Waiting for the miracle to come...

Well The next Monday before our Wednesday deadline still without an appointment. Dr G took me to immigration with a different client after having been waiting again in his office. Seeing as we were there we might as well go and talk to one of the bosses we hadn’t talked to yet, he was the usual unfriendly and aware of my HRC-case. This guy told us to go to the ministry of Labour and said the Isayas we had been trying to schedule the appointment with most of the previous week was not the right person to talk to after all.
Dr G. tried to stop a German rasta from running away from the office and managed to get his bag stolen in the process. Thus when he realised he needed to return and look for it so I ended up waiting/crying in the car for another 45 minutes by myself. By the time he returned it was 17:00 and all major offices close at 17:30. I had been waiting for Dr G since 11:45 and we had done nothing but encounter another immigration prick that felt I should leave the country.
Probably out of guilt we still headed for the Labour office where we found our way to the boss’s office. He listened to my story and called his colleague director who was also still in his office and received us as well. Labour is said to be very pro employee, there the ones linked to the union so nice and left-wing. They told me they had an important meeting with the Addis council the next day and that they would present my case and give me a call when they figured out a way to help me. I wasn’t called but still went there the next day by myself. The boss had become ill and wasn’t able to attend the meeting. He told me he’d discuss the issue the next day and call me. I’m low on patience so on Wednesday, again by myself, the other boss found me waiting for him after his lunch break and took me to his colleague and they discussed a solution in front of me. They told me to go to immigration again and ask if they would be able to give me a business visa when Labour cancelled my work permit which would allow me to get hired by the dream job. I got Dr G to accompany to the last prick at immigration we had talked to to address this question. Immigration avoided giving a clear answer which is what they do best. They did however tell me that GYA had written to them asking them for my deportation and that they had told GYA that wasn’t their place to decide.
In Dr G ‘s opinion this means there on my side. Anyway so we went back to labour who started the process of cancelling my work permit and told them that immigration wasn’t going to deport me if I were involved in a court case so I’d need a letter from court to prove this. Labour would have my work permit cancelled by the next Thursday and that left us plenty of time to file for court so I had a letter for them immediately after the permit was cancelled.
On Saturday I gave some documents to my Amharic teacher for translation which was Dr G’s idea and after that enjoyed my visit to the ethnological museum which I hadn’t seen yet. Hilarious folktales and inspiring artefacts in a former castle. Really cool! I spent the evening eating with some teachers from the school I’m in with Aaron and afterwards went to one of their houses provided by the school. A ballroom for a living room and an equally big lounge room, 3 bathrooms, etc and she lives there all by herself. This school is crazy. I really get along with the wife of one of the teachers who was my Canadian friend ( Emily)’s host and friend. She’s really very pleasant and open-minded company and loves to cook and play scrabble. I feel that if I get to stay here Alix may become one of my close friends.
Sunday flew by as usual I went for juice with Saskia( the Dutch girl) and some other people and on Monday I found myself rushing to Dr G’s office again to file the case, sadly enough my teacher/translator was sick and didn’t get the documents translated. It took Dr G a long time to decide he’d translate himself and that we should meet the next day to file the case so there was hardly a free afternoon left to enjoy. On top of it all there was a power-cut, the first for ages, and Alix was supposed to come for dinner that night. I ended up reheating the stew on a kerosene fire we borrowed from the landlady which caused it to burn and give my delicious stew a rather bad taste. Alix was nice enough to say it tasted nice anyway but honestly it didn’t. 10 Minutes after starting our meal the electricity came back. What is it with me in this place, I am cursed or something?
Tuesday I was pretty tired because Aaron has a new baby sister and his mum’s back from the states and he’s not dealing with the change extremely well but still I hurried Dr G’s office again only to be kept waiting for ages until I call for the 3rd time and am sent home with the message come tomorrow morning and then we’ll get everything done.
Thus on Wednesday I don’t go to the school and find Dr G translating the paper when I arrive at 9. At 10 he walks out with someone else for just a little while and asks me to await him there. I wait until 15 before we finally get in his car in order to get things done… We needed some stamps on copies and then the case needed to be presented in Amharic so that needed to be written… No need to say by the time that was done it was 17:15 and we weren’t able to file it. I finished the new book I started that day while waiting around for him and felt so depressed.
So we ended up only filing the court case on Thursday and then they told us they couldn’t give us the letters until the next day. I went to labour by myself and the boss was very surprised _ and disappointed?_ that I didn’t have the letter. He emphasized it was important I got this done before the end of the week, as if I didn’t know. On Friday I went with Mika who got instructions of Dr G to the court. When we arrived the judge who had to write these letters had just left for an early lunch s we hung around for 1,5 hours and then went back in. The judge saw the urgency and scribbled the letter I needed in 5 minutes, I just needed to get it typed and printed…which isn’t to difficult when you have 5 secretaries sitting in an office. But I guess I was wrong they were notably too busy playing with their mobile phones to type anything and made us wait a full 1,5 hours!!!!! ( the letter had less then 100 words for goodness sake!). I got really pissed and upon receiving the letter I ran out of there to make it to Labour as soon as possible. I arrived at 15:45 but my appointment with them was at 13:30 so they were in a meeting. The rest of the afternoon was spent waiting for them to come out which they did at 17:15. Then and there I was told it was too late to do anything and that I should be back there on Monday. I felt so extremely frustrated and mentally drained again. I never realised how much I just love our efficiency although I do admit government agencies aren’t the most efficient in Belgium or Spain either. ;-)
So the weekend began rather poorly but that would be solved with the hike I’d take with Holger and Mika. We set out Saturday morning with a scrumptious picnic packed to climb one of the mountains surrounding Addis. The views were nice, just getting out of the smog into nature from time to time is great actually and when we arrived to the top we were surprised to see a tent. We thought those would certainly be farangies but in stead we bumped into the federal police _What were they doing there? No clue whatsoever!_ They told us to go down this way or that way.
Fine, we enjoyed our picnic ( a lot mmmmmm cheese and avocado…) and decided on our route down one of the choices we were given. After a short while and a silly photo session we are called back by one of the agents. We had to return because we shouldn’t have gone that way_ even when it was one of the options they gave us! At the camp our documents were taken ( me my Belgium ID and a photocopy of my passport) and a lot of discussion was done through the radio. Mika told me later that their boss had no idea what to do with us terrorists… Thank you Mr Bush for giving them an example of this ridiculous behaviour.
We were sat down for ages before we were escorted down a very steep path ( I was fine with my little sandals and short shorts but Mika who’s quite a sissy was scared of slipping so I held his hand pretending I was the damsel in distress all the way down). One of the local woman actually discussed with the cop about why they were doing this and told him to leave us and them alone. Upon reaching the village outskirts we were taken in the back of one of their jeeps _I’m convinced that neighbourhood is still gossiping about us now_ to the regular and not federal police station. At this point we all thought it pretty hilarious stupid.
In the police station we were interviewed and I got really scared cause my paper situation is not exactly ideal and I had to tell them I worked for GYA seeing as that’s the only papers I still have at the moment so if they wanted to call the school I was in trouble. They kept us there for a long while until one of the bosses came, everybody avoids taking responsibility here, who was charmed by Holger’s excellent Amharic and let us go. We had done absolutely nothing wrong but we presented an ideal diversion to bored policeman on a mountain. Mika said later that if we had seemed unfriendly to them they had the intention of putting us in jail. I was freezing in my shorts on the way home and had become really pissed off, I hate these limitations of personal freedom just for power display. It’s something I’m finding really hard to deal with.