George Bush bought a giraffe, so I did too

All the retrospectives about and tributes to former U.S. president George H.W. Bush (Bush-père, as he is sometimes called in French) has brought back good memories for me. After several years of living and working in Paris in the late 1970s and '80s, I had moved back to the U.S. in 1982 and settled myself in Washington DC to start a new career. I ended up — long story — working with my friend CHM as a translator/editor at the U.S. Information Agency for a couple of years, and then in 1984 I moved over to the Africa Press Service in the same agency as a writer, editor, and reporter.

In 1985, my boss asked me to accompany the U.S. vice-president —George Bush at the time — on a trip to Africa as a member of the press pool that would travel with him. I was thrilled, of course. I'd never been to Africa, although I had been working in African affairs for a few years, and three of the countries where Bush and his retinue would be spending time were French-speaking. For me, it was a great opportunity.

 We flew on Air Force 2, which is what the U.S. president's airplane, Air Force 1, is called when the vice-president is using it for official travel. George and Barbara Bush were both on the trip, and the vice-president briefed reporters on the flight from the U.S. to Africa and several other times over the 10 days we traveled together. Bush's purpose for going to Africa was to support U.S. relief efforts there during a major drought crisis, consulting with local leaders and touring development projects and famine-relief camps. Here's a photo Bush's office sent me after we got back to the U.S.

That's me (at age 36) in the middle seat of the row of reporters with George Bush on Air Force 2.
The others were reporters for the Associated Press, the Voice of America, the Houston Chronicle, and Time Magazine.

It was all very official, and I can't claim that I got to spend a lot of time with VP and Mrs. Bush. However, on a Saturday mid-trip we were in Niamey, the capital of the sub-Saharan country of Niger, and one of the main events of the day was a guided tour of the city's zoological park. I was wandering around, just observing, because as a government employee I didn't have to file a report that day — our agency was closed on weekends. At the zoo, I stepped into the facility's gift shop to have a look around. I was the only person in the shop besides a couple of employees. Everybody else was out in the park trying to catch a glimpse of the Bushes, I guess.

Suddenly, the Bushes walked into the shop, and security people sealed the entrance. I couldn't leave and nobody else could enter. George and Barbara didn't speak French — or much French — as far as I know, so I served as the interpreter between them and the shop employees. We each had a cold Pepsi, right out of the bottles. The three of us looked around in the shop for a few minutes, making small talk and oohing-and-aahing over items we liked and wished we could take back to the U.S. as gifts for friends. I guess I told them I worked for USIA, but I don't really remember if that came up. They just seemed to accept my presence and assistance, or maybe they took such service for granted.

Finally, VP Bush decided to buy a giraffe! Not a live one, of course, but a brass giraffe that was at least three feet tall. He could of course take something like that back to the U.S. with him. I certainly couldn't. But not one to miss an opportunity, I spotted a miniature version of the same giraffe and decided that it should be one of my souvenirs of the trip and the experience. I still have it, and I just took a photo of it for this post.