Nearly deported, well, not really

Ok, time to tell the tale of how we nearly got deported, well, not really. (The photos are part of the intermission.)

Act I, Scene 1: Arrive and apply
When I arrived here in May, our previous Country Director had resigned and I was filling in for a while. During that time I interviewed for the position and, over the next little bit, accepted the position and offer. But because I'd arrived for the whole month of May, I got a 90-day work visa which expired August 8.

When we arrived for the next two years on July 19, I set to work completing the forms for a work permit for two years, plus a two-year multi-entry visa. I'd heard that we had staff on the project whose work permits were submitted for renewal in April and hadn't been approved by July. I figured that the folks who submitted all the docs for us to the Ministry of Home Affairs & Immigration (MOHA&I), had done this hundreds of times and knew the score. Um, well, right, but Namibia's a small country and it was an election year.

August 8 came and went and I became, for all intents and purposes, the guy who over-stayed his visa. I was re-assured that since the application had been made that there should not be a problem remaining in Namibia. I didn't have any reason to leave, so I stayed on and kept working. Hey, there were lots of folks in the same situation, including some on my own staff.

Act I, Scene 2: 48-hours' notice
But then, in what turned out to be a surprise move, on October 23 my application was....rejected!!! Everyone knew that MOHA&I was a bit behind, but an out-right rejection was unheard of for a project like mine. That led to some rounds of phone calls from the folks supporting me that I might have to leave the country within 48 hours. More phone calls and the decision was that I didn't need to rush out, but should be prepared to go within a 48-hour window. I was the first rejection that they'd heard of--a sort of dread and notoriety hung around my neck. And there were a few dozen more applicants under similar circumstances that would have to be dealt with.

Doesn't this all sound really dramatic? I mean, this reminded me of the case of Elian Gonzalez, the boy from Cuba whose boat sank and Elian was rescued and brought into the US. His mom died in the sinking and his dad in Cuba wanted him back. My brother-in-law, Roger, was one of the attorneys for the Miami-based family members that wanted him to stay in the US. Amazingly, there's still a bunch of stuff on this story on the Internet, including an interview with Roger (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/elian/elian_4-7a.html). Why do I mention this? Well, because once I'd over-stayed and was rejected, I felt like I needed a good attorney!

After much angst, I was advised that the best thing to do was to make plans to get a tourist visa so I could exit without a lot of hoopla, and move to S. Africa for about 90 days while this got sorted out. By 'sorted out', there was a lot of guessing about why the application was rejected. Was it election-year politics? Was it because there were so many applications in the hopper? Was it because the rejection letter was dated on a Saturday and someone was being capricious? ('Capricious' is my new favorite term for this situation since it's not clear at all points that there wasn't just someone making up the rules as they went.)

Some folks decided that the cause of the rejection was that the Country Director position wasn't advertised in the local paper. When I applied for the work permit, one of the questions they ask is a yes/no on local advertising, but the question after that is to ask you to attach a copy of the ad used, so a "no" answer is certainly the wrong answer. Now in all fairness, I think those who concluded this as the reason are very likely to be correct. And in all fairness to MOHA&I, I would have to agree that they should have expected the job to be advertised locally.

Act I, Scene 3: The scramble for sanity
Basically, we went into a 6-week tail spin. Ads for my job were put into the paper in search for a qualified Namibian. The worst-case scenario was that a Namibian who was qualified and who had missed every other opportunity to apply (the ad was posted on a number of Internet job sites and 6 folks in Namibia had applied, but all of them were expats as well) would apply and I would be out of a job. The best-case scenario for me was that a search for Namibians would yield no qualified nationals and I would be able to be appointed, but would still need to get approval for a work permit since, theoretically, my name might have become Mudd (http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P2-18550731.html for numerous links to how Mudd became so infamous).

In the meantime, Elina was still full-swing in school, Shannon was stopped from doing her own job search (you know, the threat of deportation can make it hard to seem very employable), and all plans for vacations, hosting visitors, going to Tanzania for New Year's and otherwise continuing to make our lives here more permanent were put on hold. Since that 48-hours' notice might come at any time, Shannon was always wondering if we should even buy more than 2-days' worth of groceries. A total mess made all the more complicated for my team at work because they'd have to go through all the worries of possibly having a new boss or at least having everything de-railed for 90 days while we tried to live in S. Africa and for me to manage from afar, while they worked under a rotating series of care-taker managers in country (while they were waiting for the permanent replacement) and my deputy did 100% of 2 jobs. Shannon spent a good deal of her time just trying to find a place for us to stay from November 1-January 31, not easy given that it'd be over Thanksgiving (ok, not a big deal for S. Africa, but a holiday for us to miss), Hanukkah/Christmas, and New Year's.

I submitted my application for a tourist visa and waited. About 3 weeks passed.

Intermission: I never did create an entry about our first weekend in town and our visit to a place where they have a leopard and cheetah in large, separate enclosures. The photo is from that visit. Yes, we were nearly that close to this cheetah.

Act II, Scene 1: The good advice

Finally, a nice guy from MOHA&I called the folks who submitted my application and I was asked to go to MOHA&I and explain why I needed a tourist visa. I said that I needed a few weeks to "settle my affairs" and I explained that I'd be trying to manage from S. Africa while a replacement was sought. I explained that Elina was in school and that Shannon would be staying with her. He suggested that it was "unreasonable" to simply kick me out and suggested that I submit a letter of appeal, with him agreeing that a 90-day work visa to turn over the work would be reasonable. Nice guy and one who seemed to know that it did not make sense for me to leave immediately. So I wrote a letter explaining the situation and asking for a 90-day work visa.

Meanwhile, I was also making plans to go to Ethiopia for a week-long meeting at the beginning of December. My hope was that we'd get either a tourist visa for me to stay through early December, I'd go to Ethiopia, then fly on to S. Africa. Shannon and Elina would join me in S. Africa mid-December and we'd at least have T-day in Namibia.

But the hope for a 90-day work visa suggested that this might be just the reprieve we needed.

Act II, Scene II: Say what?
Within about 10 days, I got an answer--a full 2-year work permit! Say what? Yep, I was approved for a full 2 years. The catch was that I got 12 months with no requirement, but after that, I would need to both a) pay a "bursary" (college tuition) for a disadvantaged Namibian (since Namibia was under apartheid, any non-white was disadvantaged--a part of history that should be explored in another entry) and b) name an "understudy" who would be a Namibian who would essentially be trained to take over. Since both of these requirements meant spending money that was not mine, I sought advice.

In the end, the decision was to take the work permit and visas and worry about the stipulations later. I got it on December 5, flew to Ethiopia on the 6th, and am pleased to say that I'm working full-time in support of Namibia's HIV/AIDS program with the support of USAID funding.

Since this entry is already too long, I'll have to share in another entry my run-in with the MOHA&I security guy who was rightly doing his job. I fib so rarely in my life and it seems I get called-out on every occasion.

Epilogue: Visitors
You, dear reader, are consequently invited to visit and see the wonders of this amazing country with its large size and small German and South African-influenced populace of African making.

How do you access "unlimited"?

From the annals of things to help you understand what life's like here in Namibia, including, a brief explanation as to why it's taken so long for a second posting.

Ok, it's September 9, 2009 and we've been in Namibia for a little over 7 weeks. I've posted only a single entry about jet lag, thought of at least 4 more, but only started on one. That's because I've been so busy at work or at home in the evening that I haven't had time to finalize and post any entries. We have had some Internet access from the house, but that service was expensive and not unlimited.

Which brings us to today's tale and the reason this posting can go up with more speed. We got Internet at home! The saga of how this happened is indicative of what it takes to get services. Once a service is started, keeping it going isn't nearly so tough.

About 3 weeks ago I went into the Telecom (the landline service provider) shop in the Maerua Mall (the newest, probably nicest mall in Namibia) and applied for Internet service. I paid them 500 NAD (Namibian dollars, about $62 USD) as a deposit. The nice lady said I'd get a call from her on Wednesday to tell me when the installers would arrive.

You probably know where this is going. On Wednesday, no call. When I called, it rang and rang, then someone would pick up, say nothing, then cycle me through the ringing again. Since I have a speakerphone, I called at least several times and let it ring for more than 5 minutes before hanging up.

Now a week has gone by, so I go back to the mall and was told to call Stienie (this last being a nice S. African name for a woman) and I was told that I'd be called. Sure I would. Got referred to a guy named Brian. Brian was nice, but also never called me back. Then I went to a second office of Telecom and was told that the real problem was a lack of router boxes (the part that goes in my house) and she went away to go find out what would happen, but she never returned. Wait, isn't this supposed to be a cool new, ready to roll out service?

More calls and more lack of answers. So far, I know, this is all typical US customer service, but this was a bit more adventuresome. So let's take a pause now and look at the photo. It's a poster advertising the newest Telecom service which is unlimited Internet. Nice poster advertising a new service. Hurray! We applied for 384k acess, which comes with 2 telephone numbers, Internet access, a router with wireless, but which obligates me to a 2-year contract. (Break the agreement and they want you to pay 100% of the remainder--nice, eh?)

What's all this cost? Well, here's your insight into the truer costs of overseas living. The service is 699 NAD/month or $87/month. It includes 100 minutes of talk time on the voice line, since calls are all timed and paid on that basis, much like a cell phone. We also pay about $70/month for cable TV (I'll have to blog on that later too), making it at least the same as we paid for much faster service from Verizon's FIOS combo pack.

Ok, so now the story gets almost fun, if not a little pathetic. Right, we were at no equipment. I get annoyed and remember that there's yet another office not far from my office. The supervisor, Lezzie, says that she's pushed this to the next step and I'll be called for an install. No surprises, I get no call and go back to this lady. Hey, I'd already threatened that I'd go back every day until I had service. She makes a call, says it's some technical thing that she can't explain, and gives me the phone number of another guy, Armando, who is someone in technical services.

Lo and behold, Armando is actually a nice guy and recognizes that I'm not getting the kind of service I ought to be getting. Cool. And he says that he's on it, and I even get his cell phone number. But a couple more calls to Armando and I ask the receptionist for the name and number of his supervisor. She knows the name, but not the number for this guy. Really? Honestly? For his telephone number at the telephone company? Turns out I had been given this details about 2 weeks earlier but hadn't gotten any answer so I stopped calling him.

But this time, eureka, he says that this is not good and when I tell him what service I'm paying for, he gets more upset (I guess since not many folks will pay for this level of service). It's a Friday and I'm sure to have an install on Monday. He tells me that the install team meets at 8 AM and there should be a team at the house by 10.

I eventually get a call from a guy named Archie who says that he will be at my house Tuesday at 9AM personally to do my install. Well, he did show up at 10AM. I meet him briefly, they work, and, well, you know what finally happened. When I did a speed test I was getting nearly 3x the speed I was paying for (download) and pretty decent speed (more than 100K) upload. So, hurray, Internet.

I've never worked so hard to pay so much money for an advertised service. But it's pretty fantastic so far. Hey, I'm watching Season 9 of CSI on cable, blogging from my work laptop (it's after hours, and I'm going to work, honestly), sitting next to Shannon who is checking e-mail wirelessly and next on this channel is "Cutting Edge 3: Chasing the Dream" (a 2008 made-for-TV movie remaking the original 1992 film with D.B. Sweeney and Moira Kelly, one of my favorites, ask my sister, and the 2006 sequel "The Cutting Edge 2: Going for Gold")...

What is "jet lag"?

Greetings from Namibia and welcome to our blog. We hope that family and friends will find these musings and photos informative and entertaining. We'll see how well we keep up with this, but for now, we'll just jump in with an entry:

What is Jet Lag?

Part 1: Movers
Sometime just before 8 AM on Friday, July 17, Elina woke up on a sofa in the room above the garage of our neighbors, the Volz, who we'd asked if we could crash there for a few days before leaving for Namibia. Starting Wednesday, July 15, the movers started packing up our lives and we'd had to move to the Volz' from Wednesday night. Shannon and I woke up on their futon, in the same room. I think this was the last calm moment before Friday's travel really began.

Wednesday and Thursday had been long days full of frustration. On Wednesday, the movers had packed up Barry's laptop and had to dig through many boxes to find it. A number of items we wanted in our pockets or to send by air (a limited quantity of stuff we'd see again in 2-3 weeks), wound up in a box marked for ocean (which we'd see again only in September). It sure didn't seem like our lives weighed nearly 10,000 lbs (5 tons!). It also sure didn't seem like we lived with such a load of unwanted items (which we sold, donated to Goodwill, or tossed). The day ended around 5 PM, with our lives reduced to a bunch of cardboard boxes, but with a lot of packing remaining.

On Thursday, we repeated Wednesday, seemingly even more hectic (hey, I know everyone reading has been through this), with goods marked for air/ocean/storage. They worked later, complained about the management of the process from the day before and asked if they could finish on Friday. And Shannon's passport had been packed in a box (ok, her fault), but that wasn't nearly as hard to find as we might have otherwise thought.

The movers returned on Friday at 8AM, saying they'd only need a couple of hours, but took until 2:00 PM. Finally, our lives, all packed up in boxes, suitcases, and bags--181 boxes for ocean, many fewer for storage, a dozen or so for air, 4 suitcases, 5 boxes, and a bunch of carry-ons.

At about noon on Friday, July 17, I dropped off Bismarck (our border collie) and Joey (our cat) at the offices of S. African Airways Cargo at Dulles Airport. $500 in blood tests and $1,128 in transport from DC to J'burg. The flight for them was the same as for the rest of our clan--5:40 PM take-off. Thus begins our story for these two.

Part 2: Car sold
At 1 PM, I got back home and handed over the keys for the car and all documents to the new owners of our RAV-4. I think Shannon's eyes were at least damp, if not outright moist--she really liked the color "flint mica"... I was just happy for the $14,000 check. (I was also hopeful that it was genuine and wouldn't bounce.)

Ok, the car was sold and the dog and cat were in crates and off at the airport. The house was mostly empty. (Did we really leave behind that much trash--there seemed to be a lot of little stuff we left behind--do shower curtain rings really have any value for the next resident?) It was 2:30 or so, the cab to the airport was called, and I was jumping in the shower when the cab showed up. It was far too small for all of us and our stuff, so a second cab was called. So, off to the airport.

Part 3: Dulles
Honestly, not much to report. By the time we got out bags and boxes checked in and rolled Elina in her stroller to the gate, with 2 laptops in various and assorted carry-ons, we were there just in time to board.

Part 4: Airports that start with "D"
Ok, so you're thinking, wow, these guys must be already jet-lagged and they hadn't yet left the ground. Ah, dear reader, let's add almost 2 more hours on the ground, in the plane, at Dulles, with Elina sandwiched between Shannon and me. Well at least the nice Indian woman next to me was able to sleep. Actually Elina was really an angel from Dulles to Dakar, sleeping for 4 hours out of about 8. Wait, you're thinking, Dakar, what the heck were they doing in Dakar? On the Dulles to Johannesburg route, Dakar is a re-fueling point, so that was an hour on the ground and Elina was awake.

What to say about Dakar? I don't know, I haven't been there since 1995. Nice place. We spent the hour on the plane, waiting for re-fueling, and being told to stay out of the aisles. Elina kindly fell asleep for another 4 hours out of about 9 and again being a real sweetie.

Part 5: Johannesburg
So, it's now about 5 PM Johannesburg time on Saturday and we'd all been up since about 8 AM on Friday--total time something like 29 hours without meaningful sleep. (Some of you may consider time spent sleeping on a plane as sleep, but I don't--too uncomfortable, too little neck support, too many people snoring.)

I don't suppose too many people land with 9 bags and carry-ons, because it took me 3 baggage trolleys to get it all to a place to store it for the night. I actually had to get special permission to pass back into the baggage area in order to get more bags and pick up Elina and Shannon. The baggage storage people were happy to see us---they charge by the bag...

We slept at what has to be one of my more unusual hotel experiences. About 3 miles from the airport is "Emporer's Palace", a casino formerly associated with "Ceasar's Palace", and connected to a conference center connected to a hotel or two. We stayed in one of these hotels. S. Africa has really nice weather and, ok, it's now winter in S. Africa, and a bit cold, but the area between the hotel and the casino is all enclosed, with the roof painted like the daytime sky and Italian-themed and full of restaurants. Lots of kids are running around outside the casino. Just bizarre, but I do recommend it to my pals going through J'burg. It's the Metcourt Laurel.

Elina was really tired and fell asleep in my arms, while we waited for some fast-food grilled chicken for her (Nando's to those in the know) and while Shannon was waiting for me in the Indian restaurant. Who remembers the meal? Well, I do remember that the vats of Indian food at the buffet were motion-sensitive and the serving dishes opened automatically when you reached for them. Really bizarre.

At some point, we were all in the hotel room and fell asleep. It's like that when you have an overnight stop on a long trip. Sleep descends on your body while it's getting comfortable for the first time in a horizontal position in more than 24 hours.

Then at some point, we woke up. Apparently, that point wasn't early enough. When we got back to the airport, retrieved our bags, and paid for excess baggage (only 1 bag considered in excess this time--it's unclear why the lady was so nice about it), we were told, and this takes the cake, that because of weather problems that the plane would have to fly lower, and, as a consequence, would use more fuel, and, as a consequence, we, along with 17 other passengers, would not be able to board and would have to wait for the 1 PM flight. We tried to argue a bit but the lady then pulled the "you were not here 2 hours in advance" card. Ok, she was right--we were only 1:45 in advance and the reason we got to the counter so late was because I was in line to pay for the excess bag for 20 minutes and because the SA Airways staff had told Shannon that she should not go ahead and check in or stand in line. Very disappointing, but, like so many things, it was out of our control. Hey, they offered us a free lunch, kind of.

As most of you know, I do travel a lot, so, although I usually travel on a bunch of different airlines, "consolidation in the industry" left me a gold card holder on United/SA Airways/14 other partners, frequent flyer program, so we got to enjoy the lounge, sort of. Seems that the lounge was closed and a new one being created, so we got the temporary lounge, but it had no bathrooms, so we opted for the "premium" lounge, whatever "premium" might mean. Not bad actually, but not exciting either.

Finally, we boarded a bus. Wait, a bus? Yes, for short flights, you take a bus to a plane, then climb the stairs to board. Fun, huh? With a stroller and all those carry-ons I mentioned earlier.

It only took about 1:45 to reach Windhoek.

Part 6: Windoek
We arrived in Windhoek, got off the plane, all in good spirits, and rounded up the baggage and boxes with no incident.

I went off to find the dog and cat and got them too, with no incident.

We all piled into a car with a smaller trailer attached (we'd told them about the baggage in advance) and Shannon sat in the front with the cat in his crate on her lap.

The picture defines "jet lag" better than anything I could otherwise type. (Careful viewers will note that Elina fell asleep on Bimarck. Bismarck was so happy to be out of his crate and off the plane that he just let her lie there. Bliss.)

Total time from waking up Friday to reaching our hotel in Windhoek: ~52 hours