Getting to the Church On Time

No, no one’s getting married. But it has been a bit of a challenge for us to get to church on Sundays! Today, we needed to go about a 10-15 min car ride from our house to visit an international church on our side of town for the first time. Since we don’t have a car, we take the “taxis” (you would call them minibuses) everywhere.
 So we left home 1 hour before church started to try to make it there on time. There are not as many taxis running on Sunday mornings, so it can be a bit tough to find one that has room for all 6 of us (although we are now quite skillful at loading into a taxi and only taking up 3 seats in a variety of configurations…). We walked out to the main road and stood waiting with a large group of other folks also waiting for taxis. We finally found an empty taxi (a rarity!) and were on our way with 12 other folks in the taxi. We made it over half of our journey in less than ½ hour, so I thought we were doing well.

Time came to get off the taxi. Jerry said the Amharic word that means “Stop, I want off the taxi,” and the taxi kept driving. He said it again a bit louder, and the driver rattled something off in Amharic and kept driving (farther and farther away from where we needed to be, mind you). Apparently, it was a no stopping zone (from what we can figure), but he did eventually stop and we hopped off. Now we had to hoof it to another taxi stop to go the second leg of our trip. It was a bit of a hike in our church clothes (of course, we were dressed up), but we got there and found the taxi going to the right location.

We hopped in that taxi for a moment, then were told to move to another taxi. All 6 of us piled out and piled back into another taxi. When you get on a taxi, it doesn’t leave until every seat is full. Sometimes you can sit for quite a while waiting for the taxi to fill up. Yep, you guessed it: time was ticking away and our taxi wasn’t filling up. But eventually, we were on our way again.

Only a few minutes down the road, the driver swerved and pulled off the road. Being in the seat behind him, I could see that the steering had gone out. Luckily we weren’t going fast, and could stop easily. The driver and the “money taker” jumped out and got under the taxi. They were banging and working…with 15 min. left before church started. Jerry looked out the taxi window and could see the building where we were supposed to turn to get to the church. The only problem was we’d have to cross 4 lanes of road that are under construction and jump 2 chest-high fences (in dresses, none the less) and a construction median to get to the right side of the road. Oh, the irony.

Tick, tick, tick. Time was ticking by. After about 5 min, we decided to walk, so started a fast trot down the sidewalk, past that landmark building, and a ways down the road until we could find a pedestrian overpass that allowed us to cross the highway and the construction, only to turn around and walk back the way we came (but on the other side of the road), back to that good old landmark building, where we turned and found the church.

We missed the first song, but did indeed make it. The floor below our seats was covered in mud from our little hiking expedition, but, hey, we made it!

I will never again wear dress shoes to church. I wore my “safest”, most comfortable dress shoes, but my blisters prove the day’s adventure, and are not something I want to repeat.

(There was another week where when we got on a taxi, Jerry asked specifically if it was going where we needed to be, and both the driver and the “money taker” told us yes. But that wasn’t the case. The closest place we could get off that taxi was a good 20+min. hike at a really fast pace to the church. We missed the first THREE songs that day…but at least I was wearing my sandals!)

~c