It's Africa!

A missionary family was taking us home after dinner last night. (we had Ethiopian food for the first time!) In a car that seats 5 we had 5 of us...plus 4 in the back. Hey, it's Africa! The missionary, Kurt, decided to take the back way so as to avoid police, not because it's illegal but because they would say it is illegal. So guess who we run into on the back way? Yup. Two police officers stopping traffic. The first van made it through (they were 5 minutes ahead of us) because the officer was busy with another car.

Sadly, we were not so lucky. We all were belted in the seats but he said the guys in the back were not ok. He told our missionary driver to pull forward and Kurt politely said, “No, I'll stay here.” this discussion continued for 5 or so minutes. On the inside, I was thinking, “Don't make trouble I don't wanna go to jail in Kenya!” Eventually, the officer asked the guys in the back to step out. This included Nick. I started praying for safety. They stepped out and the officer once again tried to get Kurt to move the car forward again. Kurt politely declined again.

Our car decided that the guys in the back should just walk back to Mayfield. We were only a 15 min walk away and there were 4 of them anyway. The officer talked to them a bit on their walk and came back to us and told us to go ahead. He even said we could pick up our walkers as long as it was down the street a bit!

Kurt informed us of the following for the remaining of the drive. The officer had no car. So if he were to take us in he would have to ride with us...and be the 4th guy in the back. Not so good. Officers usually only want bribes but they won't do it in front of each other. That's why he wanted us to pull forward and that's why Kurt refused. Once our walkers started walking the evidence was gone and he knew that we weren't going to pay him. So he let us go. He also didn't want the other officer to see us picking up our walkers so as to “save face”. Saving face is something we have been learning a lot about while here.

Lesson learned.