March 29, 2015- Part II

TUESDAY-MARTES

We were out the door a little before 6 AM, but as we soon found out, that was too late! This country gets up early to beat the heat, and we were on the road with most of the country! What is usually a 45 minute drive stretched to 1 hour and 45 minutes.

I called Patricia telling her we would be late- “No problema, this is Nicaragua. Tranquilo.” We ended up being 40 minutes late, missing our appointment, getting grilled by the main boss at Immigration as to why we needed a lawyer and what we were doing in the country, and being told that without having our original diplomas certified in the United States that we would not be able to get our Residency.

We left around 1 PM, discouraged, hot and tired from anticipation and tension, having rented a car for “no reason”, and having canceled our plans once again with Trinity Christian School. It was reminiscent to Stephen experience with Customs. Bureaucracy wins again!

We returned to Granada, turned in the rental car, did some grocery shopping, and tried to get things back on track for the week.

Just before bedtime, I got another email from Patricia. “If you can make it tomorrow at 8:30 AM, the lawyer will be waiting for you, and you will get your Residency- things have been worked out.” WOW! We had to try again.

It was too late to rent a car, so our game plan was to fill up all the fluids in the car, be ready with plenty of water,  ask friends to pray for us, and hope for a quick trip into Immigration.

WEDNESDAY- MIERCOLES

We left again at 6 AM, giving plenty of time to get there. About 30 minutes into our trip, we hit morning traffic, causing our car to overheat. We stopped, cooled it down, checked the fluids, and made it about two minutes down the road- the stop and go traffic was killing us!

Plan B: We parked the car in a parking lot, paid a man to watch it, got on the rush-hour bus, met some new intimate friends (yes, we were that close) and got into down town in about twenty minutes. The bus driver would put any racecar driver to shame  in the stop-and-go Managua traffic.

It was 8:15 when we got off the bus, and we still had about 5 miles to go. It was taxi time! Unfortunately our skin color says money so they tried to charge us $10 for a ride that Nicaraguans would pay $2. We negotiated $5 and made it to Immigration by 8:25. Then we waited, and waited, and waited.

We sat on a bench outside of Immigration for four hours. Tensions were rising, but we did not want to leave for fear that this all was in vain, again! We decided we would leave at 1:30 if no one came. Our solace was the American Donut stand, and a common practice in Nicaragua; listening to music on your cellphone at loud volume; not us but a man near us, had his cellphone cranked up. Usually this is annoying, but he was listening to How Great Thou Art, Take It to the Lord in Prayer, and other hymns in the local Indian language. The music is the same and I was reminded that many of you were praying for us in this circumstance.

We got the call that the lawyer was coming, so when he arrived at 12:30 the real process began:

• Wait for another 30 minutes because everything is shut down until 1:00
• Get in line to be told that it would take until 3:00 to get the paperwork done
• At 3:30 being told that they would need $300 in dollars for each of us towards plane tickets to leave the country if we caused a problem, and $C3,400 cordoba (about $140) for each of us for processing.
• Unfortunately since all previous interactions with Immigration needed to be in Cordoba I had withdrawn all Cordoba, so we got to walk 2 VERY long blocks to exchange money.
• We returned, got in the line to pay, then took the receipt to the first window. The receipt was in quadruplicate, but for some reason we needed to have one more copy.
• This could not be done at the copy machine right behind the woman, but we needed to go find a place to make a copy….hmmmm.
• Right outside Immigration are booths set up for lawyer, notary, computer and printing help. We got the help!
• Closing time is around 4:30 and it was already 4:20. Previous experience with government is that when they are done, they are done. We hurried back in, handed over our paperwork, and waited.
• Around 4:45 we got our pictures taken, and by 5:15 we were walking away with our cedulas (residency).

We were somewhere between very happy/relieved and exhausted since we knew that we still had work in front of us due to our car situation…

We got a ride from Immigration to the mall, Metrocentro, from our lawyer, ate a quick celebratory dinner at Pizza Hut, then caught a VERY full, rush hour bus to our car. On the bus, I bragged to a perfect stranger that we had just got our cedulas!

It gets dark here by 6 PM year-around, so it was dark once we left the mall. About 45 minutes later, we got to our car, put more water into it, and it started up right away.  We drove the 15 miles to the mechanic, left the car, then hoped on the bus again and rode to our house. At 8:30 PM, we arrived home, dusty, dirty, tired, but happy!