Visa: The final installment

It’s been a couple of weeks since we got back from the visa office, but I did want to give a short epilogue to our epic quest for a Kurdistan visa.

Final visit to the visa office: 1.5 hrs, Four three-month visas APPROVED!

After waiting an hour in the reception of the director’s office in the hopes that he would sign some magic paper to help us along, we shuffled into the hallways dripping with sweat and hating our lives. We got a magic paper but it was still at least 100 degrees inside the building and we had four or five more offices to go to.

Just as we thought we were going to melt into the floor before our visas would ever be approved, one of our students appeared out of nowhere. As it turns out, he spends a lot of time in the immigration office helping foreign students get their visas. He took our paperwork and dashed away. We ran to keep up with him as he hurried from office to office, repeating, “just one moment! Just one moment!”
A half hour later, he handed us our stamped visas with a sly smile. Visas for everyone!

The ugly side of northern Iraq - Kurdistan Visa office

The Tiziano Project team has been busy preparing for our classes, which start next week. We've met with lots of officials, decorated our new digs with key purchases from the bazaar, and I even cooked a mean risotto last night to make up for all that felafel we've been surviving on. But one thing hasn't been going so well for us: Trying to get a three month visa for Kurdistan.

Let me say first, for being in Iraq, they really have their stuff together here. But the visa office is one place that still looks and functions like a war zone. A dirty amalgamation of tin shacks, shipping containers and horribly crowded and disorganized offices inside three floors of an un-airconditioned building... welcome to Iraq. Most of the officials speak very little English and each office, while technically numbered, may not actually be numbered, or numbered in arabic, or not numbered in order, or instead labeled something nonsensical like "Come in. Out Go."

Since I wasn't allowed to take any pictures, I went old school and drew a series of diagrams for what the typical process is for getting a one-month or three month visa. So far, after three days, we've only managed one month.






This story is obviously to be continued. Luckily the blood tests are good for six months!