Travelers’ Worst Case Scenario: Purse stolen* and with it my passport, visas, money, phone, and credit cards.
*I’m hesitant to say stolen because I cannot for the life of me pinpoint exactly when my purse disappeared so I hold out the possibility that I carelessly left it somewhere (and then it was stolen).
I had a series of meetings and site visits and brought a lone my trusty giant company tote bag containing every background document conceivable and had my trusty brown travel purse with my entire life inside. Somewhere in the course of the day, I noticed I was only carrying around my tote bag. PANIC. I did a frantic retracing of my steps which was actually quite embarrassing and laced with shame as I had just formed relationships with a series of nurses I will be working with and then had to run back to each of them saying “did you see a brown purse?” So basically I’m an infant who cannot hold on to her belongings. I might be imagining this but it felt like everyone was either in the “pity the foreigner” camp or the “wow this chick is dumb” camp—neither of which I’m really happy about.
I really only sat down in three different spots which tragically were miles away from each other in different hospitals so I had to be driven by the doctor to each place to check for the bag. It wasn’t in any of them and in fact many of the nurses said they never saw me with a bag. Racking my brain for my last conscious memory of it I came up empty but after looking everywhere, it’s pretty clear it is gone.
With a day to think on it I think there were two possible scenarios. 1) While I was sitting somewhere and taking notes with my bags next to me, someone slipped by and grabbed the one that clearly had all the valuables in it 2) I absentmindedly left it in an interview room and it was subsequently stolen from there. Either way, same result.
My hotel gave me hope by claiming that usually when people steal bags with important documents in it they return the documents to the embassy or the place where the person is staying. I got all excited because I swiped a business card from my guest house and it was right on top in my bag so a charitable thief could easily find me to return my passport. No such luck. We called my phone every five minutes for two days and no one answered which the staff also thought was weird because apparently thieves here are pretty good about answering stolen phones… My theory on that is that they couldn’t figure out how to work my G1 in order to be able to answer. OR THEY ARE MEAN THIEVES.
The loss of my phone has been a big bummer since it was my only way to communicate with all the people I have been trying to meet with. I’ve been doing a series of bumming phones off strangers to cancel plans and walking around with a tiny scrap of paper with every phone number I know in this country. It hasn’t totally sunken in yet but the loss of my first expensive phone is going to be a low blow. That’s what I get for finally getting something other than the phone that comes free with a 2 year contract.
So the waiting for the return of the generous thief philosophy was quickly abandoned when I realized it was Thursday afternoon and I needed to fly out on Sunday and needed travel documents to do that. I called the US embassy and they were really nice but seemed really bummed and concerned about the timing of my predicament. They gave me a list of items to retrieve and a deadline of 4:30 to get to them before they closed. It was 3:00 AND SO THE RACE BEGAN.
First stop was the police station to get a written police report. So let’s take a little interlude here to examine the fact that I am visiting four countries on this trip, three of which are English-speaking—a language that I understand fully and speak clearly, and one of which is Portuguese-speaking—a language that to me sounds like a cross between Spanish, Russian, and Chinese. So the theft of course occurs in the one country where I am least equipped to deal with raging bureaucracies.
Thankfully the police were pretty bored at the station and endlessly amused by me. They argued over who got to take my report and then this really small man asked me a series of questions using broken Spanish and charades. Now these questions weren’t the ones I was expecting at all. I was ready to act out purse-snatching and had a map to show where the hospital was where I think it happened. Instead, he needed to know my mother’s full name, my father’s full name, my marital status, my occupation, the brand of my cell phone, and how much money was in the purse. This line of questioning took a very long time. It got a little faster when I started writing down the answers for him instead of trying to dictate how to spell “Charlotte”. After he had a nice little narrative he indicated that the guy upstairs was drinking coffee somewhere so I should come back tomorrow to get the report. In a mix of English and Spanish and the 8 words of Portuguese I know I pleaded for the report today. I dramatically acted out the closing of the American Embassy and the flight leaving Mozambique without me. He went upstairs and apparently decided it could be done and that I should come back in 45 minutes for the report. PARTIAL VICTORY #1
Next I had to acquire passport photographs. Now in NYC you cannot walk on a block without seeing a sign for passport photos so I stupidly could not imagine why we had to drive half an hour to get to a photo shop. There I worked with the nicest, most conscientious photographer ever—even though all I wanted was a really quick picture. He first offered me a mirror to primp which I refused and then he sat me down and delicately centered my necklace on my neck, tilted my head slightly in different planes a minimum of ten times, carefully moved stray hairs and adjusted a thousand settings until he had the perfect shot. He seemed very pleased with himself. I wish he was my wedding photographer- he would have made every shot beautiful. However, he was my in-a-rush-need-stupid-passport-photos photographer so I had a little trouble appreciating his care.
Once the photos were developed and ever so carefully sliced I rushed back to the police department where the four sentence report was typed up and ready for me. Now it was just a matter of an excruciating five minutes that went in slow motion where the guy in charge came down, read the four sentences with unnecessary scrutiny (was he going to challenge that I was the daughter of Charlotte?) and then reached for a pen… and knocked in on the floor… picked it up… noticed it was out of ink… slowly searched for another pen… painstakingly wrote his initials… reached for the stamp… stamped but was then unsatisfied with the darkness of the ink… searched for a new ink pad… stamped the pad… and walked away. I grabbed my report and thanked everyone as I ran out the door with 10 minutes to get to the American Embassy.
Of course to get into the embassy the security guards wanted to see my passport (don’t have it, that’s why I’m here!). I eventually appeased them with a business card but they insisted on getting my phone number despite me explaining that my phone was stolen.
The consular services dudes were the nicest people on earth. I cannot imagine liking that job but they certainly seemed to. I always thought passport stamping was something that young state department kids did while they waited for an exciting post in Iraq or Afghanistan. These guys however showed no eagerness to be out of the consular services world. I also think they miss meeting Americans because they were super chatty. At one point this really soothing man said “Laura, don’t worry. We’re here to help you.” It was so Mr. Rogers.
They let me use their internet and thankfully I had scanned my passport and all my visas before I left the country. That helped to move things along a little more quickly. Of course just being in such a fortified compound and seeing all the marines and security measures made it irresistible to me to plan out how I would invade the embassy. I think I have a pretty good plan but could only imagine using it if I somehow desperately needed to get inside to get another passport. I basically filled out a form, took an oath, and then went to leisurely wait on a nice leather couch with a copy of the New Yorker. It was almost pleasant. Somehow I had a foreboding that the Mozambique Embassy was not going to be quite so nice. PARTIAL VICTORY # 3. Temporary passport acquired. If only that were the end of the process.
Phase Two consists of acquiring a new Mozambique visa so that I’m allowed to leave the country. This doesn’t totally make sense to me but I guess on my way out we don’t want customs thinking I snuck in. Not that customs does much other than flirt and stamp things here…
Knowing that this was going to be a disaster I arrived when they opened at 8am. Thankfully the receptionist at my guesthouse had the foresight to write me a really official looking letter stating exactly what I needed and why, in Portuguese (which I just noticed that I now pronounce “poor-tchu-gesh” in my brain… YAY!). This letter was massively useful as even if I spoke Portuguese, I would never have been able to yell loud enough to communicate over the din that was the Immigration Office.
So 8am and the lines are already long. First step is selecting one of the highly differentiated yet unmarked lines. I showed my handy letter to guy in a uniform who sort of nodded in a direction of a line. Then I had to use all of my ‘Morocco post office’ skills and held my ground in line despite invasions from every side. Let me first just plant a little seed regarding the environment here. I’ve already alluded to the incredible cacophony but let’s not forget our other senses. This office smelled. There were a lot of sweaty people piled on top of each other bearing documents in such a way that armpits were exposed. Thankfully I have nothing to report on taste.
So when I finally get to the front of the line the guy takes one look at my passport and says in English “Other place, first door” and before I can get any clarification I’m subsumed backwards into the masses and am no longer in my hard-earned spot at the teller. For a moment I wandered around trying to decide where this other place was and where there were any doors, let alone a series from which I could choose the first. No luck. Plan B.
The receptionist mentioned that there was a nice guy named Jonas who worked at the Immigration office who might be able to help if things got hairy. It felt pretty hairy then so I went on a quest for Jonas. He was pretty well known so after entering the building next door I was directed to his office—which of course was locked. There was a waiting room of about 20 people, but no real way to know who was waiting for which person and what order they were coming in. I found a lady with a badge who just said “DOOR 4”- which was Jonas’s office so I already knew this. Then I started AMBIGUOUS WAITING PERIOD #1. I waited for an hour. People came and went. It was never clear who were clients and who were functionaries. Every few minutes I’d go back to door 4 to see if anyone was there. No luck. There was no way I could have known who Jonas was and his office was right next to the bathroom so there were about 5 people every minute walking down the hall with badges so a whole lot of getting up and checking on his door was required. There was a lot of musical chairs going on in the waiting room because we were one chair short and every few minutes someone would go check on the status at a particular door and their seat would be instantly taken by someone else.
Bless the man in the blue shirt who had seen me stalking door #4 earlier and saw Jonas walk in and nodded to me to go in. Bless Jonas for reading my letter and writing “espresso” on a little slip of ripped paper and attaching it to my documents. Bless him for miming very clearly where I was to go next to continue the process (across the street which I think was the original “other place” that the man told me about hours earlier). Bless the man who (while probably hitting on me) lead me to a teller in a small totally unmarked corner of that building. What a sequence of luck. Things were really moving. I even entertained the notion that I might still make it to my site visit at 10:30. PARTIAL VICTORY #3.
Things started to slow significantly after that point. I was then in the hands of who we will call “snottiest man alive” and not because he thought he was better than everyone else, but because there was so much snot coming out of his nose it was remarkable. He had one handkerchief that he kept using and reusing and sometimes wiping his eyes with. This man shed virus like no other. I had to hold my breath through the entire encounter. Everyone else in his office was also sneezing and blowing their nose and I had no doubt that this man was patient zero of the office plague. I had no choice but to use the pen he handed me, and it hurt to know that in my stolen purse was my hand sanitizer and even tissues I could offer him so he would stop re-snotting on the same rag. This man had to write an incredibly long narrative on a sheet of paper for me to get to the next step. His handwriting was nearly illegible but I paid close attention to try to figure out what he could possibly be writing for so long. He wrote the word “November” SEVEN TIMES. How many times in one paragraph does the date need to be written. At first I was tickled that he used a different color pen to write my name but then it became excruciating as he would write four letters, then stop to blow his nose and wipe his eyes (with the snotty rag), and then write the word November again. This went on for exactly 34 minutes which I know because it went on four minutes into my morning appointment. Without a phone there was nothing I could do about being late for my appointment so I endured with slow-writing-drippy-snot-man. He was actually quite vital to the process so I shouldn’t be too harsh about his sickness. He even walked me to another guy who signed a document and then back to Jonas’s office. PARTIAL VICTORY #4. Then he brought me back to the original room and told me to wait. Ambiguous waiting period #2.
I wasn’t sure what I was waiting for. I wasn’t sure how I’d know when it came. I wasn’t sure how long I’d be there. So I just waited. I managed to communicate to a guy next to me that I’d pay him if he let me use his phone. Of course I choose the one guy who has no phone credit left so first he takes my money to go buy phone credit on the street, then mistypes the pass code twice, then finally lets me use his phone so I can apologize for missing my 10:30 appointment and reschedule. I did a lot of people watching. I would have killed for a book or a cell phone to play with. I tried to learn Portuguese through eavesdropping. And wonderfully a woman called out “LOWRA!” Such joy filled my heart. She asked me for money, a gladly paid, I got a receipt, (PARTIAL VICTORY #4) and then she disappeared and thus commenced Ambiguous waiting period #3.
This time I wasn’t sure where I should wait so I tried with elbows out to keep my space at the counter but that was futile so I waited for the next round of musical chairs and grabbed a spot when someone got up. I’ll spare you the rest of the details but I did exit the Immigration Office with a new Mozambique visa. COMPLETED VICTORY! Hip Hip Horray.
I rewarded myself with a lunch of Prawn Curry by the ocean. The driver on the way to the restaurant had the song “Never Let You Go” (think Sergio Mendez, not Third Eye Blind) on repeat for the whole ride and it didn’t even bother me J Mozambique has taught me a modicum of patience.
