22
I arrived at St. Paul’s School from Monrovia,
Liberia, at age 15 with absolutely no academic
skills, even though this was my 12th school and
I was in the Fifth Form.
Poor Mr. Archer (French) and Mr. Clark (math) did not
know what to do. I was one of the first girls in their classes
but had never conjugated a verb or calculated a fraction.
Let me just say calculus was completely confusing and
French, well. . . . But I was nice and I know they didn’t want
to flunk me. I don’t want to give the impression that I
was stupid, far from it. I came with expertise, which I
didn’t know I possessed, but skill I would have considered
silly and stupid as a high school junior.
I was born in Beirut and grew up in Africa because of
my father’s job in the CIA. Like nomads, we moved in and
out of houses and various countries
all over the continent until I was 18.
Sometimes we stayed two years, other
times a few months, depending on
the political situation in the country
and what my father was up to. Living
like a nomad gives one skills neces-
sary to survive, like making a house
become a home in a day, using that
house to connect in a meaningful
way with another person, entertain-
ing hundreds of people, and unpack-
ing and packing within hours. At
various times, our African houses
turned into temporary hospitals or
schools, elevated into salons, concert
halls, or movie theaters, or degen-
erated into a war zone.
Inadvertently, I became an expert
on how to use a house; I can make a
kitchen the engine of a house or the
dining room a community outreach
center, all because of my upbringing
in Africa.
In 1961, when typhoid and its raging fevers infected me,
my sister, Cynthia Carter ’75, and my brother, Todd William-
son ’77, instead of flying from Somalia to a hospital in
Germany, our house overlooking Mogadishu became our
hospital. My mother filled bathtubs with gin and took
turns floating us in the tub to tame our temperatures.
In every county, our gardens were tropical paradises,
overgrown with flame trees and bougainvillea vines, in-
habited with turtles, goats, pythons, and scarlet-breasted
parrots. Neighbors kept cheetahs, lions, and monkeys, so
our biology lessons were not what you would call “text-
book.” In 1967, we moved to Nigeria. One neighbor owned
monkeys who continually stole guests’ cocktails. Getting
to their house was actually a walk in the jungle, a vital
lesson in avoiding 25-foot-long rock pythons stretched
across the dirt road. By carrying a long stick and tapping
the ground in front as you walked, you knew the moment
to step over a boa constrictor.
Our garden in Nigeria grew into a food bank with the
vegetables I planted, saving my father’s life as the food
on which he survived for six months in 1967. He lived
in Enugu during the Biafran War, but the rest of us – all
foreign women and children – evacuated the morning
the civil war started. Soldiers destroyed our house,
family photos, and possessions, but the devastation that
remains in my psyche is my Nigerian classmates staying
behind and perishing.
Accra, Ghana, did not have a good school in 1968 when
we arrived, so in addition to his spying duties, my father
founded the Lincoln School. Until the school opened, a
diplomat’s wife taught me in
her house using correspond-
ence courses.
Cultural lessons in all our
houses were varied: My father
always turned one room into
his music library, lined with the
10,000 records and recording
equipment that traveled the
world with us. He presented
concerts and lessons with his
constantly expanding classical,
opera, and jazz recordings.
Piazzas converted into movie
theaters, where we gathered
friends to watch the last year’s
American movies. Once in a
while, visiting dignitaries such
as Jessie Owens, Black Caucus
members from Congress, Chub-
by Checker, Pel
é
, Ike and Tina
Turner came and expanded our
horizons.
The nightly entertaining that is a part of every agent
and diplomat’s life was a fascinating education, far more
encompassing than the proper way to make a martini.
These were parties with purpose – contacts made, infor-
mation exchanged, plans forged. As a child, I watched the
pre-party mayhem of guests arriving, drinking, flirting,
behaving badly, getting louder until the stragglers left
as the sun rose. As a teenager, I became a participant.
Every moment intrigued me, from observing behavior of
the African government officials to the European wives
of diplomats, from the costumes to the cocktails to the
conversations. I learned that a house and the parties held
within its confines is the ideal setting for communication,
community, and connections. After doing this instinctively
for decades, I’ve come to realize the tremendous power
of a house in forging lifelong connections.
“I learned that
a house and
the parties held
within its confines
is the ideal setting
for communication,
community, and
connections.”
i
