Night in Tunisia

Fifty Cent Signature

Remember the story about heading to the Police office for our Carte de Sejour? Remeber he said we could go back and get it on Wednesday? Well the story continues.

Wednesday we arrived nice and early to meet with the officer in charge of our portfolio. We arrived earlier, in fact, than he did. It was about a 15 minute wait so we strolled around for a while and returned to find him working and attended by a small line up of foreigners, from where we couldn't guess.

Once we made it in to his office, he flipped through his stack of files and pulled out ours. Mine was fine and he said "ca va, ca va". Loren's however, had a little note attached to it.

Here I have to interrupt with a little background. When we applied for the cartes we only had my work contract, and since one person working is enough to get the procedure done, we didn't bother to bring in Loren's contract, we just stated that I would be taking care of both our financial responsibility. That was an adventure in itself. It took them a good five minutes of cross questioning to understand that Loren had come here with me, and that he, like most spouses moving to an African nation, would not necessarily be working. They kept asking "Mais qu'est-ce que tu fais?" But what do you do? Loren and I both laughed at how patriarchal the Tunisian authorities were. And, in the end, it wasn't a problem, once they adjusted their paradigms.

What we forgot, was that there are several levels of buraucracy and they didn't all get a paradigm adjustment.

That little note on Loren's paper said that they wanted tangible proof that this man would be supported by his wife, a concept I'm sure they had a very hard time understanding.

"You'll have to write a letter that says you'll "prendre en charge" (a term meaning: take under your care or manage) your husband." That means they want a letter that says I wont leave him in the street bumming for change. "You have to get it signed at the municipality and bring me the original and a photocopy." We contemplated just turning in Loren's contract with AMIDEast, but in light of all the signatures and attestations that we have to have signed, we decided it would just be faster to write the letter and have it signed. I couldn't do it then because I had a meeting to attend at work, so I determined to do it the next day.

Let me explain what it means to have a document "signed". You see, I write the letter, by hand because we don't have a working printer at the office, and I leave a space for me to sign and write the date. I travel in a taxi the 10 minutes to the Municiapal Office, where even at 8:30 in the morning there is a line-up. I take a number and sit there for about an hour and a half. Lots of time for meditation and new insight into the Tunisian system.

When my number is called I go up to the glass both, hand the administrator my handwritten letter. He reads it and asks for my and Loren's passports to make sure I got the number right. He passes it back to me and asks me to sign it. I sign it. He takes it makes a stamp on it and he signs it (proof that he saw me sign it). He then takes out a ledger, writes my name in it passes it to me to initial, and charges me 500 millimes.

For what? FOR WHAT? I paid 500 millimes to wait an hour and a half so he could officially watch me sign my own handwritten letter! I paid 500 millimes for a stamp and a recipt that says I paid.

I meditated on patience in the cab to the police station.

There was a line at the station too. I talked with a nice young student from Gabon in Africa, who was experiencing the same problems as me.

"Why don't they just give you a list at the beginning? Why don't they post a list on the wall? I've never seen a system like this. Not even in Gabon!"

He entered before me and left. He was told he had to make another photocopy, again.

I entered, handed in my certified handwritten letter and a photocopy. He frowned at my choice of words, and asked me if I couldn't have made it a little more clear. I was not NOT going back to the municipality to pay another 500 millimes and to wait to have the cashier watch me sign another letter, so I haggled with him. Finally he accepted it, and told me with a grunt "ca va".

"Now what?" I asked him.

He shrugged. "Come back in two or three days." And he ushered in the next person and ushered me out.

posted by tiaraletourneau @ 12:19 p.m.