Working in Ethiopia has its highs and lows, and then there are the tedious everyday nuisances that have to be dealt with, whichever country you’re in. Our latest telephone bill (covering May!) was much more expensive than usual. The only way to query a bill is to go in person to the main office of the Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation in Awassa. I’ve been there before with other queries and found their procedures to be arcane and slow with an amazing amount of paperwork being shuffled around between people in the same office. This afternoon, the office was busy with lots of people trying to pay bills, get a new phone line, complain, etc. Inside the main door was a woman at a desk for general enquiries. She was, appropriately, busy on the phone. After I had hovered for a minute feeling increasingly conspicuous she smiled at me and I explained why I was there. She indicated another desk, to which I indicated the large number of people who were sitting by the desk obviously waiting to be served. I tried to ask if this was the queue (how quaintly British!), to which she smiled again and then indicated for me to follow her to an office. Perhaps she thought I wanted to jump the queue, or she hadn’t understood a word I said and probably decided to dump me onto somebody else. In the office was a woman sitting behind a desk looking officious (and talking on the phone) and five customers waiting to get her attention. Ms Officious ended her call, ignored the waiting Ethiopians and asked what I wanted. I explained, she listened and then told me to fill out a form to ask for an investigation. I had visions of an afternoon floundering in bureaucracy, especially when the “form” was a blank sheet of paper. I wrote my story and she then took me to another desk, occupied by a harassed looking man (the first harassed Ethiopian I think I’ve seen) surrounded by six Ethiopians who were obviously complaining about their bills. I waited and waited and waited. I remembered exercises on VSO training courses about dealing with bureaucracy and official people (and horror stories of volunteers returning day after day to government offices to get a form signed). Eventually Mr Harassed finished dealing with one man and turned to me, completely ignoring the other waiting Ethiopians, who didn’t even raise an eyebrow at this ferenji being given preferential treatment. I cringed with embarrassment and made a half-hearted attempt to indicate that these people should come first, but Mr Harassed was having none of it and took my “form”. He scribbled a note in Amharic on it and gave it to somebody at the next desk, who tried searching for something on a computer. My “form” was now passed to a woman who filled out another form (a real official form this time) in a book, and then indicated I should follow her to…another office, with two men sitting at empty desks doing absolutely nothing as far as I could see. If the previous guy was harassed, these guys were chilled-out. Mr Chilled-Out No. 1 read my “form”, the added Amharic note and the woman’s official form and then asked me to explain why I was here. Feeling the afternoon slipping away from me I explained it all again. Mr Chilled-Out No. 1 then stood up and indicated I should follow him (I had an urge to scream “noooo!”)…..to Mr Chilled-Out No. 2, sitting at a desk approximately 1 m away from him. Mr Chilled-Out No. 2 read my “form”, the Amharic note, the woman’s official form, listened to Mr Chilled-Out No. 1’s explanation and then asked me to explain why I was here. It’s no wonder Ethiopian’s usually don’t officially complain about anything! However, Mr Chilled-Out No. 2 immediately told me the reason: our April bill did not include any local calls (this data was “unavailable” at the time) and these had been added to the May bill, along with the May local calls. I left feeling grateful, if a bit ashamed and embarrased, for being "fast-tracked" as a ferenji, and that it was still daylight outside.