Yesterday was the annual Around the World Embassy Tour of the month long Passport DC celebrations.
I’ve now been in DC for three of these annual events, but have yet to make it to any of the festivities. If any readers did, please comment away!
Although 40 embassies were billed as being open, I count 35, with ten from Africa (although this excludes Europe, as the EU countries have their own open house next week). I haven’t been particularly impressed with the community outreach of DC’s African embassy community, this seems like a positive development to me.
Africa in DC 
I went to five of these, because this is an Africa focused blog I’ll start with the Zambian one- it was very nice among my top 3. There was a long line to get in but not as long as the Japanese or Turkish ones. Getting in they had laid out crafts from Zambia and generally tourism related brochures etc. but the best part was that they were serving food and you didn’t have pay a dime: they had cassava, peanuts, meatballs and guess what? roasted caterpillars! I also stopped by the Ivorian embassy since the line was long I didn’t go in but from the outside they had drummers playing what I assumed was Ivorian style music.
I went to the Japanese, South Korean, Turkish, Belize, Haiti, Bolivia. South Korea was plain= there is room for improvement. My favorite was Belize had music, food, beer and the ambassador was at the entrance to meet visitors. The food and drinks were on purchase but still quite a good show. Turkey was great so was the Japanese. Haiti stood out, they had chicken pattis and rum punch for tasting. The ambassador was there to greeting visitors, such a young energized guy and all the stuff were in T-Shirts including the ambassador! I had a great time!
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