On the wall of the SIM HQ clinic there is now a yellow piece of A4 paper. It has to be displayed or SIM Ethiopia will be in serious trouble if (when?) the inspectors come round. On it is my picture, but, much more importantly, a stamp. An official stamp. It's not quite up to the Nicaraguan love of stamping that I noticed there last year (I blogged it - click here if you fancy reading it) but they definitely love their stamps. The net outcome is I am now officially allowed to see and treat SIM missionaries, staff, employees and their families.  The obtaining of this yellow piece of paper made for an entertaining afternoon, involving a trip into the depths of the Ethiopian Department for Unnecessary Bureaucracy (DUB for short).

I was summoned to SIM HQ after language school to try and complete my medical registration. I was unable to drive (it's complicated) so Cassahoun took me from Bingham. I then met Petros who has the bureaucracy surrounding medical licensing, residency status and work permits all sussed. He knows where to go and who to talk to. And now he had to take me into the DUB so they can see me. A little puzzled he drives me off across the city to a government building that houses the Department for Health, Medicines and Food, and it would also appear to house the DUB. Nothing in this city appears to be finished, and we lurch and heave in Petros's car across an unfinished carpark made of rubble to a fairly smart-looking multi-storey building. "Smart" stops at the entrance. We make our way down a corridor with a high ceiling on which are six large twin fluorescent lights. You know how faulty fluorescent tubes just glow at the ends when they won't work? All twelve were like that. Good job there was a window at the end.There were half a dozen rooms off this corridor with equally high ceilings and Petros ushered me on to a seat in one of them in which one of it's non-functioning fluorescent lights was dangling from it's cables. There were four desks in this room with people sitting behind them looking official, staring at computer screens and presumably doing administration. The long vertical blinds were all dishevelled and the looped operating chains dangling from them in the UK would have been condemned as threatening to the survival of small children. An extension cable draped across the floor to enable the most important administrator to use his computer. I noticed that the strips of orange sticky packing tape that hold the access panels on the back of printers together for transport had been left on the back and sides of the small laser printers on every desk. They obviously print a lot, as a lot of attention was being paid to A4 sheets of paper and there were seventy reams of the stuff piled up behind the door (yes, seventy - I had ample time to count them). Head Administrator's printer jammed -  he came round to the back of the printer, carefully peeled back the orange packing tape, opened the panel, cleared the jam, and carefully reapplied the packing tape. Much chatter in Amharic occurred. I waited while Petros came and went with various pieces of paper. Eventually we were told to go to another room. In the next room were piles and piles of paper files tied up with string. Bent doors hung off old metal cupboards. Anxious glances, stamping of papers, chatter in Amharic, and I had to wait in the corridor. All along the walls were dirty foot marks. Both sides. Obviously a lot of people wait out here for their paperwork with their feet on the wall. Time passed. Another room. More paper. Now we have to go to a different corridor. I sit in an ante room to an important looking office with a big desk with flags on it. Eventually, Petros smiles. A yellow piece of paper is located, popped into another tape-bound printer that makes surprisingly loud banging noises but prints OK, and my photo gets pinned on. Back to the other corridor we go. The stamp is applied. Petros beams, raises his arms in triumph (and probably a smattering of praise and worship) - we've been here three hours and apparently something good has happened. We leave with the yellow paper and he drives me through the chaos back to Bingham. Job done!

You may have noticed in this description of my trip into the heart of the DUB that I said nothing to anyone, signed nothing, didn't have my photo taken, wasn't finger-printed and was required to do nothing except sit around and look like a doctor. Something I noticed was that Petros kept passing papers from his file backwards and forwards to the administering Administrators that included copies of my degree certificates that had been couriered to SIM Ethiopia by DHL from the UK back in October. Those copies had been notarised by a Notary Public (£115), authorised by the UK Foreign Office (£35 per document), authenticated by the London Ethiopian Embassy (£68 per document), and stamped by the Ethiopian Foreign Affairs Department (can't remember how much that cost as it was in Ethiopian Birr and I was making the Administrator laugh by trying to say something in Amharic). It occurred to me that had I just brought the originals I could have saved all that fuss and more importantly all that money. But no, the originals had no stamps on.

It's not over yet. There's still the Work Permit and the Residency Permit. And apparently, after Christmas some time, Chris and I need to visit the Federal Police HQ near Mexico Square (which has been dug up to make a railway station) to have our finger prints taken. "Why?" I ask Petros. "Just in case" he replies. In case of what, I wonder? Hmm. One thing I have learned since arriving here - asking "why?" is usually pointless.