Immigration inspection

Posted by Ali

It's 10:45 a.m. and I'm lounging on my bed with my computer. No, today is not a holiday. I'm not sick, nor did I get fired. I'm actually hiding out. Immigration is on their way to the campus to do an inspection. You see, I don't have my work visa yet and Max, Yona (the programs director) and I agreed that it might not be a great idea for the immigration officers to catch me in the office and find out that I've only got a tourist visa. So, when Max heard they were on their way to the ADRA campus for the inspection, he sent someone to his office where I was working while he was in a meeting to send me back to my room.

The funny thing is, it's immigrations fault that I don't have my work visa yet. Around the middle of July I sent Max all the forms, documents and passport pictures required to get a work visa in Tanzania. Once he got them, he did his part of the paperwork and then sent everything to Dar es Salaam. The visa was completed and sent to the district immigration office. And there it sat, completed and ready for me. But immigration decided to get snarly and said they couldn't give ADRA my work visa until they came to the campus and did an inspection, something they have never taken the time to do in all the seven years that Max has been here, and probably not before that either. Max has been calling them to set up an appointment for the inspection for a few weeks now in order to get my visa and also the visa of the grant writer, Simon, who is supposed to come work here. He's currently sitting in Kenya waiting for his work visa before he can travel cross the border. Ahh, what fun bureaucracy is, eh? Anyway, Max sent someone to town twice earlier this week to talk to the immigration officers and ask them to come to our campus as soon as possible, but nothing came of it. So finally today he sent someone there to pick them up and bring them here. And now they're here, looking around the ADRA half of the campus. And so here I sit in my room, typing this on a word document because my internet doesn't seem to want to cooperate. I'll post this blog whenever I'm again able to go online. For now, I'm going to save this and read a book until I can come back out of hiding.

Evening:
Still without internet. Wonder when I'll be able to post this. Hopefully soon. Well, around lunchtime I saw the officers marching in a line up the walk toward the cottages. Watching them, I got a little worried that they might come inspect my room, but they walked to the kitchen to look around there and then Max showed them room 6 (mine is room 1) across the circle from me and after looking at that they all headed back to the ADRA office. Max stopped by my room as they left and said I could come to his house for a spaghetti lunch with him and the girls, so I did. After lunch we both headed back to the office, thinking the officers had gone, but Max, who had left a couple minutes before me, came back to tell me they were still hanging around and that I should stay away until he came to get me. I returned to his house and played in the front yard with Staci and Mariah. It was a grand few hours. We played I-Spy, then pretended we were warding off hundreds of venomous snakes (the girls idea, not mine...I let them take charge of the snake killing and they were all too happy do so). After the rousing, and quite gruesome (good thing those snakes were invisible or we'd have been covered in blood from head to toe), drama was over, Staci ran inside to get her Disney princess colouring book and crayons and we spent some quality colouring time together. Later Staci also brought a storybook outside, which Mariah asked me to read to her.

In the middle of the story, Max came back home to tell me that immigration had finally left and I was free to come back to work. By this time it was around 3 p.m. and I felt a bit bad about how little time I'd spent working so I said bye to the girls and followed Max back to his office where we worked on the budget for a proposal for ADRA UK and sent that off by the end of the day (yay, that proposal's done now!). Then, just before we locked up the office, Max remembered that he was supposed to get pictures of the main buildings on campus, print them out and get them to immigration. He wasn't sure exactly why they required this, especially now, years after ADRA having a presence in Tanzania. But he wants the work visas so I ran to get my camera and took pictures of the front of the office building, the inside of the programs, project and finance offices, the carpentry and mechanics workshops, the conference centre, the cafeteria (unfinished), the cottages, and the place where the lumber for the carpentry shop is stacked. I was also in charge of printing the pictures out and that took awhile since they had to be sent from Max's computer, through his secretary's computer and then finally go through the printer. While that was going on Staci wandered into the office and informed me that they were going out to eat and I should join them. I wasn't sure if that was her parents idea or not, but later on Max asked me to join them and so I did.

Max and Davona took three of their kids, their son Brendon (who lives and works here doing photography, designing and website work for various companies here) as well as the two girls and me, out for Indian food. While we were waiting for our food to come we took the girls to browse through a nearby grocery store, which was fun since they showed me all their favourite foods (and wouldn't you know...all their favourite foods all candy/pastry related). Later, between appetizers and the main course, Staci, Mariah and I designed all kinds of cool objects using the toothpicks sitting on the table. I even tried to make a bumblebee, but the straight edged-toothpicks made that rather difficult for an amateur like me. So we stuck to houses, people, words, flowers, stars, and even a heart. Finally our food came and, I'm excited to report to all those who know me well, I tried absolutely everything sitting on the table and only thought one food was a bit too spicy! Maybe I'm getting better at eating hot food!! It was all really tasty.

And now, since my computer tells me that I still have no network connection, I think I'll go to bed early for once and get a good night's rest. My non-jet lag seems to be morphing back into my more normal sleep pattern again and so I should probably work on readjusting to a regular schedule now.