Greenwich, where I attended public high school, thought that only kids from disadvantaged backgrounds chose the military. Why would you do such a thing? I was often asked.

To serve my country, I said, using the common refrain without any real understanding of what it meant.

My career choice changed the way I viewed the world, and it gave me a greater sense of purpose in school. In American-history class, I argued that might makes right. In English, I read The Red Badge of Courage multiple times in search for clues to how I might respond the first time I faced enemy fire. I imagined artillery applications in precalculus homework. Chemistry offered insights into the capabilities of enemy weapons of mass destruction. Spanish could be a tool to communicate with Latino Marines. I was becoming a better, more engaged student.

Unfortunately, my improved performance in school came too late for the Naval Academy, which turned me down. The rejection stung. My grades were strong but not stellar. I barely ranked in the top 10 percent of my high school class and had underwhelming SATs. A lot of valedictorians, SAT aces, and captains of varsity teams were applying to the same schools. I lacked those accolades. My only recourse, I assumed, was to work harder. So I threw everything I had into my ROTC scholarship application, spending weeks preparing for my interviews, rewriting essays, and training for the physical fitness test. The final question in the application asked, What word do you feel best describes you? I wrote, Determined.

It had worked out. I had made it to UNC with a full ROTC scholarship, and by the time I was in my third semester of Swahili, I knew that I wanted to go to Rwanda. But I was struggling with how to get there. One day Professor Mutima brought in a former student named Ted Lord. A thin, young guy with a marathon runner’s physique and a serious face, Ted stood at the front of the room and patiently waited for the chatter in the back rows to stop. Once it did, he began speaking in Swahili, a Swahili that was as smooth and as fluent as Professor Mutima’s. Had I not been looking directly at him, I would never have guessed that Ted was a mzungu, a white guy who grew up in Baltimore.

Realizing that our comprehension was limited, Ted transitioned to English. In a calm, low-key manner, he told us briefly about the year he’d spent in Tanzania. He explained that he had received a Burch Fellowship, an award that any UNC undergraduate could apply for so as to have a unique life experience. Ted used his fellowship to work as an apprentice to world-renowned door carvers on Tanzania’s Zanzibar island. My mind raced with possibilities as he spoke.

Professor Mutima proudly announced that Ted had arranged for a set of Zanzibari grand doors to be installed at the entrance to the new UNC Honors Office. When he opened the floor to questions, I asked, How did you do it? It was a clumsy question, but Ted sensed what I was getting at.

Once you know what you want to do, he explained, start sending e-mails, making phone calls. You’ve got to be flexible, be persistent. Reach out to a bunch of people and eventually a few, maybe five percent, will give a damn. That’s enough, though. When they respond, you can follow up and start pulling it together.

I couldn’t pay attention during the rest of the class. I was thinking about Ted’s apprenticeship and his contribution of grand Zanzibari doors to the university. Ted pulled it together as a sophomore. I was a junior. Reach out to a bunch of people and eventually a few will give a damn.

That afternoonI returned to my dorm room, finished the one-page proposal to study the Rwandan army’s invasion during the genocide, and sent it to two dozen people.

Sir, I am in the Marine Corps ROTC program at UNC and am learning Swahili, I wrote to the author Philip Gourevitch, hoping that he would be one of the 5 percent. Your book inspired me to focus my university studies in Rwanda. I know you are busy but I would appreciate it if you would give me your thoughts on this brief one-page proposal attached. I included a few of my reflections about his book and clicked SEND.

The first person to respond to my e-mail blast was a USAID officer who had worked in Rwanda. We met at a national security conference that I had helped organize at UNC. Unlike many of the conference participants, she was approachable. She suggested that I forward my proposal to her ex-husband, a diplomat named Peter Whaley.

Give his e-mail to no one, she said, and tell him I recommended you be in touch.

With Ted’s advice in my mind, I relentlessly pursued every lead. A week later, I had a meeting lined up with Peter Whaley and a few military officers who had worked in Africa and were based in the Pentagon. Fortuitously, my mom was in Washington that week attending a conference. Whaley left me a voice mail two hours before we were scheduled to meet. Come to 20/20 K at seven, he said, his voice sounding too high-strung to conform to the James Bond impression I had of him. I’ll be at the bar. Hope you like calamari.

My mother dropped me off at 20/20 K at a quarter to seven. The lacquer on the oak bar reflected the soft light from hanging lamps with green shades. A balding man in a pink dress shirt sat at the end of the bar closest to the exit, hovering over a heaping plate of calamari with a martini glass close at hand. He had a small potbelly, and his legs were so short they may not have reached the brass footrest at the base of the bar.

Mr. Whaley? I asked, trying to make my voice sound deep.

He didn’t look up. You’re younger than I thought. Here, have some calamari. Ya like calamari, right? He spoke quickly with a strong New York accent. How old are ya?

Twenty, sir.

None of that sir stuff on me, and none of these for you. He tapped his martini glass with his fork. Sorry.

I ordered tonic water.

Good colonial drink, Whaley remarked, launching into long digressions about the history of tonic water as an antimalarial and his favorite preparations for cooking calamari.

The waiter handed Whaley another martini, dirty, shaken not stirred.

So were there any good calamari joints in Rwanda? It