Bamdi Jingoo an America Story
Bamdi Jingoo portrayed himself as rather modest. His favorite although peculiar saying is “I might not be a 100 watt bulb, but I am certainly a 60 watt rough service one”. His peers thought this a bit of brag and that Bamdi was closer to a 25 watt cool bright refrigerator bulb. Bamdi liked the various comparisons as they suited his personality.
Bamdi’s parents emigrated to the United States after the “great turmoil” of World War 2 and, most fortunately, before the “great slaughter of the royalty”. They settled in Brooklyn, and thanks to their connections to the Ethiopian dynasty prior to its unceremonious end, they were able to prosper as part of the New York political establishment and social scene.
Bamdi was the oldest and first of the Jingoo family to go to college. However, because of a linguistic twist of fate, he went to the University of Harvayard rather than Harvard University. Nevertheless, his dual degrees in International Husbandry and Instrumental Performance proved to be a fortunate choice. The Central Intelligence Agency was looking for unusual talent from unusual places. He was hired and given the title of Ambassador at Large. His first assignment involved intelligence work as part of a joint partnership with the FBI.
And then the story of Ambassador Bamdi Jingoo took a strange and fortuitous twist:
It was a rather beaten down little brown church in the middle of a wild wood. Bamdi was assigned to search the church for contraband but instead found an active Mousean nursery. Greased mice mothers and their babies were everywhere squealing, screaming, whistling, squeaking, snorting and otherwise being noisy as all get out. Then came an unexpected and totally revolutionary discovery ——-. Thanks to his surreptitious visits to his ancestral home in East Africa and his diverse high pitch musical performance training, he began to understand some of what the Mouseans were saying. (For example, squeal squeak was mommy and squeak squeal was baby. Musical tones reflected tense.)
It was immediately obvious to Bamdi that his joint FBI/CIA search team would napalm the church and everything within a half mile radius of it. He reasoned quite correctly that this would be a genocidal crime against humanity —– well not really humanity but species genocide for sure. Such a horror could not be allowed. He signaled “all clear” for the church.
In his next clandestine visit to the little brown church, Bamdi began to create a Mousean to human translational dictionary and enigma device. This “labor of love” would prove to be revolutionary and quite necessary as the future unfolded. However, nothing of this magnitude could be done solely in a remote location, so —-
Ambassador Bam D. Jingoo, the badge name he used to enter and exit the FBI headquarters, snuck a few greased mice into his private special access required office. It was really quite simple to do – just suppress the unique grease smell of the mice and hide a few in a diplomatic pouch. His choice of aftershave, “Royal Habesha”, was quite pungent, and he was given a wide berth when he went in and out of the FBI headquarters. (He would also loudly hum the music of the old and repudiated monarchist Ethiopian national anthem. This was quite off-putting in and of itself.)
His future interactions with Special Agent Pierre Ducksalot were eventually the stuff of legends. But that is another story.