So, the afternoon after all the Agaba drama, Sarah and I finally got around to fillng out the check-in sheet at our guesthouse. Neither one of us had brought our passports or work permits with us, as we hadn't left TZ and saw no reason to carry those with us. However, in retrospect, I do remember always having to write those numbers down at the guesthouse there, but that's been a few years, and I just forgot. So we left the places for those blank on the registration form. BIG mistake!
Tuesday morning, Obbo came and said, "Miriam, immigration is in my office, and they want to see you and Sarah. You go on up, and I will find her and come." Sure enough, 2 young men, Steven and Abdon, were waiting. They asked to see my passport and permit, and I told them the amusing (!) story of how we had forgotten to bring them, so sorry, we would bring them next time. Sarah arrived, and it started all over again. People here do things in such a circular way that we had to hear, repeatedly, that since we had no proof of who we were, we were in violation of the laws of immigration, subject to various penalties, fines, etc. I really didn't know what they expected us to do, but Sarah had the idea that we could call Magreth at our Joshua office, and she could scan and email copies of our permits to them. Sounded good to me, but they decided to take us to ther office, instead, so Obbo and both of us, along with Abdon, got in the back of a pickup and went to their office, where we had to repeat the entire story to their boss. I'm still not sure why, but instead of having the documents sent to them, they wanted them sent to Sarah, us to print them off at school, and bring them to them the next day. (That is the short version of this since that took several more trips of a circular nature to get to that point!) They told us to come back first thing the next morning and not to go to school first.
So, the next morning, we actually slept a little later (or as late as the 5 a.m. Muslim calls to prayer would let us, and the 5:30 one, and the 6:00 one!!!), stopped off for breakfast, and met Obbo at 8:30 to go their office. This time was the same thing all over again. They were just incredulous that we had come without any proof of what we were doing there! At one point they realized that they knew Alan Stephenson, the director of The Joshua Foundation, and that they wanted to talk to him to verify what we were saying. (Because I'm sure many illegal aliens come to TZ to work in village schools!) Alan spoke with Abdon for ages, then asked to speak to me. He told me that he had been imformed that they "could" charge us $600 EACH for our various felonious activities, arrest us, take us to court, etc., but that they would settle for the copies of our permits and passports this time as long as next time we do the following: bring a letter of introduction from Imara because we are working in an Imara school, bring a letter from Joshua saying that we are doing this on behalf of Joshua, bring our passports and permits (even it's just copies), and come see them time we get to town, not going to school first. I also had to dictate a written statement, with everything we'd been talking about for 2 days, sign it, and put my fingerprint on it! They then asked Obbo if he was willing to "carry this load" on our behalf, which he agreed he was. (Don't even know what that meant!)
All of that took an hour and half, and our students and the other teachers had been so worried about us but told us they'd prayed for us at staff devotions. Nothing else happened the rest of the week with them, and now we know!
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