Living across borders

Beauties of an Arusha shopping trip

Rebecca here: You may have already read about our Ethiopian reality from Paul, on the weekend. But a few words from the liminal space are in order: while Paul has been conveying the excitement about our new home-to-be and the work that we will do there, I have been back in Arusha dealing with a totally different reality. As much as possible I tried to join Paul by phone as he met with our new team members in Ethiopia and learned about them and their projects. Poor internet quality precluded a video connection, so basically everything was only audio. It was quite a surreal experience, sitting at Gymkhana or driving home, putting away dishes, and hearing the sounds of this group of colleagues sitting peacefully, discussing very interesting and distant work, with unseen birds calling in the background, and with me still going about by normal everyday life in Arusha. I think I must have been on the phone for at least 3-4 hours each day, just trying to listen in.

During the first week of Paul’s absence, I was also required to attend a three-day leadership training session on Zoom – it was very interesting content, dealing with conflict and critical conversations in the workplace. I was very interested and stimulated by the opportunities to think about how deeply our wrong assumptions about other people’s actions can work in our hearts to create conflict, if we don’t go back and check their intentions. We also had great opportunities to interact with other new MCC leaders, many of whom we’ve been able to meet in the past months, and many of whom are “repeat offenders” like ourselves.

David and I both doing homework

The complication of this training lay in the fact that it started at 4:30 pm and ended at 8 pm – yep, right through the time that I would normally spend checking in with the kids after school, supervising homework, and having dinner together. David, Oren and I had a serious conversation about the difficulties before this training started, and I was really thankful for the ways that they were willing to pitch in and get dinner ready. David tried to do his homework next to me while I was online. And we spent my 15-minute breaks together jumping on the trampoline.

On our first Saturday without Paul, both kids had extracurriculars at school on Saturday morning (drama practice for David, and extra math and art tuition for Oren). I decided to explore the coffee plantations around the school and took a long walk to try and unwind from the week. 

In the afternoon, the kids’ friends came over to keep us company and give me a bit of a break. And we enjoyed a great bible study meeting on Sunday afternoon, at the beautiful compound of a German friend, where our kids could play together in an extremely inviting pool. Paul was even able to join us for bible study by Zoom.

The next week held significant Arusha-based challenges. On Monday, I plucked up the courage to check on all the online portals of the government offices, to see if MCC had successfully been deregistered and removed from their systems, now that we are officially closed. My heart sank as I realized that all the work Lucia and I had put into closing properly in November has basically had no effect on the official record. There was also the question of our kids’ student visas for Tanzania. We had been attempting to renew them since last October. The lawyer at the kids’ school, who helps with this, told us that there were problems in the government system and that we should wait until January to apply. When I reminded him in January, he said that the system was now purely online, and that he could no longer lodge paper-based applications. But, in a perfect catch-22, the mandatory online application process was not yet fully operational online for student passes. And my kids’ visas expired that Thursday. There was also the question of registering for COVID tests for travel. And finally, a very complicated issue to deal with involving getting driving licenses for Ethiopia.

David has been handy in the kitchen in Paul's absence! 

So, Tuesday morning, I girded my loins to go do battle on multiple fronts. I started with the kid’s visas, as I dropped them off for school in the morning. When I went to see the lawyer, I was informed that he had lost his father to a sudden illness and would be out for a week = no help from him on the visas. His assistant gave me our kids’ files and I decided to go to immigration myself to see what I could do.

View from our watertower by David

Next, I went to the revenue authority to deposit a letter and see how we could get de-registered from their online system, which keeps claiming that we owe payroll taxes. At this present moment, with the rapid spread of “viral pneumonia” in the community, I absolutely hate going into that building. At least masks were required to enter (a new development as of last week). But in order to talk with someone, you need to go up into a large open-plan room, where at least 50 people are busy at work, and another 50 people are milling about waiting to talk to them. There are a few open windows at each end, but it is basically a super-spreader horror to even walk into that place. After going to an officer who had helped us in the past in the big room, I learned that I needed to lodge a whole new letter to the regional manager, which would take more work. So, I left.

At immigration, at least I had the name of the particular individual who could help. And when my turn came, she had good news for me: the online system for student passes had just become active 10 minutes ago. So, I could go and apply for the visas myself. Maybe I would even be able to pay before my kids’ old visas expired! That seemed like good news to her, but I knew that I could not apply without the help of the school. And both the lawyer and his assistant were off work for the father’s funeral.

Burka coffee farm walk

On the driving license issue, it turns out that Ethiopia will only grant a new license if you can prove that your license from another country is valid. This takes a letter of validation from the issuing authority. I needed a lawyer to help with this, and so my next stop was to go see him. He had done some advance work for me and had found out that it would be necessary to actually go to the police to get a letter from them. I had picked up Paul’s license from DHL, and brought along mine, and so I the lawyer agreed to work on getting the correct document from the police. However, the Arusha police don’t follow up on anything without “facilitation” or “encouragement” and so I had to agree to a fairly large facilitation fee for the lawyer. I knew that I would then need to send our licenses to the Ethiopian Embassy in Dar, but there was also the problem of still not knowing exactly what the Ethiopian embassy would need from us, and there were problems with reaching the right person to get answers. So, three big issues were not entirely resolved.

And then there was the question of paying for the COVID-19 tests I had booked – it’s been hard to do that in the past and has taken hours standing and waiting for a government control number to arrive in time. I wanted to take care of that payment early, and so walked up to the government hospital – but even when I found the right people, they told me I would need to get the control number from the hospital actually doing the test. So, basically, I felt like I had lost pretty much every one of the fights I had gone out to wage that day. Ironically, that same week, I had stumbled into a book called “Burnout” by Amelia and Emily Nagoski (no time to read, so I’d been listening to the audiobook). They talk in a very compelling way about the fact that stress and feelings are actually biological – we hold them in our bodies – and how important it is to complete the stress cycle in a physical way, to burn all the way through the adrenalin and cortisol and return our bodies to a state of feeling safe again. They also talked about redefining success and developing an unconventional relationship with failure. These were timely things to consider!

David's homework

On Wednesday, I did some hard exercise before taking the kids to school and prepared to do battle again. I started with one big win: the lawyer’s assistant was back at work, and together we sat for an hour and managed to complete the online applications for my kids’ visas and even get receipts to pay for them. Next, I was finally able to reach the Ethiopian Embassy, but I learned that I would need to get additional stamps of validation on our licenses from the ministry of foreign affairs, before the embassy would validate them. This ministry of foreign affairs being in Dar es Salaam, it would be absolutely impossible for me to complete the process on my own. I needed an agent. We used to have a guy who did stuff for us in Dar, and I tried his number once, but it didn’t work. I went to the Orthodox church at the kids’ school for about 15 minutes to try and calm myself and pray. And then I tried a different number for the agent George, and I reached him! He agreed to help me out with the whole issue, as long as I could figure out how to do all the payments necessary. By the end of the afternoon, I had managed to:

1)     

Victory: payment for student passes! 

Pay for our kids’ visas – so at least I could arrive at the airport immigration with receipts showing they were in process

2)      Pay for our COVID tests in advance

3)      Lodge a new letter with the tax office, asking them to de-register us from the system

4)      Pick up our licenses from the lawyer, with stamped letters from the police, and send everything on to George in Dar by expedited mail

5)      Figure out how to automatically move money from our bank account to our mobile money app to be able to pay for all these ridiculous expenses remotely as they came up!

It was a tough day, but after a solid day of losing, I felt I had finally returned home with some wins. And we even enjoyed a nice dinner and conversation with our neighbors that evening.

On Thursday morning, I decided to take a little time to emotionally recover from bureaucracy (so strange how gutting it can be do deal with these processes) and so I parked at a friend’s house to do a little morning birdwatching after dropping off the kids at school. From her place, it’s possible to take a lovely walk into deserted hills and spot all kinds of birdlife not found in the urban center. I was breathing deeply and really enjoying the acrobatic flight of the white-fronted bee-eaters. And then there was this other yellow bird…I had my binoculars up and was stepping back to get a better look, and suddenly there was nothing under my feet and I was falling down and backwards. When the dust settled, I realized that I had fallen into a porcupine hole, about a meter deep and slanted down under the road from the edge of the verge. I had walked 20 minutes to get where I was and so I hoped adrenaline would carry me back to my friend’s house because I could tell I’d twisted my left knee. Thankfully, she checked in with me and then came to find me with her car.

My first hospital card!

From that point in the day, I somehow just kept finding one kind person after another to provide me with an ice pack or a bag of ice, since I needed to stay on the school side of town all day until evening. I was very thankful for their care! Oren had an important event at school: he received the results from his O-level (IGCSE) mock exams and had the chance to talk with teachers about his options for A-level courses next year. He was pretty pleased with the progress he’s made in a number of subjects, and I will just say that the number of A’s far outweighed any other letter on the list.

Beautiful view

After a quiet Friday, trying to keep weight off my leg and keep it iced, I was able to get a doctor’s appointment on Saturday at a private hospital. It was my first actual medical visit on my own account in Arusha, so I guess I was proud (?) to finally get my own hospital card. 😉 The orthopedic doctor felt that I didn’t have anything torn, just strained ligaments that would take 6 weeks to heal and gave me a good brace. I was able to see a PT the following week, who gave me an even more promising assessment and some exercises to speed up healing. But that extreme birdwatching accident definitely slowed me down for the rest of the week.

Kids enjoyed being dignified too!

Other highlights of our weekend included a beautiful sunset evening on the rooftop of Arusha’s newest and most prestigious hotel. The occasion was to say a sad farewell to our friend Beth Marie. We have really enjoyed her friendship and did our best to just enjoy each other’s company, together with our friends the Taylors. The fun on Sunday mostly involved early morning COVID-19 tests with the kids. I then took them back home so that they wouldn’t have to stay with me through a long church morning and Annual General meeting, where I officially ended my term as a church elder.

The remainder of our short week in Arusha mostly involved packing – trying to figure out things we treasure and want to have with us in Ethiopia, but that we don’t really need presently in Arusha. David especially did a phenomenal job of packing up his favorite things all by himself. I’m holding back on bringing our camping gear, hoping that we will be able to do some more camping still in Tanzania. Finally, we flew out of Arusha with minimal difficulty on Thursday afternoon, eager and ready to join Paul in Addis and to start getting to know what will become our new home.

Packing up