A relatively small debacle

The likelihood that my last expenses cheque may arrive after I am gone loomed larger today. Someone suggested that I give Bezeba Arefaine signing authority on my account so I looked into it. We went to the Arat Kilo branch of the Commercial Bank where my account lives. We were told we needed a form filled out and signed. The form must be run through the records and documents official organization of the Government then the bank can act upon the request.

So off we go to the appropriate government department close to my office. We are approached by 2 people the second we show up and I do not have a clue who they are. I them remember back to when I was negotiating with customs over the Dell. We ended up at the Kezanches police station at one point, needing a letter written by yours truly and stamped by the police to show to customs. A "letter writing expert" did the work for us and these people today were representatives of the same. We entered the Records office nonetheless, and ended up in room 105 to see a gentleman behind a desk. Bezeba spoke with him for a while, then off we went with the guy from outside. We traversed the street and ended up in a small cluster of offices packed with computers, printers, photocopiers and tons of people.

A woman at a keyboard took my passport and passbook, and edited a document for about 15 minutes. The end result was an 80 birr letter to the bank in triplicate that had to be processed by a handful of people elsewhere in the same Records building we had come from. Then the fun began. Within the next 45 minutes we saw no less than 9 people in offices 205, 302, 305, 306, 215, 202, 204, 306, and finally 205 again. There were so many stamps, signatures, notations, and more stamps on the paper such that one could hardly distinguish the colour of the paper. At one point I signed the forms on both the English and Amharic sides and printed my name.

We finally ended up in the cashier's office and paid another 51 birr. Thinking I was done ... not quite. There was one final visit back to room 205 where the process ended, well sort of. Back to the bank to see the customer service head that we saw when the whole process started. We ended up upstairs where a teller processed the request, the bank manager gave his approval, signatures were done and we departed. Eureka ... Bezeba now has authority to deposit and withdraw from my account. By the way, to bring about this end result, his name had to be registered on the forms as Bezeba Arefaine Abbey :).

In summary, there were:

9 offices visited
16 signatures written
131 birr extracted from ferenge
29,892 stamps plopped onto 5 forms
12 ink pads used up completely
8 photocopies made
78 thank-you's given
12 amahsagenalu's given
3 uttering of my approvals to effect the signing authority declaration
118,902 stairs climbed
4 false-ends proclaimed to the process by Bezeba

Throughout all this, there were no animals harmed and NO non-kosher food consumed. Now if the cheque arrives after I leave, Bezeba can cash at the bank.

In the big picture, on a scale of 1 to 10, the customs blue Dell debacle was about a 17; today's was a 3.