Within a couple of weeks of arriving at the school (this is in December now), we were on holiday again ! And not only that, winter holiday lasts a month at this school !
We had considered visiting Panama or Trinidad or Ecuador...you see, we had two reasons for traveling outside of Colombia : the first was of course to visit a new country, the other was to get Pauline's visa. She wasn't able to get a partner visa while we were in the States because we weren't married. So in December the school finally offered her her own position as a bilingual (English/Spanish) assistant in the Kindergarten.
But in the end we chose to return to Venezuela. The Colombian consulate in Maracaibo was literally across the border from our new home, and we had many friends living in Maracaibo and elsewhere in Venezuela. Furthermore, despite spending three months in the country, there remained lots to see and do...Roraima, for example, is a table mountain in the far southeast corner of the country that was especially alluring.
We arrived in Maracaibo on the weekend. First thing, we visited the consulate's website that insisted that we needed a reservation to apply for a visa. Below, there was a little calendar with dates in black or red. "Please reserve your appointment by clicking on the dates in green," read the Daltonian website. What ?!? After we and six other educated and computer-savvy people tried for a hour to make sense of the site and of that thoroughly unclickable calendar, we gave up and assumed that the site was still under construction and not yet functioning.
Come Monday, we were off to the consulate sans reservation. At eight in the morning, there was a moderate line hanging out the front door, with the consulate bouncer emerging every few minutes to admit or refuse entry to an applicant, without apparent logic. Watching and learning from the people around us in the line, we figured out that in order to get any answers you must aggressively pass in front of others and shout your query louder than the rest of the mob. Pauline learned this lesson much better than I. She finally convinced the bouncer to send someone out to speak with us, who informed us that we should please go home and make a reservation on the consulate website. Yes, of course the website works. She was as deaf to our pleas as the website was color-blind and dysfunctional. And furthermore, they only process visas on Tuesdays and Thursday. We slunk home, shoulders sunken.We started recalculating our trip; instead of a few days in Maracaibo, a few weeks seemed more likely. But we were determined, we decided to return on Tuesday, even earlier in the morning. Our astonished yes met a line dangling from the door three times longer than the day before. After nearly an hour, a woman came out and asked who was here for a visa. Pauline and I and three others disengaged from various points in the line and rushed over to the woman. "Who has an appointment," she asked ? Uh, the applicants stared searchingly at one another, "but the website..." This woman slowly started to believe us after hearing our desperate declarations. Unfortunately, she was not in charge of visa applications; she ushered us inside, in the air conditioning, and told us to await the woman who would be in charge of our fates.
At nine o'clock, the moment of truth came and the group was summoned to meet Señorita Visa-Rejector in her office. Unlike the woman before, she could not be swayed. She knew that the website worked perfectly ! She dismissed the group with a wave of her hand. Your visa application has been rejected, her hand told us. And one man left, defeated. A few minutes later, the young couple left, defeated. Pauline would not be defeated, she persisted. Having only Pauline to listen to, she asked a strange question, "Where are you from?" From France, Pauline answered. "But where do you live?" France, she answered again...and then added the bit about us traveling in Colombia and being offered jobs and all that.
"Show me your papers," she said coolly. We had arrived where few visa applicants had trod. They were not worthy. Most were stopped by the website, specially designed to weed out the weak-willed. Then the long lines, the scorching heat, and finally the women who repeated, "no, no, no." They were all tests. We had passed them all. Or maybe she was just a francophile.
Pauline showed her the documents, we paid the fee, and waited. Within another hour, we emerged from the building, heads high. The linear mob momentarily stopped their gesticulating and shouting, and turned their gazes upon us. I may be mistaken, but I thought I heard the whisperings and murmurs of "They did it !" and "Look at them, they have earned the visa !" and finally "Look my son, more rare than Halley's Comet, a visa approval happens only once in a lifetime. Savor this moment." Then the shouting recommenced, "Hey, I've been waiting out here for hours, goddamnit !"
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