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| These two help me keep my sanity. |
Noun: 1. A lengthy and complicated procedure.
2. A long, rambling story or statement.
Today’s adventure: going to the immigration office to get our
visas extended. Deb’s is already 15 days expired and mine expires in two days.
Both Dana and Mark were under the impression that we had 60 day tourist visas,
but no, according to the stamps on our passports they’re only good for 30 days.
Which Deb and I thought we knew, but sometimes it’s hard to convince significant
others … What’s the penalty for an expired visa? It’s $100 AED or $27.22 USD per
day, which can add up quickly.
The rigmarole really began when we learned that we need to
have our marriage documents certificated in order to obtain our resident visas
under our husbands’ work sponsorship. This process involves stamped and signed official
letters from the county and state where the marriage took place, then the U.S. Department
of State, and then the country in which you are applying for the visa. It’s all
clearly spelled out online, uh-huh. Once you get your local and state documentation,
you send it to the U.S. Dept of State and they will send it on to the embassy,
in our case the UAE Embassy, in Washington D.C.
Or is it the U.S. Embassy in the UAE?
Just to be sure, I called the UAE Embassy in D.C. Yes, they
need to certify it. So I’ll have the State Department send it directly to them,
as instructed on the website –
“No, no, no. I am telling you. Do not have the U.S. State
Department send the document. You need to send it here.”
“So I need to mail it to Washington, then have them mail back
to me, then I mail it to you. Then you mail it back to me. Or … it will be
lost?”
“Yes. I am telling you. I have people calling, crying, every
day.”
“Can I take it to the UAE with me and have it certified
there?”
“No, no, no. You must send it here.”
But when I explained this to Mark he said no, no, no. The
company is taking care of everything. All I need is the State Department
letter. Which I was glad of because I wasn’t going to have time to send the
document back to the UAE Embassy before leaving on October 24th. In
fact I had to have the document sent from the U.S. State Dept. to my daughter
Nicole, who would then send it to us in Abu Dhabi.
You following?
Meanwhile, Mark’s and Dana’s resident visas came through.
Hooray! Next, they needed their UAE driver’s licenses. I had heard through my
AWN grapevine that you are not allowed to drive without a UAE driver’s license
once you have your resident visa, and you also need a UAE identification card
as well. I told Mark that he wasn’t supposed to drive once he had his visa, and
he knew nothing about that. But suddenly the next day, the company PRO was
taking him and Dana to get their driver’s licenses.
So when Mark came home with the driver’s license I said, “What
about the ID card?” He didn’t know anything about that.
“I am telling you . . .” I said.
Meanwhile, my documents had arrived at Nicole’s, and we went
to the UPS office in Abu Dhabi to see about sending them. Here in the UAE
people don’t have addresses where things can be easily delivered. Here, they
are still transitioning from using landmarks to street names – or numbers. The
streets here have numbers, but each one also has several names. So the best
thing was to have it held at the UPS office for pickup.
We gave Nicole instructions, and she went to her local UPS
office. No, they said, we can’t send it there because it’s a P.O. Box, and UPS doesn’t
deliver to P.O. Boxes. What? UPS won’t deliver to their own location? We looked
online and sure enough, it was true, the address listed was a P.O. Box. We
finally convinced Nicole to go to the main UPS office in Concord and tell them
to send it to UPS, Airport Road, Abu Dhabi, UEA. Hold for pickup. That’s it,
that’s all. Several hours later she emailed a tracking number and three words: “It
wasn’t easy.” Three days later, it arrived.
Mark and Dana took our marriage documents and passports to
work yesterday so they could be processed for our resident visas. When he
arrived home that afternoon Mark said “You and Debbie have to go to the U.S.
Embassy tomorrow and get your marriage certificates stamped.” What? “We spent
all day trying to get our ID cards, and your visas. The PRO (the company’s ‘public
relations officer’) drove us to the embassy and they said they only do the
document certification between 1:00 and 3:00 p.m.”
Meanwhile, as I am writing this, I get a harried phone call
from Mark. Are you on the internet? He and Dana are driving, trying to find Kahlifa
Hospital. You’re going to a hospital? Yes, that’s where we have to go to get our
fingerprints for the ID cards. After a comedy of errors, because everything has
three names, or no name, or the same three names as something else, I finally
confirmed where they were, and where the hospital was. It still took them
awhile to find their way through that maze to the correct place for fingerprinting,
which of course had just been moved, and nobody who works there knew where it
was.
There is a saying here: “Insha’ Alla” which means “God
willing.” Muslims are instructed in the Qu’ran to never say that they will do a
particular thing without adding “insha’Allah” to the statement, because it will
only happen if it is God’s will. It reminds me of the Spanish imperfect tense,
which is really saying “I may be doing this in the future,” because you never
really know it will happen until it’s done, and reserving the perfect tense for
“I am doing it now.” At least that’s how I remember learning it. I mention this
because it may explain the mindset of the Emiratis just as it explains “man͂ana
time” in Mexico. I am not equating the two, but rather trying to illustrate
that not everyone has the expectation of results in a certain time frame that we
Americans do.
So yesterday Deb and I spent about half an hour driving in
circles trying to find our way into the Embassy Area. Finally we spotted the
American flag, which made us cheer and practically break out into a patriotic song.
All of the entrances were blocked, which is normal here. A security guy – they are
ubiquitous, and I guess I should be calling them “parking attendants,” pointed
to a lot across the street. As we were pulling away he said, “Do you have an
appointment?”
What?
We don’t need one, I began to explain, we are just getting a
stamp on – never mind, yes, we do have an appointment. He smiled knowingly.
When we got to the door, we found out about the appointment
thing. The security guard pointed to a sign that read “AS OF AUGUST 1, AN
APPOINTMENT IS REQUIRED.” He gave me a card with a website address and said to
make an appointment online. Thanks a lot! Why didn’t the guys and their PRO know
about this?
Deb phoned Dana to see if they could make a same day
appointment online. HAH! The first available appointment was Sunday, and it was
only Monday. At that point we uncovered the fact that Deb’s visa was already
expired, and mine was on the brink. Next thing we knew we had a date with the
PRO.
So today Deb and I were picked up by the PRO, Mubaruk, a
little after 1:00 p.m. We decided to dress conservatively, which meant that I
needed to lend clothing to Deb. Have I mentioned that she is a bartender? We
were mentally preparing for Deb to get kicked out of the country because of her
expired visa. Here are the Tourist Visa rules, per the official website:
TOURIST VISA
This
visa is issued through tourist companies and it is valid for 30 days. You
cannot renew it or extend it. If the Visa holder (tourist) stays more than the
30 days, then that person has to pay a fine per day plus some charges for an
out pass.
As we left Deb’s apartment I said, “Here’s the rules: stay
together. If you have to leave, I’m going with you.” Secretly, we were both
thinking: “Vacation in Oman! Five star hotel! The company pays!” This was all
supposed to be handled by the company, insha’Allah.
Mubaruk was very helpful, and he obviously has “wasta.” Wasta
is influence, connections, “clout.” I don’t know how we would have navigated
that immigration office scene without him, starting with just the physical site
which, believe it or not, is under construction. All we really did was follow
him around, sit where he told us to sit, and give him money when he told us to.
We each signed one piece of paper and talked to one bureaucrat. We came out
with visa extensions, and medical insurance for the next 30 days. Deb’s visa is
only good till December 5th, but they forgave 10 days of penalty at
$1000AED. My visa is good till 23 December. As we left the immigration offices
Mubaruk said, “Tomorrow we will start on your resident visas.”
But, I said, we haven’t gotten our marriage documents
stamped here. Oh no, then we have to wait till Monday. This is cutting it close
for Deb, so we called our friend Major James Collins, who works at the embassy,
to see I f he could pull strings. He couldn’t help because we aren’t military.
So we have to wait, and hope that everything works out, insha’Allah.
On the way home, Mubaruk mentioned that he learned to speak
English in San Jose, California. That’s where Mark and Dana worked when they
met! And Mubaruk has also been to Concord, California. That’s where my kids and
my sister live! We have so much in common. Mubarak also told us that there are
unmarked police cars on the road that take photos of you breaking the traffic
laws, and they automatically give you a ticket. Just as he finished saying
that, one pulled up next to us. He also told us that the fines for speaking on
your cell phone without a hands-free device, and not wearing a seat belt, are
$400AED. Good to know.
When we got home, Deb and I attacked the jug of
Cosmopolitans she had that we had been talking about all day as we waited. Mark
and Dana were amazed that we got the medical insurance. And they told us that
the day we described was exactly like four or five days that they have already
lived through.
If you have read this
all the way to here, there will be another exciting post about the end of the
story, insha’Allah.
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