Iguanas on My Roof: Funny, Sad, and Scary Overseas Adventures of a Foreign Service Family in Third-World Countries During the Vietnam War and Watergate Era

CHAPTER SUMMARIES

Iguana Stew

Introduction

Why We Did It

Getting Ready To Go

MANILA, PHILIPPINES

A New Way Of Life

Not Exactly The Us Post Office

Protocol And Etiquette

The American School

Grocery Shopping 101-103

Just Like A Date

Language And Culture

My Friend, The Colonel

It Wasn’t The Flu

Black Magic Exists

Over The Rapids With Grandma

Baguio Guest House

Nothing Like The Brochure

Memories On The Bataan Peninsula And Corregidor Island

SAIGON, VIETNAM

The Vietnamese Experience

Language And Culture

Protocol And Etiquette

You Buy Me Saigon Tea?

MANILA, PHILIPPINES TO LAGOS, NIGERIA

Bangkok, Thailand

Mumbai, India

Tel Aviv, Israel

Athens, Greece And Rome, Italy

LAGOS, NIGERIA

A New Way Of Life

What Daddy Did At His Nigerian Office

Language And Culture

Grocery Shopping 104-106

Black Magic Again

Stranded At Tarkwa Bay

Now You See Them, Then You Don’t

WASHINGTON DC

What Daddy Did At His DC Office

DC Does Its Own Thing

FROM DC TO MANAGUA, NICARAGUA

Southward Ho

MANAGUA, NICARAGUA

What Daddy Did At His Nicaraguense Office

A New Way Of Life

Grocery Shopping 107-110

Protocol And Etiquette

Language And Culture

The American School

Not Your Usual Ministry Meeting

The Dreadful Terremoto (Earthquake)

Call A Marine

Turtle Eggs And Huehuete Beach

Iguanas On My Roof

Thanksgiving—Nicaraguense Style

Head Him Off At The Pass

Not So Perfect End To A Perfect Evening

So Many Volcanoes

A Big Mistake

WE WENT BACK HOME

The End Of The Story

About The Author

IGUANA STEW

Serves qwe.jpg

(Who knows? Most people won’t eat it.)

1 large iguana

1 tsp. salt

3 peeled and sliced potatoes

1 large sliced onion

1 cup lima beans

1 cup canned tomatoes

1 tbsp. sugar

1 cup frozen corn

1 tbsp. ketchup or Worcestershire Sauce

1/4 cup butter

Cut iguana meat into small pieces.

Place meat in a large pot with enough water to cover.

Bring to a boil, add salt, and simmer for 45 minutes.

Add potatoes, onion, lima beans, tomatoes, and sugar.

Cover and simmer for 30 minutes.

Add corn and simmer for 10 minutes.

Add ketchup or Worcestershire Sauce if desired.

Add butter and stir well.

Thank you to my husband who had to live for months with a wife constantly in front of her computer and to my children who helped me remember.

INTRODUCTION

My husband’s job in the Foreign Service was to follow wars and disasters around the world. My job was to follow him into an unfamiliar world that was exciting and challe nging.

Would I have changed anything? No.

Why? First, we were right in the middle of the often befuddling process we call government, so we better understood that the precious freedoms in the United States had to be fiercely protected. Second, our five children grew up independent, confident, and not easily intimidated. Third, we learned that good friends could be found in any culture. Fourth, we were privileged to meet many people who were making decisions that changed the world.

It was exciting, always interesting, certainly challenging, and because we were so far away from family and friends, we learned to trust in and depend on each other—a very special gift. To complete the picture, there was a wonderful feeling of satisfaction from knowing we benefitted a country and its people by being there.

Besides, I had help with the housework and laundry, did very little cooking, and didn’t pull a single weed. With a family of seven, I loved it. Even though there were a few inconveniences like iguanas on the roof, I had found a home in the Foreign Service.

Movie version: The chartered plane glides to a stop. The door opens and a dashing Foreign Service officer appears in the bright sun. Next to him, draped in fur, is his beautiful wife. Their Russian Wolfhound is close behind. The Ambassador waits at the bottom of the stairs to welcome them to an exciting, sophisticated world capital. The beautiful people have a beautiful life that is a whirlwind of intrigue, elegant dinner parties, and fancy balls. They hobnob with presidents and dignitaries from all over the world.

My version: Pan Am was always our host for the flight. The door opened and we drowned in the humidity. We were rumpled from hours of travel and the Embassy aide who met us at the airport was definitely not the Ambassador.

We had to live for three months with what we could carry, so we always crammed as much as we could in our luggage. It took a long time to get through Customs with five kids and twenty-one suitcases. Throw in a cranky cat and I think you get the picture.

As for the sophisticated capitals, beginning in 1968, the State Department sent us to unsophisticated Vietnam, Nigeria, and Nicaragua with a stopover in Washington DC. Even so, the diplomats, fancy balls, and elegant dinners were a way of life. It was an extraordinary adventure.

I was asked many times to write about circling the globe with five children. Nearly thirty years later, my daughter made me promise to email my children one story each week. I pretended they were sitting in front of me and let the words spill out. As they added comments, it became a fun family project. This book is the result.

Let me introduce my family. My husband’s name is Al (Jr.). Our children are Butch (Al III), who is the eldest, then Jim, Janice, Kenny, and Eric. When we left the United States they ranged in age from twelve years to eighteen months. We were away for eight years.

Stone Family

Butch (Al III), Jim, Nancy, Al, Eric, Janice, Kenny

Bombay (Mumbai) India 1970

WHY WE DID IT

It all started when my husband decided to save the people of M exico.

During the drought in 1959, Al worked as a railroad brakeman. He saw firsthand the swarms of dehydrated and starving Mexicans with swollen tongues who regularly overpowered and boarded the trains that traveled through the Mexican desert and in and out of the southwestern United States. They were desperate and dangerous. Their last hope was to illegally enter the United States. Al was determined to help Mexico help them.

With only a high school diploma and deadly serious about his decision, Al found a new job with flexible hours and enrolled in college. His goal was to join the Foreign Service. Five years later, he held a dual degree in Accounting and Economics with a Latin American emphasis. I worked, took care of our four children, and typed all his homework on a tiny portable typewriter. I received an honorary degree for being a good sport.

It took another four years, but Al eventually applied and was accepted by the US Department of State, an extremely difficult and demanding process. He resigned his job in 1968 as Administrator with the Marin County Welfare Department in California and accepted the position of Program Officer with USAID (US Agency for International Development). This agency works to improve the lives of people living in underdeveloped countries.

In typical government fashion, his knowledge of the economy, culture, and language of Latin America was ignored. His first assignment was not Mexico, but Saigon. There he was to coordinate the efforts of the United States government and thirty-three relief agencies such as CARE, Catholic Relief, OXFAM, and World Vision. These formed a major part of the Vietnamese Refugee Program. Geographically, if Saigon had been any farther away from Mexico, he would be coming back around the globe on the other side.

People were shooting at each other in Vietnam so joining him was not an option. Al did some research and found that USAID offered three safe-haven Posts to the families of men and women working in Vietnam. One was in Thailand, another was in Taiwan, and a third in the Republic of the Philippines. We couldn’t take advantage of any of these Posts until there was an opening. Al was gone six months before housing was offered to us in the Philippines. We took it.

GETTING READY TO GO

Al left for three months of language training in Washington DC. That left me with the now five children and the responsibility to prepare for the move. Our next door neighbor had been in the Philippines during his tour in the Navy. He began telling me horror stories about dead bodies in the back yard, security walls with embedded glass around homes, and gruesome crimes. He had me terrified, but my Mother convinced me the move was a wonderful opportunity that we shouldn’t miss. She was right, although I fully expected to be machine-gunned from behind a palm tree upon arrival in M anila.

We were given a date only a few short weeks away and there was a ridiculously long To Do List. I had to hire an agent to manage the rental of the house. The Philippine government would not allow us to bring a car, so I had to sell mine. We were in the middle of some house remodeling. Everyone needed a full medical examination and an extraordinarily long list of inoculations. Janice, Jim and Butch had to be tested in order to enter the American School. We needed passports and tickets.

I needed a clearance: I attended classes from 7:00 to 10:00 three nights a week at College of Marin about thirty miles away. On the way home one evening I noticed a car that turned each time I did. As I drove into my cul-de-sac, it moved into an unlit parking lot opposite my street. The headlights went dark.

My neighbor crossed the street to stay with my kids while I drove the baby-sitter home. The car edged in behind me to and from the sitter’s, then returned to the parking lot. There was no cell phone in those days. I had to wait until I got home to call police. It seemed a long walk from the drive-way to the front door.

We turned off the house lights and watched from the kitchen window. The car, headlights off, slowly crept from the parking lot to my curb. With five children and a neighbor in the house, I remember wishing I had a gun.

The police officer forced the man out of his car and made him put his hands on the fender, but stepped back when the man waved something. The something was FBI identification. The agent was upset, I was upset, and the police officer was not happy about a false alarm. Hopefully, the agent learned a lesson on how to investigate a clearance without scaring someone to death.

Al had taken out the hall closet in order to enlarge the kitchen, so the tile floor had to be extended. The piano had cracked some tiles in the family room. I wasted days trying to find matching asphalt tile and a contractor to replace them. I gave up and learned how to iron the floor to take up old tiles and lay new ones.

I called every real estate office in town and finally found an agent to manage the house rental that had good referrals and didn’t charge outlandish fees. I said a prayer and signed a two-year contract.

I didn’t know how to handle test drives to sell the car. (Should I let someone drive off with my car or should I get in the car with a stranger?) Thank Heaven a friend needed a car and would wait to take possession until the day we left.

Because we were State Department, we could use military facilities. Al held the equivalent rank of full Colonel which allowed us special privileges. We made twenty-one trips to (the now closed) Hamilton Air Force Base for inoculations. The older children could receive some of the nine different inoculations in one dose. The younger ones had to have the same inoculation in two doses. Eric was eighteen-months old and had to have them in three. Of course, everyone had sore arms, ran fevers and got cranky—including me.

We had our passport pictures taken at Hamilton as well.

Lesson learned: Not knowing any better, I let them put Eric, Kenny and me on one passport. It created a horrible problem when I wanted to go to Vietnam later. If I took the one combined passport with me, it left the two of them outside of the United States with no passport of their own. The Embassy later made new ones for each of the boys.

It was summer and most schools were closed, but after calling every school in the phone book, I managed to find testing agencies that gave the exams required to enter the Philippine American School. Of course, all were on different days.

I couldn’t get an appointment for medical exams at Hamilton before my deadline. I found a medical office at an obscure base on the State Department list that was about thirty miles away. Poor Butch, the only date available for exams was on his birthday. We drove to the facility, pulling off onto a tiny, narrow road. It dead-ended at a military gate. I couldn’t see anyone so I slowly pulled in through the gate. The old baby-blue Chevy station wagon crammed with five kids must have looked threatening because I heard the loud crack of a shot and someone yelling, Halt! The guard wasn’t the least bit interested in my explanation. A jeep with armed men came out of nowhere and escorted us to a medical office in a Quonset hut. We got the exams, but found there was no x-ray machine. That meant I had to schedule another trip to Hamilton for x-rays. I never did learn what they did at that base.

Al came home for a few days before he left for Vietnam. I felt achy and terrible the