After all I did for YOU!!

I should have been able to tell already by the man in front of me in the queue that this visit to the Transport office was not going to be fun.  Though I couldn’t understand all that he said, I knew from the few words I could understand and his body language that he was letting the lady behind the glass window know about how frustrating the lack of directions and instructions in this office was for him.  Him! The Amharic speaking and reading returnee from Canada.  I was a non-Amharic reading person from New Zealand and all I knew was which window to go to.  I did know though that I could pick up from where he was and asked him to help me get through this gruelling process of acquiring an Ethiopian drivers licence. 

This was not my first visit to the office.  I had been before- a couple of times on information seeking trips with Amharic speakers who at that time gave me some non-conclusive advice.  At that time there was no New Zealand Embassy and authentications were required from them to get our local licences stamped and authenticated as real.  So New Zealand was not even on “the list” of acceptable licences.  I found out later that New Zealanders up until that point had to go to the British Embassy to get our licences authenticated.  Apparently, one of the most expensive Embassies to get stamps from!

I waited.  We don’t have a car, so there was no point in hurrying to get a licence.  I knew the New Zealand Embassy was in the pipelines and our Ambassador had been elected at that point so I delayed the licence process.

Can I just say that again though.  We don’t have a car.  Since the time our first son was born, we bought our first car.  It was 1998 and it was a Toyota Mirage that we bought for 800NZD.  It didn’t take long to save for that car but it was the best thing we could have done with 800NZD.  Asaua had made a pact with himself that when he had a family, that they would never ride public transport.  That was for poor people, he had decided.  And we would at least be able to afford a car.  Back then, petrol was 79c a liter.  For a long time.  That wasn’t hard to do.  To fill up a tank on $20 was not something I never remember complaining about.  It was cheap and we knew it.  We would take advantage of it and go for long drives to the lake on the other side of town (the one thing I missed about living on the North Shore).  Even when we upgraded to the Ford Econovan 12 seater to fit some kids in to take to church, we would load it up with youth and take them for late night swims at our leisure.  This was a leisure that seized once the twins came along and the van downgraded to a people mover and filled up a lot faster with our family taking up most of the room – then all of the room as no.4 and no.5 children came along.

That people mover, we sold for 1000NZD when we left New Zealand.  It helped to move THESE people (us) to Ethiopia.  That was almost three years ago and so for three years we have had no car.  Imagine living without a car.  There’s not the freedom of being able to drive at your own given time at your own given pace.  We have others driving for us in various shapes and forms- all adding to the adventure of life here.  Yet we have no privacy.  If we go anywhere, people know.  People stop and stare and say what they please if unrestrained by common courtesy.  As our daughters develop into beautiful young women, the tendency for men to stare and make innuendos becomes more common.  There’s also the added amount of time it takes to walk to the bus station, wait on the bajaj driver to come from the other side of town that really turns what should be a ten minute trip into a two hour trip.  Then there’s the uncomfortable, undignifying positions you can get into when squashing yourself into a minibus that should seat ten, and you’re the twentieth person to get in.  Or really from the fourteenth on it can get pretty revealing.  In New Zealand we would say, “Oh Novis!”

So this year, we are really, really praying and believing for a car.  We can’t afford to buy one, even if hire purchase was an option as would be possible in New Zealand.  Our support would not accommodate the payments we would have to make on ANY vehicle.  The main reason being that private vehicles in Ethiopia incur a 200% tax.  So that Toyota Estima we sold in New Zealand for $1000 and was probably more likely valued at $5000 would sell here for $15000.  No less for sure.  We can only DREAM of owning such a car here now.  But we are believing for something.  For God to pull through on what WE can’t do, but we know HE can...  For safety, for time, for privacy.  We not only WANT a car, WE NEED a car!!

So as we pray for a car, we are asking a God who created SPACE before He filled it with STARS.  He created land before He filled it with land dwelling creatures.  He is in the business of capacity building so WE need to get a licence in our household so God can supply that licence to drive with a car!! And as I am the only one game enough (or desperate enough) to drive on these roads, I started the process of getting my licence. 

It meant I had to go to our Embassy at the Hilton Hotel in Addis Ababa on one day.  Go to the Foreign Affairs office on another day.  Then go with my documents to this Transport on THIS day.  Almost a month after the last two visits.  Not even sure if I had everything I needed STILL I asked the lady behind the fourth window I was directed to, to check what I had to see if I had everything I needed.  Pushing through a couple of other men, after standing  there in front of her for about twenty minutes, (that MAY OR MAY NOT BE  an exaggeration) I asked that she please just look at my folder. 

Kindly, she obliged then stumbled across my photocopied licence with the stamps I had acquired and paid for from both the previously mentioned offices.  “New Zealand?” she said then promptly went to check “the list”.  This “list” had all the Embassies that they accepted authentications from.  Before they didn’t have it because we had no Embassy, but now that we had one, and our Embassy workers had gained their licences through this process, I was sure that she would come back at me with a grin and a “oh, here it is, yes we have that Embassy on our list!” in Amharic.

Maybe I went there with too high an expectation.  I had told my kids as I left home that morning, that IF (thinking that an IF would be a WHEN) I would come back with my licence that we would celebrate at dinner time.  Maybe I was being unrealistic from the get go.  I mean after all our experiences with government systems and procedures here, there is more likely a rejection and come back with additional papers, than an immediate acceptance.

So the busy lady behind the computer, standing in front of the glass that extended out to the department behind her with hundreds of people (mainly men) waiting in the cold of Addis Ababa’s morning frost, stared back up from the list. 

“No New Zealand”.  “What?” I asked.  “What’s New Zealand?” She repeated as if to say, she doesn’t even know if the country exists.  Stunned at her response and not knowing what to do, I asked what embassy I should go to.  She shrugged her shoulders and went back to her previous file.  “So you’re not even going to help me?!” My last statement was ignored and I walked away.  Her words ringing in my ears.  Our friends had dropped me off at the office so I left with no one to talk to and no credit on my phone to call anyone to debrief (or rant about) my current situation.

I found myself conjuring up a “could have been conversation” in my head.  The one I always have with myself AFTER the fact of the matter has past and it’s too late to respond.  But this time, it went something like this:

“What’s New Zealand?! New Zealand is a country so far away that it took us 24 hours in the air to get here.  It’s the country that’s so full of beauty, the tourism industry is it’s second biggest grossing industry.  It’s a country that holds the people we love so dearly and that often tempts our return with it’s conveniences and comforts that we used to take for granted.  It’s the country that I have had a licence to drive in for almost twenty years!! AND It’s a country that me, my husband and five children left to come and help YOUR people and YOU won’t even help ME!”

My mind had stepped over the boundaries of my own limitations.  “After all I did for you!” is not a part of my life’s philosophy and something that I always have to measure my intentions against.  Maybe it’s the FEAR of holding THIS against someone that was being reflected back on me.  It's so easy when we do something for someone, to think they owe us something in return.  But this is not the way of the Kingdom. 

When working with people, we shouldn’t hold our own sacrifices against THEM.  Jesus never did.  His sacrifice on the cross didn’t necessitate our obedience or loyalty.  That’s our choice that He has given us the freedom to choose. 

“After I all I did for you” conjures up a sense of entitlement.  I am entitled to your loyalty, your reciprocation of my actions, your affection, because I did THIS for YOU!  The thing is that even though we SEE the people we seek to serve, the person we are doing this FOR is for the One who has called us. 

“For what we proclaim is not ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as servants for Jesus’ sake.  For God who said “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.  But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.  2 Cor 4:5-7

We are but the jars of clay that God has chosen to use as His hands and feet to the beautiful people of Africa.  Jesus emptied himself to come here to earth, so how minute is it to leave our country, to come to this one?  It’s nothing.  In fact, its just our "reasonable service."  (Romans 12:1) It's not even the above and beyond.  And it’s not for that lady behind the desk, or the ladies we work with, it’s for the King of our hearts who loves us so dearly, that He compels us to share His Love with those who may not know it.

As I left the Transport office in my raging thoughts, I went to buy a phone card to top up my phone so I could call my husband.  The man who sold me the phone card was blind.  He had a small stall out at the busy intersection that hosted the Transport office and main road that joined Addis Ababa to the Southern cities of Ethiopia.  Even without the ability to see, he pulled out a 50birr card and then 50birr worth of 10birr bills to change for my 100birr.  “You are so clever” I said to him in Amharic.  “I am,” he replies, “I can run around with my friends and run my business”.  He didn’t let his disability get in the way of him using his ABILITIES to make a life for himself.  Encouraged by his determination, I smiled and went back into a taxi full of 17 people on the 30 kilometer rocky road home.  Ready to come back another day.