I flew from Vancouver to Washington DC on Sunday the 17th of December and having landed in a tropical downpour, exited into a totally chaotic three lane swarm of cars at the Arrivals level was picked up by my daughter. The traffic police were in their cars keeping their powder dry.
Yesterday, Monday I booked an Uber to my local doctor’s office for a blood draw and on the way the driver Saol was kind enough to share the following story with me.
At 18 years of age living in Addis Ababa, and despite his father’s objections, his father taught in a local university, Saol joined the Ethiopian Air Force. After basic training he was sent to the Ukraine where he was trained as a helicopter pilot, returned to Ethiopia and after 16 years of service and having reached the rank of major he resigned from the Air Force because the salary was pitifully low, he was having to borrow money to feed his family. Also he told me the helicopters were very old and vibrated a lot and after all those years of flying them even when he was home his body continued to shake at the same frequency as the helicopter.
When he left the Ukraine he had purchased and brought home a Lada car but found because of its poor, he says undeserved reputation no one would buy it so he had placed it in storage.
He now decided to become a taxi driver, put the Lada in working order and had it painted in the required color for taxis in Addis Ababa. When driving it home a foreigner in front of a hotel flagged him down and asked to be driven to a government office on the opposite side of town and with a strong smell of paint in the car, still bearing the original plates and without a taxi license he had his first customer. He was asked to return and drive the customer back to the hotel and on arrival was give the equivalent of approaching US$200, he said the equivalent of a months salary in the Air Force. He protested this was way too much but his protests were waved off and he realized a taxi was as he said an instant cash crop.
At that point he decided life favored those that took risks and stayed alert to opportunity. Some months later he had been driving 5 Saudi businessmen around town in his taxi for a few days when they told him they were tired of hotel living and asked him to find them a house where they could relax and cook their own food etc. he told them let me check.
He returned home and asked his wife if she was OK with moving in with his parents, had the house cleaned and painted, rented it to the Saudis and went into the real estate business buying, fixing and reselling houses. Life was definitely favoring the bold. He next purchased a heavy truck and added that to his growing business empire. He told me that no matter what challenges arose he always remembered his true north, that with fate and god watching you have to take chances to succeed.
But then he told me the old Italian time bomb exploded, that the colonists always leave a time bomb behind, and the war with Eritrea broke out. Evidently when the Italians invaded Ethiopia centuries ago they first conquered Eritrea and integrated it with Ethiopia, which Eritrea never accepted.
Because of his former military service and his businesses he was at risk so he fled and eventually arrived with his family in the US as a refugee and having worked at different jobs he now at 66 years of age is an Uber driver. Without he mentioned medical insurance.
I thanked him for opening my eyes about colonist time bombs in N. Africa and told him we had an English time bomb in Ireland that was still exploding after 500 years, I thanked him for the conversation, said goodbye and wished him well. He made me reflect on just how many post colonialist time bombs there are continuously exploding in various parts of the world.
But I was at Dr Cullen’s office and it was time to bare my left forearm and keep the phlebotomist relaxed while she tried to hit my aging and always rolling away veins. If the phlebotomist becomes tense after a few misses they switch to the other arm and have once even proposed trying a vein in the back of my hand, so it is a good idea to keep them distracted, relaxed and successful on their first effort.
Stay well.
John
Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
