CLAYTON: Foreign Service Officer, Management Career Track
I'm Clayton. I'm a Foreign Service Officer in the Management Career Track
and currently, I'm a Post Management Officer
in the Bureau of African Affairs.
And so, with that, I try to be the Washington point of contact
for the posts that I cover in a particular region of the continent
on administrative matters.
So, I'm from Detroit, Michigan,
and...and I hadn't really thought about the Foreign Service as a career before.
I mean, I just thought, you know, I knew I needed to go to school
and so I was thinking maybe I'd be a lawyer,
maybe get into politics,
go back to Detroit, get involved locally
and then, I got this mailing about the Pickering Program, and...and I thought,
"Oh, so...you all will pay me to go to school
and...you'll get me a job."
This is the most interesting work that I can imagine and I, and I Iove it for...
for the career, for the lifestyle that we have.
I love adventure and so, being able to live overseas
and experience different places is tremendously satisfying for me.
And, and for me, there was this moment when I was in Delhi
and, and I was at the American Center working there,
and just walking at lunch time on Kasturba Gandhi Marg
and it was just...everything sort of coming
together for me, like, "I love this....",
you know, it's just so different from Detroit,
from anything else that I had experienced before --
the sites, the smells, the noises -- everything.
And, it's, it's about like dealing with fear
and just being human, and sort of not knowing,
you know, how much of your true self
you can be and what not,
and, and so I happened to be at a reception,
it was a sort of formal gathering, and, and, you know,
I was seated next to this, this elderly woman, very dignified and matronly
and, you know, like I'm, I'm gay, my spouse is of the same sex
and...and he was also working at the embassy.
So she, so she said, "Well but, and so what does, what what does your wife do?"
...you know, and so, my spouse happened to be at that reception
and so I could gesture to him and say, "Well, he is over here", and he explained
what he, what he did at the embassy and then I started to just sort of,
you know, blather, babble, and whatever like,
"Oh, well, you know, I know in, in, in this culture, you know,
it's a sort of foreign concept and even in my own", and you know,
she just grabbed my hand and said, looked me in the eye,
"You live your life!"
You can find support in all these places
that you might not even imagine it's there.
After India, we went to Indonesia and, you know,
this predominantly Muslim country,
and again, we were sort of thinking,
"Well, how will that work, what will we say,
and will people hate us just for, you know...being gay?"
And, and we found, just like India, it wasn't...
if it was a problem for people, we didn't know about it,
and it seemed even quite the opposite, like people were more interested
maybe to meet us and spend time with us,
invite us to places.
Maybe cause we were different.
It does make me feel proud, you know...
and our country is a great country, and I also think about, mean, just...
just being here and what it means
that I'm in the Foreign Service.
This black guy from Detroit who's gay and, you know, just that...
so, I'm someone that people might see, you know, like in India
and they've never met a black person before or an openly gay person,
you know, or someone from Detroit, you know, and so, you know, that...
I, I hope that people see something much more about our country
through my own personal experience.
You know, I'm proud to serve but I'm also really satisfied
with just working with great people and having these interesting experiences.