There must have been
moisture last night. All the trees have
a dirty, white frosting on them. It’s
getting near to Christmas. I wondered if
maybe the traffic wouldn’t be so bad as more and more people have left
town. The foreign community won’t be
going to work much this week. But the
foreign community is a drop in the ocean, even out here in this foreign
enclave. The license restrictions have
lifted. It’s rush hour. Even this access road is jammed.
The US has announced that it will no longer be providing the
‘add pages to your passport’ services that had otherwise been the
standard. The change, it was explained,
was for security reasons. After January
1st, if you run out of clean pages for visas and stamps, you’ll need
to go get a new passport. I dully
accepted this when I read the email from the embassy. Then a friend in Tokyo mentioned that he was
dashing off to the embassy this week, to get his pages before the end of the
month. “That’s smart” I reckoned considering
the four or five clean pages I had for the next seven years, and made an
appointment for myself.
Arriving one can’t but spare a thought for all the Chinese
people in line. The mass of people seems
overwhelming. Today, I’m fortunate. I walked right up to the front of the line,
hopped a metal barricade and, after weathering a “you’re not supposed to do
that" message from the guard, showed him my passport and appointment doc and
was allowed to enter in, straight away.
Once you’re on the second floor the crowds part and it’s all
rather civilized. I filled out the form,
paid my money, turned the passport in was told to wait for “one hour.” I hadn’t counted on that. My phone is being kept outside in a
locker. This would mean the driver
outside waiting for me would be furious, the call I was supposed to take, I’d
miss and I’d be very late for the 10:30 meeting. But at least I had my book. With a guilty smile, I cracked open “The Life
of My Choosing” by Wilfred Thessiger to continue with his life in Ethiopia.
Lost in a stroll through Djibouti in 1930, I was a bit
dismayed to hear my name called after about ten minutes of waiting. “Here you go.” “Right.
OK. “ I was just settling in to
obligatory hooky when it dissolved in front of me. Ahh well.
Outside the driver was still happy, and the meeting was
still on. Perhaps later on today, I’ll
get to return to Axum.
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