Hello, FMLers,

Some major successes in the city last week.

Funny how I have to turn my head around and picture well-wishers,
rather than detractors, when I want to write. But, ok, that's what
is meant by character-building, right??
  - - -
I spent most of the week in AA, and had the help of an Ethiopian
friend about half of the time. In the end, good things and good
progress {skip the rest of this paragraph if the details are boring}:
I got the first two Corporate minutes (member changes, and General
Managership extension) accepted by the jerk at Document Authority and
Registration. Then my lawyer got a commitment from the old partners
to go down and sign! He's supposed to let me know when that happens.

Secondly, I met with the car buyer, Fasika ("Easter")) and his
(ex-murderer/counterfeiter) partner, Fikadu ("The Love of God" ?). They
came, wanting to push and demand, especially Fikadu (steadily folded
arms and tight lips), but by the end were almost dear and friendly.
They understood why the process was long, sympathized, and agreed to
wait. They also agreed that I could keep the car a few days, after the
sale completed, so I could take care of the final running around I'll
have to do before leaving.

Two things led to that attitude change, IMO: First a dear friend of
Fasika's had hung himself a couple of days before -- the economy here
is in the trenches, and the friend had been unable to keep up payments
on a house he was building, so the bank seized everything. Fasika says
suicides are greatly on the rise -- presumably more for people at the
lower ends of the economic scale, but you can see that man was more in
the middle. So Fasika'd been shaken, and perhaps it had softened Fikadu
too, though it didn't look like it.

The second thing was that I explained the sorry story of my Ethiopian
partners and me, and both men related to it. They then understood how
those problems had devolved into the problems that were delaying the
car sale. Happily, by the time F+F+I met, the lawyer tought the women
would sign the first two minutes.

Here's the story of my old partners and me, very briefly: Ababa
(Flower)'d worked for me when she was 16 and I was 26, we'd kept in
touch after I'd left Ethiopia in the 70's, and I'd helped her out when
she was in trouble in the mid 90's -- by when she had a 16-yr-old
daughter herself, Saba (the Ethiopian name for the Queen of Sheba, who
was Ethiopian). Ababa's extended family credited me w saving her life
then, and perhaps I did. Then, in 2007-8, I retired here, and started
the biz w Ababa and Saba. But Saba and I fell out drastically when the
biz didn't take off. The strain on Ababa was bad -- she got thin and
lined in a matter of months. I got drained too. In the end, I moved
to the country and the two women stopped talking to me, presumably on
Saba's impetus. One of their relatives robbed me blind, the next year.
After making a couple of efforts to reconnect with Ababa, I dropped it.
Very sad, given all the history, but it's the past.

[Posted in FML 7761]