Tragic Accident

A friend and fellow American diplomat here was killed in a car accident in Zambia on Thursday, April 5, 2007. He and his wife Eileen were traveling to Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, when the car blew a tire and flipped. They think he was killed instantly. His wife has a broken shoulder. Luckily, some people from Lusaka were passing by (going to Lake Malawi) and picked her up to take her back to Lilongwe. Another car was heading to Lusaka and picked up John to take him to the morgue in Lusaka. The American Embassy in Lusaka is taking care of his body there. Eileen has gone back to her home of New York for medical support and to be with her family. They are about 60 years old and John had planned to retire after finishing his assignment in Malawi. He worked for the US Department of Treasury.

This is a very difficult time for us here since this is the first person we’ve lost in the American diplomatic community here in a long time. It’s also very tragic because it was such a freak accident and surprise.

John was a technical advisor on the project I am managing and a key person in the project. He interacted with tons of Malawian government officials and had a lot of relationships here. While most of the American diplomatic community here knows, it was take a while to get a message out to our government counterparts.

My heart goes out to Eileen and her family as they deal with this extremely difficult loss.