Gracious hosts, superpower guests.

So, our commander-in-chief has finally gone to the Dark Continent. It was a modest trip: he brought only 800 people along.

Bill Clinton's journey through sub-Saharan Africa last March and April--the first such presidential tour in twenty years--triggered recollections of a high-powered visit to Nigeria that I participated in eighteen years ago. It was an eye-opening lesson in the realities of international diplomacy and cultural misunderstanding.

I was a graduate school intern then, spending a summer at the American consulate in Kaduna, the largest city in northern Nigeria. It's a post that has long since closed down, a casualty of the diplomatic "downsizing" that's so emblematic of our nation's progressive disengagement from Africa. Vice-President Walter Mondale was to make a one-day stopover.

Naively, I thought that this was a wonderful thing for our consulate--a true honor. We would be hosting our own vice-president! But in the view of our consul-general, official visits such as this one promised only aggravation, extra work hours, and logistical headaches. "The best you can hope for," he warned, "is that everything goes well and nobody remembers the veep ever came. But the smallest screwup, and it hangs over your head for the rest of your career."

It is galling for career foreign service officers when White House advance teams swoop in and take over their consulates and embassies. Members of the advance teams are often political appointees who enjoy the glamour and power of managing overseas visits but possess not an iota of cross-cultural interest or skill. One such advance woman had much experience in planning vice-presidential visits but no interest in the host nation. As she saw it, the point of the visit was not to facilitate understanding or promote dialogue but: "to impress the hell out of the Africans here."

Discussions at the consulate swirled not around the significance of the sights chosen for the tour or how the visit might advance American understanding of Nigeria but, rather, whether the Secret Service would get cold diet sodas in the morning, or whether the vice-presidential lunch would be pre-served on plates or dished out in front of the Mondales, or whether Lipton Iced Tea and Tab were appropriate beverages for this level of delegation.

Agents of the supposedly Secret Service were identifiable no less by their telltale suits and sunglasses than by their paranoia over drinking local soft drinks and bottled water; gallons of American mineral water had to be airlifted in for the sake of their delicate gastrointestinal tracts. They spent their afternoons poolside, complaining about the facilities and the lack of attractive local women. When one agent overheard me speaking Hausa--one of only thousands of languages spoken around the continent--he asked in utter stupefaction, "You speak African?"

Reading accounts of diplomatic visits being "choreographed," I had always assumed that the theater term was used metaphorically. Not so. Assigned to guide the photographers of the press corps from one end of the first scheduled visit site to the other, I was instructed to rehearse the actual steps between their arriving vehicle and the designated spot from which they would be shooting pictures. I felt as if I were once again an extra in a high school play.

One of the highlights of the Mondale visit was to be a trip to the ancient and legendary Kano marketplace. But the narrow, winding alleys which imparted much of the market's Casbah-like charm were deemed too difficult for the Secret Service to "secure." So a parking lot was cordoned off and a mock market with some tacky souvenir stalls set up for the Mondales to visit instead. It was as if a visiting foreign dignitary were shunted into the shop at the Smithsonian and led to believe that she or he had visited the actual museum. I--the only American involved in the visit who actually knew how to speak the local language--was assigned the sensitive task of helping the vice-president's son bargain for bibelots in this paltry counterfeit emporium. (Chip Mondale turned out to be one of the few visitors who did take a genuine interest in local culture.)

Shortly before the motorcade made its way from the airport into town, some sheep wandered onto the highway, throwing the Secret Service and the Nigerian military into a dither. They had not worked out in advance which nation's security team was responsible for clearing ruminants from the highway. The ensuing squabble caused great mirth among the roadside crowd.

Smiling and sweating in the hot African sun, the Mondale delegation emerged from their limousines to visit Kano's famous dye pits. One suavely dressed American patronizingly handed out candy to the African dyers--venerable artisans who had earned their place at the dye pits only after decades of apprenticeship. One old man, justifiably offended, looked at the bonbon in his hand, sniffed, and asked me in Hausa, "Why is he giving us candy as if we were children?"

Equestrian salutations by traditional chiefs marked the final ceremony. Bedecked in flowing, kaleidoscopic gowns, they rode forth and saluted their own king and our visiting U.S. highness with gilded spears and royal batons. The point was not to demonstrate equitation but fealty. It was the elaborate cloth strips on their robes, not the speed of their mounts, which were designed to impress. But the chief of the White House advance team disdainfully muttered, "That was the lamest horse show I've ever seen. More like a geriatric performance."

For years I believed that Africa was called the Dark Continent on account of the skin color of its inhabitants. Only much later did I learn that the epithet stemmed from the West's ignorance of Africa's vast, mysterious, and inaccessible interior. It is ironic that modern technology, communications, and diplomacy have done so little to increase our understanding of Africa--a land where hospitality is an art form and hosts are exceedingly gracious. I hope that this time our own chiefs and their entourage found it in their superpower selves to be gracious guests.

Bill Miles is professor of political science at Northeastern University. From 1977 to 1979 he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger.