t.i.g., take 2

Last spring, I posted a blog describing some of the nuisances we deal with on a regular basis which make life more complicated, but which we've also gotten used to. I lightheartedly referred to these instances as "T.I.G." moments, or "This is Guatemala" moments. Friday was T.I.G., Take 2, an even greater test of our patience which led to an even deeper awareness of how the T.I.G. reality impacts our lives.

We had reached the end of the 90 days of validity for our visas. We are allowed to request one extension for another 90 days before we must leave the country/cross a border. Because of some other traveling we've done in the past year, this was actually the first time in awhile that we had needed to request this extension.

I dutifully looked up the requirements on the website, printed out the forms we needed, started making photocopies and gathering the official documents they would want to see from us. With our three kids packed into the car and my little envelope of very important information, we set off to get the last thing we knew we needed...photos.

Our grand plan was to have the photos taken, wait for a minimal amount of time for them to be developed, add them to the packet, and then drive over to Migracion and turn everything in. Living three hours from the capital means that we get as much done in each visit as we can. Since we already knew we would have to return a week later to pick up all the paperwork (with our renewed visas), we were trying to be wise and careful about having absolutely everything we needed to do what we could on this specific day.

We thought this would be a fairly simple process of going to a street behind the embassy where we have had pictures taken before. Hordes of men surrounded the car as we approached and then hustled us into their store as if we were celebrities and they were the paparazzi who were just dying for our attention.

Not more than a minute after getting out of the car, our "star treatment" ended as I showed my paperwork to the shop owners and they conveyed that they could not take the pictures we were required to have. Apparently they don't do black and white. And they only do instant. Neither of those points was in our favor. Just as we were being jostled back out the door, I overheard them say a name, "Photo Roma". Good thing I caught that piece of information as it floated through the conversation, because it is the only true or helpful thing we heard for the next several hours.

The people in the shop could not give us any clear ideas about where this Photo Roma place was, but an old man standing outside the shop spoke to us in broken English and said, "It's just on the other side of Reforma. In Plaza Espana."

We thought we could work with that. Plaza Espana was the same place where we had to get Olivia's birth certificate and register her as a new citizen of Guatemala. So we packed all the kids back up in the car again, found parking, unloaded everyone, and began walking around the block of Plaza Espana looking for this photo place. After many minutes of slowly scouring every store front, I finally walked into a restaurant and asked them if they knew where it was. The lady looked confidently at me and said it was three more blocks straight in front of Plaza Espana.

And here is when we really began to lose confidence. You see, most people in Guatemala pretend they know where something is located...and then they smile and give you false directions. It's a part of life. And most missionaries know that if you're desperate enough to ask for directions, there is very little hope that you will find what you are looking for anyway. But when you are in a country you don't know, on a map grid that doesn't make sense, in a place where you know only bits and pieces of the language, what choice do you have?

I kindly thanked her and then immediately erased her advice from my head. I was sure it wouldn't help.

On we walked, until just up ahead, I noticed Union Church. This is a church in Guatemala City for the English-speaking community. My brilliant idea was that if we could get someone inside the church to help us, at least it would be in a language we understood. What I was neglecting to remember is that we were expecting someone in this city of 3 million people to know where this one tiny little photo place is.

Can anyone say "Looking for a needle in a haystack?"!

Again, after many minutes of dialogue and confusing conversation with a few people in the church, we were even less sure than before of where this place might be. Upon looking in the phonebook, we could at least confirm that it existed. But it most definitely was not within walking distance of Plaza Espana, and even as the kind people tried to explain where it was, we knew it was not a task we could undertake alone because we just don't know the city well enough.

Enter Roberto. He was the man who thought to get the phonebook. And he was the man who offered to come with us so we could find this obscure store. He had never actually heard of it before, but he knew city addresses enough to get us to the general area. With a little distracted conversation and sketchy translations, he led us to 20th Street and then we all walked together to find the exact location.

Once we saw the Photo Roma sign, we thought our troubles were over. The fiasco of going to three different places before finally getting to the right place had already taken more than two hours of time, and we were anxious to succeed at something. But when we walked in the door, the owner looked at our paper, looked back at us, and proceeded to tell us that they could indeed take the pictures we needed, but we couldn't get them back until Monday.

Ugh. My shoulders slumped as it finally hit me that even with the most careful of planning and the most meticulous reading and preparation of the paperwork, we had been defeated. Sometimes I think this is the plan of the Guatemalan government agencies. Change the requirements. Add multiple layers of demands that require more and more trips into the city. See how complicated and confusing the processes can be so that they can weed out the weak links.

That's it. It's their own little test of the "survival of the fittest". Three hours, four locations, and a splitting headache later, I was ready to wave my white flag of surrender. But then that would mean leaving the country because our visas would no longer be valid.

Instead, with just a slight attitude of bitterness and disappointment, we posed for our photos, paid the fee, gave a small donation to Roberto, and went on our way. No stop at Migracion. No feeling of accomplishment that we had actually completed the task we set out to do. There wasn't anything else we could do about it.

That's just the way it is. T.I.G.

So, on Monday morning, at 5:30am, Don raised himself from slumber and set out to finish the job. And...the fiasco that ensued on that day is another T.I.G. story for another day...

(Heather)