Here's something I wrote to Cindy. I hope you can put up with the
UC -- I haven't the energy to retype all that text! [Yeah, but I
convert it anyhow. BIG]

The bureaucratic etc tangle I described is starting to unravel -- the
lynch pin of the problem was my old partners, and yesterday they
agreed to do their part. Next task is getting a paper from the church
here in town -- I rent my office from them, and Min of Trade wants to
see the original lease. I'm ashamed to say I lost my copy a couple of
weeks ago (so you see that I contribute to these messes myself).
Probably the church'll lend me theirs or put new stamps and signatures
on my xeroxed copy. The main guys left town just before Abrahame and I
got to them today.... wont be back till Sat, but possibly someone
below them will help. Will see tomorrow.

There's also a new hopeful development to shorten the part of the
process where I must be present. I might be able to leave the process
in someone else's hands once I get my General Managership ratified. I
could give Power of Attorney to one of the men who are going to help
me with the process. He could be in charge of finishing the car sale,
and the other guy could be in charge of using some of the proceeds to
send my possessions and then send the remaining money to the US.

I'm actually maximally jittery. The process of dismantling my home is
agonizing for some reason. Also the process of bargaining with people
when I sell things is very difficult for me -- not my culture! Perhaps
it is strengthening my character. Dunno. Sometimes I feel as though I
am cracking up. So when that happens I've learned to take a break and
get out.

The last few days I have spent time with David or else taken Abrahame
to a restaurant in Holeta. It is great how that turns me around. Here
are pix from today. Think those fish are tilapia?

http://s1144.photobucket.com/user/celebrateoften/library/?page=1

Also, today I had to go to one of the main church people and ask for
help getting the copy of the biz lease. 2 months ago, his
sister-in-law  came back from some place in arabia where she worked
day in+day out for 9 years. Many young/youngish women do that and come
back exhausted and sometimes broken. Others come back just fine, but
most seem rather shaken. Most of them work as servants, but I think
that this young woman, fikurte ("fikurte" means something to do w
love, prob of god) had an office job.

Fikurte said she is very lonely. Though her sister is nearby, I
guess -- well, I don't know anything really, but F says she is quite
lonely. So I told her to be sure and come to see me when she starts
feeling bad.

She's building a house, and hopes to start a bakery once the house is
done. Addis Alem has only one bakery and it doesn't produce enough
bread for the town. I introduced her and Abrahame and proposed they
talk about working together, which they are going to do.

He needs to make money for his airfare and money in the bank if he's to
come to the us. Also the US gv't bars most young brown foreign men fr
America, and a candidate must be very solid to be accepted. Our gv'ts
main concern is that people will come and then disappear into the
culture and be either a burden or a disruption. They want anyone
applying for a visa to show money in the bank, but also very strong
ties to Ethiopia with many reasons to return home.

So I was more than delighted to suddenly see Abrahame with full-on
motivation to go into business (after I leave) to make money and
establish himself. Before he mentioned it, but it was always in the
context that he and I would do a business together (which I'd never
want to do). Now he is taking steps to do it himself.

A couple of days before that, he decided to set up his own home after
I am no longer providing him with one (as part of his job), and that
he will stop living at home. No rift with his family -- he visits a
lot. He'd been telling me he was "very child" for months before this
announcement, which I never responded to, given that he was 21 and then
22. When he said he was setting up his own place, I said something
like, "so now you are an adult, no longer a child," and he said yes.

Today at lunch after we'd each had a beer, he told me he has been
thinking a lot, and that that is new to him. In the past he more or
less drifted (clearly in some despair about what his life was likely
to be). He says I have changed him in that way too. Now he has ben
thinking steadily about what he should do.

A couple of weeks ago he told me that I had changed him by teaching him
responsibility. It's certainly true that he has changed. It started
after Binnie's death, wen he knew he was partly responsible. That was
when I talked to him about what being responsible meant. I told him we
were all responsible for Binnie's death. I didn't yell or condemn or
weep. I was factual and heartfelt. From then on, he was much more
self-reliant in his work. I have had to remind him less and less of
what he is supposed to do.

At lunch today, as well as talking to me about being self-reliant by
making his own money, rather than going to work for someone else, he
said he had decided he will not marry till he has enough money to make
a good start for his children, and he thinks that will be 7 or 8
years.. As a poor member of the community, he was subject to some abuse
in school and out. Here the gv't charges for books, requires uniforms,
and does not supply pencils, etc. All comes out of the parents'
pockets. A large % of people can't do it.

At times Abrahame couldn't go to school -- his help with planting,
harvests, etc was crucial.

A's main intention is to work in but improve part of what his family's
been in for generations -- livestock. His sister, whose working
somewhere in Arabia, sent him some money to get started, and he
sold many of his own things as well. Then he bought a lot of my
infrastructure-- the water tank, the ferret pen, etc. It's helping
both of us.

He plans to be a little diversified, but is definitely going to do the
livestock -- cattle "fattening." so I am hoping we can help him get
into Texas A&M. Both governments should be supportive of that as well
as its being his primary interest too. Ethiopia has to approve its
citizens' going abroad, so abrahame has two governments to please.

The Eth gv't is very into supporting agriculture. 85% of the people
earn their livings and eat off of that effort. Most are subsistence
formers, but big agri is starting up here too. Mid-level, actually,
not huge yet like we have. Almost all of these are foreign investors.
Almost no ethiopians can afford to fund such operations. But there are
a few.

I just added the pix from today, plus the one with three people is from
last week. That was another little drama. It happens that Abrahame's
father and the father of my landlady had a massive land struggle -- I
think of it as like the hatfield's and mccoy's. So some of the next
generation on the side of the side that lost -- the landlady's -- want
to continue the ill will and have nothing to do with abrahame. I need
to keep this house going for another month or two after I leave, and I
do not want to send rent money to one side and send the money needed
to finish things up here to the other side -- each international
transfer costs $30.

So when the landlady's sister, Salome, came to collect the rent and to
get an agreement on how the final rent and utilities would be paid, I
said that it had to be through Abrahame. Then, first as part of my
argument, and then for its own sake, I tried to make a statement on how
destructive and anti-god it was to continue this stuff down through the
generations. Her english is poor and my amharic is poor, so I resorted
to drawing a diagram -- at the top, side by side, the two original
protagonists, separated by an explosion between them, then below that I
put Salome and Abrahame as the next generation's representatives, with
nothing between them, and then Salome's child and Abrahame's future
children as the next, again with nothing between.

Salome agreed God wouldn't like the scenario with the destruction
continuing down and down, and then I tore off the part of the diagram
with the first two people and put it aside.

I don't know if I really influenced the feud, but I tried. And I did
get what I wanted, which was to leave Abrahame in charge for the end
tasks. As you can see in the photo it was a challenge for me! Not sure
what Abrahame really thought -- he hadn't even heard of the problem
ever affecting him -- it took place when he was about 2 yrs old.
Salome seems at peace w the whole thing.

[Posted in FML 7749]