In a Five Step Process, We Have Seven More To Go: Day 1

I’m not frustrated, honestly, I’m not. I am just sitting back and learning more and more how things work in this country. You see, since receiving my work permit and residence ID card, we have started the process of officially buying the truck. The owner of the truck left the country on May 30^th, and so he gave our Ethiopian friend “DRJ” power of attorney to sell the truck on his behalf. That was the first step in the process, and thankfully it was accomplished all in one morning (though not without hassle of its own). Step two was me receiving a residents ID so that I could legally own a vehicle. That was accomplished about two weeks ago.

 

Step three is to perform the actual selling of the vehicle. Step four is the government inspection and Step five is the registration of the vehicle in my name. Sounds pretty straight-forward. So, Tuesday morning, with ID card in hand, we went to the government office where the sale was to take place. We bought the proper form (it is nice that they have a form to fill out, many other processes do not). My friend “DRJ” filled it out and we went to the guy I call “the chaos controller.” His job is to look at the form, see what your business is and tell you what number room to go to. Ok, 210 was assigned to us and so we quickly located it and entered the chaos of a typical Ethiopian office. Let me set the scene and from here on out you can just assume that every office we enter looks like this. It’s a small room with big windows, which are partially blocked by the large desks which, end-against-end, line the walls.  Behind each desk is a nicely dressed, yet obviously tired man or woman, whose smile wore off shortly after their first customer of the day arrived. Now, usually, if it’s the desk that we need, we cannot actually see this important man or woman because of the large wall between us and them. By “wall,” I’m not speaking of a concrete structure, which could easily be passed. I’m speaking instead of a wall of people who are pressing against the desk and shoving their papers into this poor man’s face. Usually, it seems, there is only one popular guy in a room and everybody jockeys for him to take their papers next (while the other workers behind the desk just sit there and watch the chaos with a certain expressionlessness that makes me wonder whether they are glad to not be that busy guy or whether they are bored out of their minds.

 

So, anyway, after waiting for a good 30 minutes or so, DRJ had managed to push his way to the front of the crowd, only to be told that he is missing a certain form. Sometime later, as DRJ was once again arriving toward the front, a woman came in and interrupted the fun. She spoke to the man behind the desk who then announced that he was done and had to go to a meeting. Suddenly the room cleared as all the people rushed back to “the chaos controller” for room reassignment, who was now surrounded 360 degrees by people demanding his attention. Somehow, we managed to get assigned a different room where we found the same scene. The one popular lady sat behind a large desk at the end of the room while those behind the desks along the side walls sat idle. After a good hour in there, DRJ said, “maybe we should come back tomorrow.” As he was pushing through the crowd to try to retrieve our paperwork, which he had thrown onto the desk, his name was called. “This needs to be in Amharic, not English, do it again.” Yes, another step forward in a piece of advice, though of course it was probably a step backward. As he was translating the document, a woman in another office said “where is your ‘appraisal form?’” Through further questions, we learned that we needed to go to the road transport authority where the vehicle was first registered and have them appraise the value of the vehicle for taxation purposes. You see, I must pay 2% sales tax on the purchase of the vehicle, but they will of course choose the higher purchase price between the actual amount of money paid and the appraised value. So, with the sun beginning to set, we decided to pursue this appraisal the next day. One day gone, and what did we accomplish? Well, we learned a little bit more what we need to do. I suppose that’s something. I’ll keep you updated as the days add up, just to give you a flavor of how well-oiled this bureaucratic machine can be.