Living History Unknown (best books to read fiction .txt) 📖

of 1998, Dick’s detractors tried to torpedo his appointment. Melanne and I worked hard to get him confirmed and urged him to persevere through the process that increasingly deters qualified people from accepting nominations for important posts. After fourteen months, Dick prevailed and went to the U.N. in August of 1999, where he shepherded through Congress the long delayed payment of our U.N. dues and worked with Secretary-General Kofi Annan to make the HIV/AIDS pandemic a United Nations priority.

The highlight of spring was Bill’s long-anticipated trip to Africa, his first to the continent and the first extended visit to sub-Saharan Africa made by a sitting President. Since we had first met, Bill had opened my horizons to the world beyond our country, but now it was my turn to show him what I had discovered.

We arrived in Accra, the capital of Ghana, on March 23, 1998, to a welcome by the largest crowd I had ever seen. More than half a million people gathered in the searing heat in Independence Square to hear Bill speak. I had loved traveling with Bill ever since he took me to England and France in 1973/ He rose to every public occasion, delighted in meeting strangers, and had a vast appetite for new experiences.

Standing on the stage and facing the immense crowd, he told me to look behind us at the rows of tribal kings who were decked out in vibrant robes and festooned with gold jewelry. He squeezed my hand. “We’re a long way from Arkansas, little Hi’ry”

And indeed we were. Ghana’s President, Jerry Rawlings, and his wife, Nana Konadu, hosted a luncheon for us at Osu Castle, the President’s official residence. Slaves and convicts had once been kept in its dungeon. Rawlings, who first came to power in a military coup in 1979, confounded his critics by bringing stability to his country. Elected President in 1992 and reelected in 1996, he peacefully relinquished his office in a free election in 2000. His wife, Nana, a graceful woman who wore her own striking designs made of Kente cloth, shared with me an intimate connection: Hagar Sam, a Ghanaian midwife who helped deliver Chelsea in Little Rock, had also delivered the four Rawlings children.

Like many enterprising people all over the world, Hagar continued her education in America, studying at Baptist Hospital in Little Rock and working for my obstetrician.

Every day was an eye-opener for Bill. In Uganda, President and Mrs. Museveni traveled with us to the Wanyange village near the source of the Nile. I had asked the two Presidents to highlight the positive results of microcredit loans. From house to house, we saw the evidence of success: borrowers who used their loans to build a rabbit hutch or buy a bigger cooking pot to make extra food to sell or purchase goods to take to the market.

Outside one of the houses, my husband came face-to-face with another Bill Clinton―

a two-day-old boy whose mother had named him in honor of the American President.

Bill wanted to go to Rwanda to meet with survivors of the genocide. The best estimates were that in less than four months, between five hundred thousand and one million people were killed. The Secret Service insisted that meetings occur at the airport because of ongoing security problems. Sitting in an airport lounge with survivors of one of the worst genocides in human history reminded me again what human beings are capable of doing to one another. For two hours, victim after victim calmly recited the circumstances of his or her encounter with evil. No country or international force, including the United States, had intervened to halt the killings. It would have been difficult for the United States to send troops so soon after the loss of American soldiers in Somalia and when the Administration was trying to end ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. But Bill publicly expressed regret that our country and the international community had not done more to stop the horror.

In Cape Town, Bill and I were greeted by President Mandela, who ushered Bill into a speech before the South African Parliament. We lunched afterwards with a racially diverse group of parliamentarians who before independence would never have met one another socially. Bill also visited Victoria Mxenge to see the more than one hundred new houses built since Chelsea and I had visited a year earlier. The women had named a street after me, and they gave me a souvenir street sign with my name on it.

South Africa’s summer was ending, and there was a chill in the air as Bill walked through the cell blocks on Robben Island with Mandela. Black prisoners had been required to wear shorts when working in the limestone quarry on the island, even in cool weather. The coloreds, or mixed-race prisoners, wore long pants. During monotonous hours of rock breaking, Mandela drew letters in the limestone powder, trying to teach his fellow prisoners how to read when the guards weren’t looking. Years of exposure to the caustic dust damaged Mandela’s tear ducts, and caused his eyes to water and itch. But they lit up whenever he was around his new love, Graça Machel, the widow of Samora Machel, the President of Mozambique, who died in a suspicious plane crash in 1986. She was a guiding light in her own war-torn country and had championed the causes of women and children across Africa. Mandela’s marriage to Winnie, which had included decades of separation, prison and exile, did not survive. He was at ease around Graça and clearly smitten.

Under the prodding of his old friend Archbishop Tutu, they married in July 1998.

Mandela insisted that Bill and I call him by his colloquial tribal name, Madiba. We were more comfortable addressing him as “Mr. President.” We simply honored and admired him so much. Mandela repeatedly asked why we hadn’t taken Chelsea out of school to come with us. “You tell her that when I come to the United States she has to see me,” he said. “No