African Queen for a Week

DURING World War II, Eleanor Roosevelt logged thousands of miles visiting American troops overseas and meeting with exiled leaders in London. Mrs. John Kennedy lent her special brand of jet-set elegance to her husband's presidency by making unofficial trips to India and Pakistan. Lady Bird Johnson, who generally confined her traveling to the continental U.S., journeyed to Greece for the funeral of King Paul. But no First Lady in history has quite matched the Pat Nixon traveling road show, which last week wound up a resoundingly successful eight-day, 10,000-mile, jet-propelled good-will tour of the West African nations of Liberia, Ghana and the Ivory Coast. Mrs. Nixon so endeared herself to Africans that she won the ultimate tribal accolade of the Ghanaian chieftains, who told her she had cemented a friendship that "not even a lion could destroy."

No lion would dare take on the First Lady's imposing retinue of 40, which included Evangelist Billy Graham, Mrs. John H. Johnson, wife of the publisher of Ebony and Jet, and Bernard Lasker, former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange board of governors.

The official purpose of the trip was to have Mrs. Nixon represent the President at the inauguration of William R. Tolbert Jr., a longtime friend of both the Nixons and Graham, as President of the Republic of Liberia.*

Ghana and the Ivory Coast were added, Mrs. Nixon candidly admitted, "because I only had time for two others, and they asked me first."

After a sleepless nine-hour flight to Liberia, followed by a frenetic twelve-hour day of state activities, she told a news conference: "Being First Lady is the hardest unpaid job in the world." The eager, enthusiastic Liberians helped prove her point. She was greeted by Tolbert in a red-carpet ceremony complete with the ruffles and flourishes and 19-gun salute usually reserved for a head of government. Dressed in red, white and blue, she kept solemn step with the military tattoo as she reviewed the Liberian honor guard. Following the ceremony, she rode at Tolbert's side in an open-car motorcade along the 40-mile highway to Monrovia, the capital. Beneath the welcome banners that punctuated the arch of entwined banana trees, villagers abandoned their huts to greet her with cheers and, of course, miniature American flags. Liberians have a historical tie to the U.S.: their country was settled by freed American slaves in 1822.

Grand Cordon. At the inaugural ceremony, held in blistering 100DEG heat, President Tolbert praised Mrs. Nixon as a "testimony of the strength, solidarity and permanence of this special relationship between our countries." Afterward she conferred privately with Tolbert for half an hour; among other things, they discussed President Nixon's forthcoming China trip. The fun began the following day, when brightly clad tribal dancers performed for her on the rooftop terrace of the eight-story presidential mansion. To Mrs. Nixon, the dance was extraordinary: the pulsing beat of drums and hollow logs, the rhythmic clacking of ankle shells, the sinuous writhing of bare-breasted women within inches of her chair. She enjoyed herself thoroughly, and at the end of the dance, gracefully stood as two women wrapped her in a brilliant blue lappa suit and a towering head tie.

The Liberian visit was crowned by the inaugural ball, where Mrs. Nixon was given the nation's highest decoration, the Grand Cordon in the Venerable Order of the Knighthood of the Pioneers of African Redemption.

Points of Pride. In Ghana, the First Lady renewed another friendship --with ancient Chief Nana Osae Djan II. At his tribal home in Aburi, she sat next to the blind old chief while a glittering ribbon of royal ladies brought her a garland of kente cloth and baskets of fruit. Mrs. Nixon, who rarely dances at her White House parties, joined the ladies in a tribal dance. Later she met with President Edward Akufo-Addo at his sumptuous hilltop palace in Accra, where she was greeted by seven heralds sounding throaty blasts on their elephant tusk horns.

Mrs. Nixon and her entourage took off for the Ivory Coast capital of Abidjan for more of the delightful and exhausting same: a quarter of a million people spilling into the streets, a lavish banquet in President Felix Houphouet-Boigny's palace, and a visit to a school for modern homemaking. Throughout the trip, with laudable subtlety, she avoided all American aid projects, concentrating instead on local points of pride. Finally, depleted but happy, the Pat Nixon troupe flew back to Washington.

The trip brought to 74 the number of foreign nations the peripatetic Pat Nixon has visited. It also satisfied her husband's unabashed penchant for firsts. Never before had an American First Lady visited Africa, acted as the nation's official representative at an event of state, or conferred with heads of state on behalf of her husband.

More important, Mrs. Nixon won thousands of new friends and once again proved that, taken from beneath the penumbra of the White House, she is an engaging, effervescent personality in her own right. "I wanted to show that we are good neighbors, good friends," she said of her trip. At a press conference in Accra, she also announced that her husband would run for reelection, and pronounced his chances "very good." Asked if she would politic for the President, Mrs. Nixon got understandable laughter with the reply: 'I thought that's what I've been doing."

* The Nixons met the Tolberts in 1957 on a visit to celebrate the independence of neighboring Ghana. Both Nixon and Tolbert were then No. 2. Graham and Tolbert are fellow Baptist ministers.

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