In the past few days I’ve felt particularly embittered about my life as a young “veteran” teaching at a rural university here in northern Ethiopia.
My salary does not match my grand-sounding rank of lecturer.
I earn a whopping 2 600 birr (roughly US$162) a month in an inflationary economy. So although my title may be graceful on the tongue, its salary is graceless in my pocket.
I can barely afford three meals a day. And if I dare eat this much, as the premier promised we would two decades ago, I would soon find myself overwhelmed by debt before the next pay cheque arrived.
I’m no Mr Doomsayer, though. Those in my position are also privileged to receive an additional 160 birr ($10) as a huge monthly house allowance. With this, I live in a miniature house and eat a mini-meal. For fun, I watch television at my neighbour’s place.
If I wish to buy my own set, well, that’s two months’ salary and no food. Recently, I felt as if I should do something and luckily one idea flashed through my mind: the DV Bingo!
The Diversity Visa Lottery is a priceless annual gift from the United States. As a youth, I considered it injera (this country’s food staple) from heaven. At night I dreamed sweet dreams of the US and a happy life in Los Angeles.
Thanks to Hollywood, I knew LA from the movie LA Confidential. Families who sent sons to the US through the DV drew huge homage from neighbours. Somewhat later I considered the lottery a betrayal of the motherland. But now, well, I believe winning it could alleviate my poverty.
The problem was, a DV did not really match my personality.
Mind asking
As a child, I never obeyed my mama when she sent me to seek injera from neighbours; I’d rather go to bed hungry. Even borrowing an eraser in class bothered me. I preferred scratching out a mistake with spit. I’d never ask other students for a sharpener. I just rubbed my pencil against the wall.
So the idea of filling out a DV application created psychological turbulence, putting me at odds with myself. Besides, I had no idea how to go about it.
How would one fill in a DV? Where do you fill it in? And what if people saw me? How could a respected university lecturer fill in a DV form just like an ordinary citizen?
Because it’s DV time in Ethiopia, notices of “You can fill in DV here!” with images of Barack Obama have been posted in all the internet cafés for the past two weeks; some entrepreneurs open cafés just for the month of applications.
On the campus of my university ads for the DV are everywhere: in the student cafeteria, on classroom notice boards, near the entrance to the library. The student council organised this display, urging students not to miss the chance.
Nostalgically, I recalled how my student council once mobilised the struggle for basic rights and academic freedom. Now this council has created DV queues. The queues equalled those I recently saw at the immigration office in Addis Ababa one morning, where citizens fought to secure passports to go to the Arab world as housemaids.
But how to fill in the DV without anybody’s knowledge? My colleagues and I don’t want to be perceived as DV filling-in types. And where I live, even a fly from another place can be easily identified. So I decided to take a taxi to the anonymous city centre.
I headed to an internet café and pretended to surf the web. All the while, I secretly studied customers. Some, leaning up against a white background, were being photographed. Most tried a wry smile, thinking that the DV came with the size of a grin.
The business centre was packed: many youngsters, a few adults, a couple, a family of seven, a maid with a jerry can for cooking gas, a mechanic in overalls and my former students. This business centre had attracted so many applicants because four people who filled DV forms here have won — and the crowd believes in good omens.
As my former students and some acquaintances left, I summoned courage to whisper to the photographer that I wanted to fill in a form.
“Possible! You’ve got to pay 10 birr and then you’ll be photographed and fill in this form. We’ll give you the confirmation form tomorrow,” she replied loudly. I winced. Why didn’t she talk to me in the low tone in which I had addressed her? Did she want my students to hear? Wicked!
Rather not, I’ll wait
Then I learned that internet cafés let applicants fill in paper forms during the day when the internet connection is slow and then the staff sends out the e-application in the evenings when the connection is fast. The next day café workers handed out confirmations. But who would be responsible if mistakes occurred? I didn’t want to ruin my chances. “I’ll be back,” I said, sneaking out.
I headed to the city’s sole post office, only to find a crowd and disorder. Customers who had arrived early to fill in the DV were angry with hooligans who had jumped the queue and a fight had erupted. The postal workers stopped service to restore order.
While I was waiting, I read notices declaring that the DV lasts only one month this year, warning how only few days remained and citing the advantages of sending a DV through the post office.
Among these notices was one proclaiming that the post office, as a government office, is entitled to write an official letter to the American embassy if there are spelling blunders. The post office wanted to show just how hard the government was working to smuggle its citizens into another nation!
Of course, not only government employees like me apply, but also government officials. Once the police commissioner for Addis Ababa allegedly won the lottery. He tried to keep it secret, but the news leaked out and he landed in the limelight of notoriety. Back at my university, I heard rumours that even the prominent head of the research centre was spotted filling in a DV form.
Finally, with a clear understanding that the American DV does not care about my African CV, I headed back to the good-luck internet café. I was photographed smiling, but I filled in the form soberly. And left feeling as though I slept with a prostitute.
Mohammed Selman is a lecturer in journalism and a freelance writer. He lives in Ethiopia. In 2009 he won the Excellence in Journalism award for print from the Foreign Press Association in Addis Ababa