Visa schmisa

During the three years I spent in DC, I visited 31 different embassies in pursuit of visas for various Mercy Corps colleagues around the world. I suppose that this experience has prepared me well for dealing with consular officials in just about any part of the world. Or I just should say that pretty much nothing surprises me in the visa acquisition process. I usually go into a situation assuming that I am going to have a long wait, that I’m going to have to jump through a lot of hoops and that I’m going to have to argue with somebody. So far, getting a visa for Iraq has met my expectations.

A staff member working in the Sule office supposedly has connections in high places with regard to getting residency visas, so six of us expats trooped over to the visa office on Thursday, prepared to do all we needed to do to put the paperwork in motion. After filling out applications one by one, we were told that we would each be meeting with some official for a security interview (I guess so they can confirm that we aren’t terrorists). Members of our group kept being called into the next room, until me and another co-worker were left. Finally, we were also summoned to the next room, only to discover everyone else sitting around. After continuing to sit for another half hour, we found out the one guy who could do interviews was not there that day. So, with my colleagues up from southern Kurdistan set to return to their base on Saturday, we decided to go back in on Saturday morning for the interview and then go to the hospital to get blood drawn for our HIV tests.

Our well-placed colleague assured us this whole process would only take “20 minutes,” so we good-naturedly headed out the door to the registry office again to conduct the security interviews. Upon arrival at the visa office, we were escorted to the same room as before, only to sit around for about 20 minutes doing nothing other than handing our pictures over to the police officer who was stapling them into a book and writing our mobile numbers down underneath. After drinking the proffered tea, we went back into the main room to give more details to someone else and then waited to find out if the head guy was going to be there to conduct the interviews. Nope, he wasn’t in yet, but was expected shortly. So, off we went to the hospital, which reminded me a little too much of the one I toured in Uzbekistan several years ago, and not in a good way. I didn’t have any blood drawn in Uzbekistan, and I wasn’t feeling particularly enthusiastic about having it done in Iraq. However, as an enthusiastic former blood donor, I was felt okay about the whole matter once I saw that at least each needle came in fresh packaging.

Hoping that we could finally get the interview out of the way, our well-placed colleague called the visa office to see if the man in charge had finally arrived at work. Nope, turns out that he suddenly had “very urgent” business to attend to and wouldn’t be available for the rest of the day. No big shocker there, but really an inconvenience for my colleagues leaving town today. Unfortunately, all the arguing in the world isn’t going to bring that man into the office. Ahh, to be back in the world of “tomorrow, tomorrow,” “not a problem” and “we’ll see” when in fact, none of those things are true. This is a very valuable lesson in patience…