Visas are silly little things. It really wasn't until my sojourn in Morocco that I realized how extremely lucky we Americans are. I watched shocked as a Colombian friend was time and time again foiled by visas. It is necessary for him to have a visa to travel pretty much anywhere and getting the visa, the right visa for the right amount of time, can take months and countless hours of running around to different embassies. Americans are truly lucky, and we don't even realize how lucky we are usually.
Now normally, even an American would need a visa to stay in a country for more than 3 months, but in Morocco, they just ask that you file for an extension of stay or a residency card. Since my stay was just slightly longer than 3 months, I applied for an extension of stay. I spent a few hours one day running around Meknes getting visa pictures taken and having copies of documents made, but all in all, it wasn't too dificult.
A couple of weeks later, I went down to the local police station with one of my directors to make the paperwork official. We walked through the station which was comprised of a long narrow corridor with dozens of small rooms off of it. We squeezed past ladies of the night and questionable looking gentlemen as we made our way down the hall. At the end was a large room that really looked more like it should be the main entrance to the building. I actually think that it was at some point, as several doors led out to the main street, but it must have been more difficult to monitor the many doors in the front. Instead they made the small backdoor the only entrance.
I waited while my director conducted the business of the day in Arabic. As I waited I began to notice hukas everywhere. Hukas are tall devices used to smoke tobacco through water and are quite popular in Morocco as well as other places. There must have been well over a hundred hukas along the walls, stacked in the corners... everywhere I looked. Naturally, when my director finished the business, I asked the reason-surely it wasn't just a popular past time in the police station. She explained that huka was illegal in cafes. However, the police turn a blind eye for months or even years, and then, without warning, they go in for a sting.
The week before I was to depart from Meknes, my official extension receipt arrived. I carefully stashed it away in my passport. My directors said I may need it when leaving the country. The day of departure quickly approached. My mom and stepfather had come to visit, and I had said a bittersweet goodbye to all of my new friends. My mom, stepfather, and I made our way to the airport, checked in, and as I was about to go through emigration, I noticed that my extension receipt had slipped out of my passport and was nowhere to be found. Panic momentarily rushed through me, but I qualmed my fears. Obviously my extension would be in the computer files, and the emigration man had a computer right in front of him-no problem. WRONG!
Fifteen minutes later, I'm sitting on a bench being lectured by two emigration officers as they threaten to not let me through. I promise at least a dozen times that I do have the extension, I know that I should have the receipt, but it had obviously fallen out of my passport in the shuffle to the airport. They let me through, thankfully.
I know it was my fault and that I should have been more careful with my receipt, but I find it funny that the way that they would punish a person for not having an extension of stay is to not let that person leave the country-that just seams a little backwards.
We flew out of Morocco to Rome. In the ensuing three weeks, we've travelled through Italy, France, Portugal, and Spain. It has been a wonderful time, and a good chance to slowly acclimate myself to the cold weather undoubtably waiting for me back in Minnesota and Michigan. I sit now in my hotel room, my last night on a foreign continent. Tomorrow night I'll be under my sister's roof. By Thursday I'll be waking up to the sounds of my niece-excited to start a new day.
I'm always sad to see an adventure end, but I can't wait to see all of you-my friends and family who have been such loyal readers and followers of this blog. Thank you for sharing in this most amazing experience, and if you don't mind, I may even have some epilogual stories for you whenever I see you next!
Happy New Year!
