Why did I snatch up such unusual things to take with me on that terrible night?
When you’re under pressure, you do strange—and mysterious—things.
And I was under terrible pressure.
Our whole family had lived under the threat of death for almost a year. We’d been afraid ever since communists had taken over our country, Ethiopia, in September 1974. Our longtime emperor, Haile Selassie, had been arrested, and sixty-two of the country’s leading officials had been shot. Our land teemed with ruthless Marxists and fanatic radicals intent on eliminating people such as us: I was a government loyalist who had served as a senator in the emperor’s parliament; my husband, Deme, was a prosperous businessman who had once headed several government departments for the emperor.
There was another reason our family was in peril: my husband and I were outspoken Christians.
Now it was the fourth day since we’d learned that our emperor had died. With his death had come a new wave of arrests. To save our lives, it seemed to us that our only hope was to flee south across the border into Kenya, a trip of some five hundred miles, leaving our home in Addis Ababa and all our possessions behind.
For an exorbitant sum, we found a driver and a guide who would transport us in their ancient Land Rover. It was a trip that seemed impossible, for we knew we’d have to detour via farm fields and river gorges to avoid police roadblocks and cross forbidding terrain—yet we were ready to trust in God’s promise: “But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:19 KJV).
We’d hoped to have a day or two to plan for our trip. But now, on August 31, 1975, we felt compelled to leave immediately. Later, we learned that an order for our arrest was being processed in police headquarters that very day.
There wasn’t a moment to spare. Since informers were everywhere, we pretended we were going on a picnic. I hurried our three sons who were still with us in Ethiopia—Lali, nine, Beté, fifteen, and Mickey, twenty-two—into the vehicle. There was some fried chicken in the refrigerator; I had our cook pack it in a pan of aluminum foil and put it into a cooler. What else? We couldn’t take too much in case we were stopped; it would look too suspicious.
Hurry, hurry! my heart whispered. I grabbed four cans of tomato juice and a bottle of water and climbed into the vehicle. The driver started the motor.
“Wait!” I said. I dashed back into the house, wondering, What am I doing? A roll of cloth adhesive tape had been left on a chair. I stuffed it into my purse. And there on a shelf was a jar of Vaseline. I made sure we took that too.
“Marta, please!” my husband pleaded. I climbed back aboard, and at eight o’clock, we drove off into the night.
We held our breath as we passed police barricades. Then, as we drove through the dark countryside past sleeping villages, I grieved for my fellow countrymen. What would happen to them in the hard times ahead?
My melancholy thoughts were interrupted when the old Land Rover broke down. The fuel pump had given out. But in the morning, we found a mechanic to fix it.
Later, as we rested beneath some acacia trees, we ate the cold chicken and drank the tomato juice. I started to dispose of the aluminum foil pan and the empty juice cans, but something stopped me. Without knowing why, I thrust them back into the cooler.
Already far behind schedule, we pressed on that evening to the town of Arba Mench, a Marxist stronghold. We prayed our way through the crowded streets and were on our way out of town when Deme looked behind us.
A police car was chasing us!
Our driver accelerated and switched off our lights. We veered off the road into the bush, lurching over the rough terrain, swerving to miss boulders and trees. We eventually shook off our pursuers! But in the bush, a thorny tree branch had ripped open the protective canvas cover on the Land Rover. Cold night air poured in around us.
“If only we had something to repair the canvas with,” Deme muttered as we shivered in the cold.
“But we do!” I exclaimed, reaching into my purse for the cloth tape.
As we repaired the top, our driver said, “You were smart to think about bringing that with you.”
“But I didn’t think of it,” I said. “The Lord made me pick it up.”
He grunted. “You really think that Allah is interested in such little things?”
“The Lord is always watching over us,” I answered softly.
On the third night, we had to follow a dry riverbed to bypass a dangerous town. The Land Rover groaned and squealed as it bounced off rocks. Then, with a terrible jolt, it lurched to a halt.
We climbed out to look and were instantly engulfed by a whining cloud of stinging insects. As we beat the air to ward them off, we discovered that a wheel had fallen off; its lug nuts had loosened and were lost in the dark forever. Deme suggested we take two lug nuts from each of the other wheels, and we used them to put the fallen wheel in place once again. But that was just the beginning of our wheel troubles.
Our next hurdle was the town of Yaballo, where the road crews were on the alert for escapees. There was a rise in the road before town, and we figured our best chance was to coast silently down the hill and through town just before dawn, when people would be sleeping their soundest.
Thank God it worked.
Then we faced the most dangerous place of all—Mega, a city near the border where all traffic was funneled through a police checkpoint. Deme, the driver, and the guide hoped they would look like a road crew. The boys and I hid on the floor in the rear of the Land Rover. Slowly we drove past the police guard. Since most of the crews drove Land Rovers, the police waved us on. Deme and I breathed a prayer of relief.
To avoid highway patrols, we again turned off the road and followed a dry riverbed. But just as we were beginning to breathe easier, the Land Rover’s rear slammed onto the gravel with a bone-jarring jolt. We climbed out to find that the back wheel had broken away from the axle. Deme examined it.
“Powder,” he groaned. “The wheel bearings have been ground to powder.”
Now escape looked hopeless.
We waited fitfully through the night. As the light rose over the rolling hills, I raised my hands. “Thank you, Lord, for watching over us,” I said. “Thank you that we broke down here instead of in a town. Thank you for providing this day for us.”
“Can you fix it?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Not unless we had new wheel bearings or . . .” He jumped up. “Or we had something to fill up the space in place of the bearings.”
He began rummaging through the truck, then opened the cooler. “This just might work!” he exclaimed. Taking the aluminum foil, he folded it into tight strips. Then, fitting them into the wheel, he said, “Marta, we need grease. Do you have any cosmetics? Any cold cream?”
I reached into my purse and held up the jar of Vaseline—the jar the Lord had prompted me to retrieve as we left.
By Friday noon, the fifth day of our flight, the Land Rover limped slowly along. We’d had no water for a day and a half; our throats were parched and our tongues swollen. That evening our vehicle shuddered and collapsed. The back wheel had fallen off again. The foil bearings had been chewed away.
Have we come this far, I wondered, to die here in the midst of nowhere?
Deme slipped down against the Land Rover and, as if in prayer, sighed. “What do we have left? One wrench, half a jar of Vaseline, four empty tomato juice cans, and seven people dying of thirst.”
Suddenly, he leaped up. “That’s it,” he exclaimed. “The tomato juice cans!”
As the sun rose on Saturday, Deme stomped the cans flat, shaped them into a metal tube around the wheel shaft, and applied the last of the precious Vaseline.
By noon that day, we faced the desert. Grim and foreboding, it undulated endlessly before us. Hour after hour we drove into charcoal-gray nothingness; even the sky had turned that sickly shade.
The Land Rover’s metal was searing hot. I looked anxiously at our son Beté. He was in a stupor, dehydrated.
“Deme, we must find water for Beté!”
My husband buried his face in his hands, then looked up to heaven. Suddenly, his face lit up. “There is water here. In the radiator. I saw the mechanic fill it with plain water.”
I worried as we drained the steaming rust-brown water into our one remaining glass. I tried to strain it through a tissue, then handed the glass to Beté.
“Don’t drink it,” I cautioned. “Just rinse your mouth.” He grabbed it and gulped it down. Mickey and Lali did the same. Their thirst was quenched—and the liquid didn’t seem to harm them.
As we rode on into the blazing afternoon, we began to see hills in the distance. Then, near 6:00 p.m., we saw a cluster of houses ahead where a dozen handsome Kenyans stood waiting for us.
We had found sanctuary.
However, now we faced the unknown. Destitute, where would we go? What would we do? Moreover, as I glanced back at the gray desert, my heart cried out for the countrymen I had left behind.
For a moment, deep sadness for the past and fear of the future gripped me. Then I looked at Deme. He smiled and took my hand. I knew what he was thinking: we had the most valuable thing of all—our faith.
Surely God would do as much with that as he had done with a roll of tape, a piece of aluminum foil, four tomato juice cans, and a jar of Vaseline.