Traffic Police

Richard and I had a little adventure today.

We went out to purchase airplane tickets for everyone, as we're all heading to a different city next in a week or so for our conference. Anyways, we successfully got the tickets, even picked up a handful of mail, some stationary, and started to make our way home in the truck. Of course, I wanted to go on a little diversion to pick up some bread from the Eritrean bakery, which was also successful.

The adventure came when we turned round the corner on the main street, and the police pulled us over. Richard was driving (thankfully, since I didn't happen to have my license with me!), so he had a few words (in Arabic, of course) with the police man. Seems they're pulling people over to make everyone switch to the new license plates that they're trying to introduce... again. Of course, our truck has the registration paid up through November of this year, so we're not really interested in paying to re-register the truck... again.

Anyways, Richard convinced them that yes, when the truck needs to be re-registered, we would get the new set of plates. However, they were convinced that they wanted to see our certificate of insurance. No problem - I put a photo copy of it in the truck last year, when we got all the papers in order for the truck.

So we looked in it's place in the folder. And it wasn't there. So we looked in the glove box. It wasn't there. We even looked under the seats. It wasn't there. So, all we could do was jump out of the truck and leave it there on the side of the road. I called "home" to see if someone could bring us the original of the insurance certificate from home, and me and Richard went in search of someplace to sit in the shade and have a cold drink (this was at about noon, when it was 38C in the shade!). Of course, today happened to be "clean up the town" day as well, so none of the shops in that area were allowed to open.

Instead of standing on the side of the road in the sun, we just decided to take a little mini-bus home. It was my first time in a mini-bus in this town, and it actually wasn't too bad! The first 5 or 6 that passed were completely jam-packed. So we waited until one came by with a couple of free seats! The busses are actually a bit expensive - it cost us a whole $1 to go about 2 kilometers. Imagine if you were making a salary of about $150 a month, and you had to take the bus back and forth to work every day? That's quite a big chunk of your money just for transportation!

Anyways, we made it back to the compound all in one piece, and I only flashed a little leg as I tripped in and out of the bus in my straight skirt! Richard just grabbed the necessary papers and turned around and took the bus back to where we left the truck - we didn't want to risk missing any papers in the other truck! Anyways, at least now I know how to take the bus back to the compound, if I ever get stuck anywhere like that again.

We had another funny moment this evening. While we were at the stationary shop in the morning, I was standing next to Richard and another African man. The second guy's friend came along and asked him, "Hey, are you with the white girl?!" Before the second guy could answer, Richard piped up and said, "No, I'm with the white girl!" with a big grin on his face. Then, this evening, as we were eating our dinner in a local restaurant, the same guy came in. He took one look at me and Richard and said, "Hey, you're still with the white girl!".

Ok, so maybe that's not so funny. But Richard and I had a good laugh over it - maybe you just had to be there...