Outpost: Life on the Frontlines of American Diplomacy: A Memoir Read Online Free PDF Page B

or without trousers). I headed down the mountain track, riding slow in the gathering twilight. I felt that in that far-off village I had been representing my country, and that people felt better about my country as a result of my visit that day. Heady stuff.
    I signed up for the Foreign Service exam soon afterward and resolved to pass it, because I knew that was what I wanted to do with my life.
    • • •
    Some credit unions took more time than others, and Tole Tea Estate’s credit union was one of those. There were about six hundred members, not unusual for a credit union whose membership was drawn from a plantation workforce. Unlike village credit unions, the plantation-based credit unions seldom had any loan delinquency problems because the corporate employer garnished the wages.
    Tole had a “board of directors” that consisted of about twelve people. When I looked at the loan ledgers, I discovered that some 50 percent of all of the credit union’s loans had been taken by those twelve people. The loans appeared to be cosigned, that is, covered by savings accounts, and I hadn’t spotted any arrearage, or indication that they were not going to be paid back. Still, the concentration of loans with such a small group of people highlighted the fact that these leaders had abused their positions and needed to be replaced.
    I raised the overall governance issue with Alex Lantum, Southwest Province director for the government agency that had broad oversight for cooperatives, including the Cameroon cooperative credit union league to which I was assigned. He looked at my report and agreed that something had to be done before there was lost or stolen money and other more dangerous threats to people’s savings.
    With the annual general meeting coming up, I worked fast to prepare my report to the general membership, and, most important, my recommendations for a fresh start with a new board of directors. Fortunately, Tole was located only thirty minutes from my home in Buea, which I could get to through a back road, a narrow dirt track that descended rapidly down the side of Mount Cameroon, a dense forest shading it on both sides. Approaching the estates, the forest would give way to tea fields, and refreshingly, as I looked back over my shoulder, to a view of the thirteen-thousand-foot mountain that often disappeared into thick rainy season clouds.
    Tole Estates was a division of the Cameroon Development Corporation plantations system in the province, a German, then British, and now Cameroonian-owned corporation that produced rubber, palm oil, bananas, and, only at Tole, tea. Unlike in the other plantations, the bulk of the workforce was composed of women. All day, they worked along the rows of tea bushes, carrying on their backs enormous wicker baskets the size of a laundry basket, attached by a string that would loop around the women’s foreheads, which were in turn covered with thick headbands.
    At the annual meeting, held on a warm Sunday afternoon in March, the board and I sat in plastic white chairs set up on a green sloping hill, the view of Mount Cameroon behind us, and a thick forest below. When the time came for my report, I stood and delivered a cautiously optimistic version of events, but made very clear to the membership that the board of directors had entirely too many of the loans. Person after person rose in support of what I had uncovered. And while the board appeared sullen and upset, one of them saying to me, “You are destroying the credit union,” I stood there in my khaki pants and excessively colorful Cameroonian loose cotton shirt, explaining that these loans exceeded our rules, should not have been approved, and needed to be reduced.
    The reaction overall was positive and, more important, not panicky. I was calm in my appearance and presentation, though clear about theneed for change, and the reaction could not have been more approving and supportive. I decided it was time to move on to the next