Ambassadorship

"When Washington is awake, I am asleep. And even better when I am awake, Washington is sleeping" -- Walter Mondale, the U.S. Ambassador to Japan, tells interestingly of the inherent perks associated with certain ambassadorial postings.

However, Mr. Allan Robert Taylor, the outgoing Australian Ambassador to Indonesia, wishes to carry with him images of the country's beautiful scenery gathered during his travels throughout the archipelago (The Jakarta Post, June 20, 1996). In perfect humility, Taylor says: "The good things in the relationship of the two countries would have happened without me."

How an Ambassador feels once back in his home country is vividly portrayed by Sidney Sheldon in his novel Windmills of the Gods: "An Ambassador arrives in tears (in a foreign country) because he knows he will be spending years in a foreign place, away from his friends but when he leaves, he leaves in tears because he must leave his new friends in a country he has grown fond of."

Yes, when we meet a stranger, we should leave him as a friend. An Ambassador does precisely this function for his country.

However, there's one difference with Indonesia. An Ambassador who is posted to Jakarta does not have to deal with strangers -- on the contrary, he will find the most friendly people he could ever hope for.

It is not incumbent only upon an Ambassador to foster good relations between his and the host peoples. Every foreigner is an unofficial representative of his country and each one, in his own way, should endeavor to build bridges of goodwill between his country and the host nation, in addition to establishing meaningful and friendly relationships with expatriates of other nationalities.

Any expatriate returning home from Indonesia will no doubt carry happy memories of his/her life here. But, what makes Indonesia unique is that the returning expatriate might well become an unofficial goodwill Ambassador for Indonesia in his home country.

D. CHANDRAMOULI Jakarta