Page 45 - IFAFA ebook v4

16. Ewa Loumbee-Mc Cabe

My husband, Pat, was in the diplomatic service for more than forty years.

When we got married, he was already a diplomat so I knew what I was

getting into. He even told me that as long as he was a counsellor, I could

work but that once he became an ambassador (if that ever happened),
work for me was out of the question.

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I have always been a working woman. I am no good around the house, I

don’t enjoy housework, maybe with the exception of cooking, but even

that I learned after I got married and I never interfered with professional

cooks when Pat was an ambassador. To justify my presence in the world, I

like to work outside of the house. So I knew that this might become a

problem, but I said, look, we will pass that hurdle when it comes.

When we were posted in Brussels in the late 70s, I was one of the few

diplomatic spouses who worked. It was still very unusual for a diplomatic

wife (and there were mostly wives with very few diplomatic male spouses)

to work outside the house. If a spouse could paint, or write, that was

acceptable, but I was not gifted artistically. There were cases in the 70s

when spouses, educated professional women, found a job on posting but

they were not allowed to take it up (‘My wives do not work’ was still a

possibility). Fortunately, this was not the case in Brussels when Pat was a

counsellor in the Irish Permanent Representation. Of course, there were
some challenges: Pat had to entertain at quite a high level and on those

occasions, I had to cook and be a hostess, while working part-time for a

US company and looking after one, and later, two daughters.

Pat became an ambassador when he was forty. To his (and my) surprise,

the Secretary General told him that the policy towards working spouses

had changed, and that the Department wanted families to be happy so if I

wanted to work, I could. I think what also made a difference was that in

the late 70s, when female civil servants no longer had to give up their
jobs after marriage, a new situation arose with the appearance of male

spouses of senior female diplomats. And back then, you couldn’t easily

send a male spouse to a coffee morning or ask him to get involved in a

charity work (I knew of only one male spouse who was responsible for

charity events in a diplomatic spouses’ organization).

However, Pat’s first ambassadorial posting was Baghdad, where the only

job opportunity for me was to teach at an international school. I am very

flexible workwise, but teaching is just not my thing so for the three years
we spent there, I did not work, and I volunteered for a diplomatic

spouses’ association instead. I represented Western Europe and, when

necessary, the whole of Europe, given my Polish background.

I am an economist by profession which is not a very easy profession to

carry around (it is maybe easier now). So I tried to adjust to the demands

of the local market, wherever we were posted, and worked more with my

languages (I speak four fluently and have bits and pieces of a few more).

In Moscow, I was translating subtitles for Russian films. I also interpreted
for Pat, but that was, of course, unpaid. And I was an observer in the

first Russian presidential and first Ukrainian parliamentary elections,

which was fascinating. We then moved to Poland where I had no problem

finding a job, as I am Polish. I worked for the consultancy firm Price

Waterhouse Coopers there. Then in Stockholm, I learned Swedish so that

I could find a job. I worked for a local council there. With the big EU

enlargement in 2004, I also got a freelance translation job with the

European Commission. For my years of work in Poland, Sweden and

Ireland, I am now getting some small retirement pensions. 36