Ethiopia or Eritria?

As I was walking to the bus stop this morning, an older woman stopped me and asked me if I could help her. She was holding out a small booklet. I thought it was going to be a map, and that she was going to ask me for directions. I love giving directions, for some reason, so I was kind of excited. Instead, it was a passport. She asked me if I could read it to her, and tell her if it said Ethiopia or Eritria. I told her Ethiopia. She then double checked with me to make sure it was actually a passport, and then she told me she was going to "trade it in" for an American passport.

I've discussed how hard I think it must be to be illiterate, so I'm not going to talk about that. I don't think it was just that she couldn't read English, because the Ethiopian passport was in English and Ethiopian. I wasn't surprised that she had an Ethiopian passport -- there are lots of Ethiopians in my neighborhood. What I was surprised about, however, was the idea of trading in your passport for an American one. I don't think it's that simple! Maybe she has some other circumstances that I'm not aware of, like she's already a US citizen and she just needed an old passport for proof of ID or something, or maybe... hum, I can't even come up with another possible circumstance where trading in a passport might even apply.