I'm Special!

Actually there are lots of special people here. The diplomatic community is large, not just the US contingent, but all of the Diplomatic Missions in country. I never noticed, and that is probably because I have never lived in a capital… of a country or a state before.

There are several other Embassies … near the US Embassy or scattered about. There is the ‘new’ Chinese Embassy, just recently built and rumored to be housing compound as well. I drive past the High Commission of Great Brittan and Lesotho, Japans Embassy, Mali, New Zealand and Australia, just to name a few.

So why do I say I am special. I am referring to the plate on my car. You see most of the plates here are just your normal plate with letter and numbers and a province code. GP is Gauteng (I live here), FS is for Free State Province, EC is Eastern Cape, L is for Limpopo and MP is for Mphalanga. There are several more provinces- I’m sure you get the idea… Well my plate is different (and it will be changing soon, this is the plate that came with the car and will have to be turned in when our plate is ready). Actually, all the diplomats have a ‘special’ plate and looks very similar to this. The “D” signifies that the plate belongs to the Diplomatic community. The 175 signifies the US Mission, but that is also changing because it is a target indicator. Word has it that all the Diplomatic plates will start with DBBB. But we shall wait and see.

So you see when I am driving around in my car… I am ‘Special’. There are several other ‘Special’ things too. Like we have our own South African Police Division in Pretoria, they drive around in cars that say Diplomatic Police on the side, and if we have problems, we are to call them. Not sure if it will help or hinder the situation, but I will call if I need to. I have the number programmed in to my cell phone, along with a list of about 20 other numbers!!!!

My plate!

I know I have been a little slow with updating the blog, but getting the pictures of the plates to go with it has taken some coordination… I have another post planned but again, it needs some pictures too.