No Visa

We had been living in Cairo for two weeks. Our move there came three months after being given the assignment to lead workers in northern Africa, the Middle East, and the Arabian Gulf. Our reason to relocate to Cairo was to evaluate this massive city as a possible location for our regional office.

One of our leadership team members, Mike Edens, and his wife, Madelyn, had already spent over 20 years living in Cairo, and they had convinced us that this might be the right place for us to move personnel and establish a beachhead for our work in 35 countries.

Our first flight out of Cairo was to Ethiopia to meet our workers serving there. One of the unfortunate anomalies of the Cairo International airport was that most of the international flights departed during the hours between midnight and 5:00 am. Our flight to Addis Ababa was at 3:00 am, so we arranged for a taxi to pick us up at 11:30 pm.

Our taxi dropped us off at a convenient spot for check in for Ethiopia Air. We were early enough that there was only a short line, and soon we found ourselves standing in front of the check-in agent. He requested our passports, and we handed them over the counter. As he opened one of the passports he said very cheerfully, “Welcome to Ethiopia, Mr. James.” As he thumbed through my passport, he continued and said, “We are happy that you are traveling to Ethiopia, Mr. James.” And then he looked up at me and said, “But I am sorry you will not be going to Ethiopia tonight, Mr. James. You see,” he said, “you do not have a visa, and to get to Ethiopia this evening you must have a valid visa before departure.”

Puzzled by this request, I asked if we could get visas in the airport at Addis, and he said no.

In communicating with our personnel in Addis, no one had mentioned getting a visa. We had already lived overseas for many years and were certainly aware that visas to many countries were necessary, but we depended on the people we were visiting and the travel agent to inform us.

We had used our colleague’s travel agent to book our tickets, but they had not mentioned a visa either.

There was no need to argue with the desk agent as he was doing his job, so we said thank you and hauled our bags to the curbside to return by taxi to our apartment.

Once we finally arrived in Addis, we learned that a few of our workers in Addis Ababa had some fun talking about their new leader who did not know that he needed a visa to travel. I did not like hearing that as I had been traveling overseas for 20 years, and I certainly understood the necessity of visas in many countries. I admit I was angry that they had accused me of being a rookie traveler. Didn’t they know that we had cut our teeth in West Africa which was so much more primitive than Ethiopia? Had they not heard that we had been traveling and living in several countries for longer than many of them had even been in Ethiopia? Plus, one of the workers in Ethiopia had worked alongside us in Burkina Faso before she married a worker in Ethiopia, but she was enjoying ribbing me about being a rookie. It was all in fun, but my immediate reaction was to get angry. I was already stressed about meeting all the new personnel in the region, and a couple of our meetings had not gone well, because some of the personnel took out their anger about losing their former leader on me.

My anger subsided and I decided to let them laugh at me, and we would find some fun in all this. Staying angry about this would only hurt me and Cheryl and our relationships with the workers. I decided to laugh heartily with them when the no visa story came up in conversations. This strategy worked out well as some of the more creative workers made a song about their leaders missing a flight because they did not know they needed a visa to travel.

This is a fault of mine and I have known it for many years. I get angry too quickly. But I have learned over the years that it is not bad to get angry. It is bad to get angry and stay angry. So, now when I get angry, I say to myself, “Get angry and get over it quickly. Do not stay angry.” Anger, like a cancer, can eat away at your heart and mind and make you so bitter that you lose the countenance of Christ in your temperament.

“My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.” James 1:19-20 NIV.