Saturday, September 19, 2015

Today I bought a phone in Ethiopia.

Today I bought a SIM card in Ethiopia.

The internet has been out in Addis Ababa since yesterday, and I decide it is time to buy a SIM card so I am not completely cut off from the world. The hotel reception sells these. I grab my wallet and head downstairs, phone in hand.

This should be the end of my story, and instead it is only the beginning. I must change the first sentence. 

Today I bought a phone in Ethiopia.

It should have been so simple--- a SIM card for my African Nokia. Instead, it becomes a 2 hour adventure, back and forth around my neighborhood (where the main dirt road has a 2 meter wide canyon running it’s length as a new sewer system is built. Area merchants have placed metal barrel lids nailed together, or 2x4s, to aid pedestrians, dogs and goats in the harrowing crossing, and the busy shopping district provides scores of observers eager to offer advice and delighted to witness my unusual odyssey.


With the help of a woman police officer, I am guided across an unstable 2x4 to the phone store (a 3-sided tin box), where they spend a lot of time figuring out that my phone (purchased in Malawi) won't accept an Ethiopian sim card, so I have to buy a new ETHIOPIAN NOKIA (buy stock in NOKIA. They have a brilliant business plan). I lack cash, and the Tin Box doesn’t take plastic. But the shop owner points down the road to an ATM. I proceed across the canyon (a middle-aged gentleman urges me “to run quickly to not fall in”) and find the ATM (doesn't take foreign cards), am directed to a second ATM back on the first side of the road (broken), and I return for further instruction to the Tin Box (in the process of this, I inadvertently pick a nice man's phone up from the counter and walk off with it). I follow their directions to the bank (across the road again) where they make copies of my passport, my Massachusetts driver's license, my ATM card, and an old Harvard ID. The nice man’s phone rings. I ignore it. It rings again. I ignore it again. It rings again and I answer it, (as I am filling out a third Byzantine form in triplicate) and say I will bring the phone back in 5 minutes.  I hang up. It rings again—and a voice speaks in Amharic. (I don't even know how to say "I don't understand" in Amharic--a professional oversight). A few minutes later, as I am standing in line in front of a teller behind iron bars, a young boy sporting a tattered "England" football jersey comes running in and taps me on the arm. "Phone! phone!" and he thrusts a striped plastic bag in my hand and grabs the nice man’s phone. I assume the kid’s legit and I let him have the phone (honestly, it happens so fast, I couldn't have stopped him), but now I am holding a bag containing an ETHIOPIAN NOKIA I haven't paid for. I can’t run after the kid, because the bank teller slides a HUGE pile of cash through the iron bars, which won’t fit in my wallet, and is (embarrassingly) too big for my bra. I stick it in my waistband and hurry back to the Tin Can, crossing the now familiar chasm that is my street. The kid is there, and so is the nice man with his phone. The shop owner holds out his hand for my cash. I reach into my pants (by now the money has slipped well down into my somewhat sweaty crotch) and pull out the damp bills. I peel off the requisite number and lay them on the board. The kid watches me with disbelief (Americans on TV carry purses). I shrug, stick the money back in my pants and walk proudly back to the hotel with my new ETHIOPIAN NOKIA, by this time quite nimbly crossing the Great Ethiopian Canyon. I arrive safely, and sit down and order a strong coffee. I relish the feeling of accomplishment I feel from buying a phone in Ethiopia.

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