My encounter with a Nobel Peace Laureate, by Michael Korff

When I was PAO in Dar es Salaam, I was the Control Officer for a one-person codel headed by then Senator Russ Feingold. He arrived in Arusha on the Nairobi Defense Attaché airplane, so the Ambassador and I, accompanied by the Assistant RSO, flew to Arusha to meet the plane. The Senator’s main reason for visiting Tanzania was to meet the President/Chief Judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, so the three of us from the Embassy had dinner with Navi Pillay the night before the Senator arrived.
 
At the dinner, the Ambassador asked her about her Indian roots (Kerala), and then observed that both my wife—who was the Ambassador’s OMS—and the Assistant RSO’s wife were from India and that the two officers had clearly “married up.” (The two wives were both born in Bombay and worked at the Oberoi Hotel there, although the ARSO’s wife was born after my wife worked there.)
 
We met the Senator the next day and drove directly to the ICTR for the meetings and briefings, and I took the notes for the report I subsequently had to send to the DOS. We then returned to the airport and flew to Zanzibar.
 
This was an unusual itinerary, since normally Codels arrived in the capital before proceeding to other—usually touristic—destinations in the country, including Zanzibar.
 
The wife of the President of Zanzibar had visited me in my PAO office at the interim chancery—the Embassy had been bombed three years earlier—the week before the visit to set up the protocol for the Senator’s visit. Her big ask: American flags for the arrival ceremony! All I had were small flimsy paper flags that we had received from the Regional Printing Center in Manila. She took our entire supply and I wondered what she would do with them.
 
Upon our arrival at the Zanzibar airport we were met by the President of Zanzibar and his wife and a horde of children all waving the flags, which the President’s wife had attached to popsicle sticks! In addition, colorfully attired dancers greeted us and ululated. It was a colorful and noisy arrival ceremony. We then drove to the President’s office for meetings, following which we returned to the airport and flew to Dar es Salaam. The next day, Senator Feingold met with the President of Tanzania and the Foreign Minister—who later became President—and then caught a commercial flight back to the U.S. (My next encounter with the Foreign Minister was when I was Chargé and had to deliver a démarche.)
 
Upon Wheels Up, I returned to begin the process of preparing the cable to Washington about the visit.
 
Years later, my son and his wife lived next door to an attorney who had worked at the ICTR, so I was able to talk to her about her time in Arusha and her recollection of Navi Pillay.
Michael Korff is editor of Public Diplomacy Today and a member of PDCA's Board of Directors. He co-chairs PDCA's Awards and Communication Committees and is a retired Foreign Service Officer.