I went to the Lufthansa office this afternoon (in Addis). They could
not make reservations because their communications to the central
office were down.

OK, communications problems here are common, BUT they say they have
been having problems for MONTHS, including many gaps of as long as 2
WEEKS. The most recent time of connection was yesterday afternoon,
which was preceded by a 2-wk gap. I'm assuming the problems are from
Ethio TeleComuncations.

So I gave them my itinerary and other specs, and they'll call me.

Now, I know a few of you on the FML are going to interpret this as
lies and scamming, but that's your own fantasy. Sorry to be abrupt,
but that's 100% accurate.

Here's another, maybe more serious, problem: Fekade, who was going
to buy my car, is suing me for breach of contract because I missed a
contract deadline BECAUSE the Ministry of Revenues and Customs missed
their deadline to provide me with a car-sale tax clearance. The auditor
who was working on it got sick 2+ weeks ago, and they haven't assigned
a new person to the job. So far I've been waiting for 6 weeks for the
clearance. Three times they've given me a date when they'd be done, and
each time they've been casual about missing it.

My lawyer says no one can stop me from leaving the country even though
involved in a civil lawsuit. He also thinks that I can now cancel the
contract with Fekade and make a new one with a new buyer, even though
Fekade refuses to accept the termination. However, though he is the
best lawyer I've dealt with here, I have serious doubts about this
second piece of information. I hope I'm wrong. I think I can find out
in a few days to a week.

So far, the US Embassy has had nothing to offer other than a list of
lawyers, some of whom I've already interviewed over the years and
found unsatisfactory. I'll go to the embassy again next week.

Maybe you're interested in Ethiopia's Byzantine car-sale process? To
sell a business car, the government requires you to FIRST make a
car-sale contract with a buyer, 2CND get a car evaluation certificate
at Road-Transport Authority (if I remember right, that took 14 hours
at Road Transport), 3RD bring the certificate to the Ministry of
Revenues+Customs and request a car-sale tax clearance (so far this has
taken 6 weeks, including one long and maybe 6 short visits to them),
4TH submit the clearance to Road Authority and get the paperwork
allowing the transfer of ownership (I haven't gotten this far, of
course).

For a private-car sale you do the same, but the nature of Step 3
differs and is probably much shorter.

PS -

Someone asked me why I was using Lufthansa and why I didn't leave
sooner than Oct 21. Here's the info:

The Oct date's becasue my friend Kris thinks she can meet me in
Frankfurt on Oct 21. She'd go w me to Houston and help me with the
very difficult (physically etc) process of getting all the animals
through US Customs, and then we'd drive the animals to Cindy"s --
another wearing task if I were alone, especially after that 24-hr
plane etc event. It will be a tremendous help if she can.

I'm using Lufthansa becasue they are the best for animal travel in
terms of care and pricing. They gave me a scare this aft, but it came
to nothing.They have a notebook full of outdated info, including the
costs for pet travel. Because of their communications problem, they
couldn't get to the online info.

[Posted in FML 7910]