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.