Of Traffic Signs and Not Honking Your Horn

Joe arrived last night, safe and sound. And we were fortunate enough
have driven him home at 3:50 am, legally, using our official Ethiopian
driver's license.

After going to the Department of Motor Vehicles, the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, and a training facility on the other side of town,
after venturing back and forth to offices and lines at the training
facility, after having papers stamped and signed in the tradition of
third-world bureaucracies that would've made Kafka proud, and after
attending a brief "orientation," as it was called, we received the
documents last Tuesday allowing us to join Ethiopia's fray traffic.

During the orientation, a man sat us down in a room with two posters
displaying all Ethiopian traffic signs. Some displayed pictures of
animals and people, some simply had lines streaking across at various
angles and through various background colors, and some were written in
Amharic and in Amharic script.

The gentleman who gave us the orientation (and no one had told us what
it was, exactly), gave us each a blank sheet of paper and said to
write our names at the top then write what we thought symbols 1
through 36 meant. Barely having an idea of what a third of them meant,
we completed the test with little hope of passing.

Fortunately, the gentleman in charge of the test came in afterward and
explained us all of the signs, and he made observations about how
silly it would be for one to go when a sign said "stop" or to drive
down roads that were not there. Then he signed our papers and sent us
off to another office.

No, we don't know what the test was for, but at least now we have full
knowledge of all the rules that no one regards. Did you know, for
instance, that it is not legal to honk at night? Or as our test giver
said, "There is no using of the horn at night."

While we did have our driver's licenses, we weren't able to have a
well waiting for Joe in Awashbuni. The one thing we established during
our ten-hour work days this past week is that our well is not a well.
Or at least it is one that produces no more than one cup of water
about every five hours, not nearly enough for a homestead.

Our well's water production makes sense. Since the hand-dug wells
around us are at the same depth and produce several liters every few
minutes, one could hardly expect our 2-inch diameter, bore-hole well
to produce near as much, especially if the aquifer we're in is only a
meter or so deep.

Jeremy and I did all we could to develop the well so that it would
produce more water. In addition to the well development we did when
Joe left, we blasted 16 barrels of water through with our motor pump,
pumped eight barrels through by hand and swabbed and plunged the well.
That cup of water was all we got.

In summary, the first well collapsed, and our second well is too
shallow. Will our third attempt be just right?

The bore-hole wells that give water to the school and a couple other
water-faucet locations near the highway are 40-some meters deep,
although others say there is good water past 30 meters. So we're going
deeper.

Everything is ready for the third attempt - the rig moved, the pit and
pilot hole dug, etc. We should have an intense week ahead of us.