The Foreign Service Journal, December 2020

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | DECEMBER 2020 11 demonstrated the cost savings. There was supposedly no “overland route,” although we had no trouble driving through Mexico to our home leave in California. If we had not driven, we would have been waiting for our vehicle in D.C. and had to rent a car during our home leave. When I was posted to Malta, shipping our 6-year-old car to a right-hand-drive island seemed like a waste of govern- ment money. Instead, we purchased a new car from a dealer in Malta. Using our tax-free status meant it was rela- tively inexpensive, and we were able to sell it for almost what we paid when we departed three years later. As a management officer, I also helped a few employees purchase used cars from Japan, another right-hand- drive country. Because most Japanese keep their cars less than three years, used cars are cheap, and the shipping from Japan was less expensive than from most other posts. Some employees then sold those cars to incoming employees, so there were further savings to the government. And this provided another advantage to employees: They had a car on arrival rather than waiting, sometimes for months, for their shipment to arrive. Obviously, none of us benefited from the thousands in government savings. In fact, if my husband and I hadn’t had enough funds to purchase our vehicle outright, my idea wouldn’t have worked. So I think Mr. Leishman’s idea to give a POV stipend would encourage more folks to save the government an average $8,000-9,000 for round-trip shipping while offering other advantages, includ- ing the environmental ones he also mentions. Marietta Bartoletti FSO, retired San Francisco, California A Good Suggestion Now, and Then Warren Leishman’s Speaking Out piece (“Stop Shipping Your Personal Vehicle!” October) made some com- monsense recommendations to both save money for the U.S. government and minimize the frustrations associated with transfers overseas and between posts. It also brought back memories of my first posting in Tunis. After a year of Arabic in Washington, I transferred with my family to Tunis to complete a one-year U.S. Informa- tion Agency junior officer tour and a follow-on year at the FSI campus in Tunis. Under USIA, new FSOs typically spent one year rotating through different sections of the embassy in preparation for serving as spokespeople during our careers. Tunisia in the early 1990s was saddled with a molasses-like bureaucracy, and the admin officer asked me during my time in his office to look into ways to streamline the customs and shipping processes that frustrated many an incom- ing embassy staffer. This was doubly the case for FSI students, who were assigned to Tunis for less than a full year of training, but often spent up to half of their time at post with- out their household effects (HHE) and POV. In my own family’s case, we didn’t receive our HHE until after Thanksgiv- ing, well after the weather had changed and with an awful lot of baby food and undersized diapers to sell.