AMMAN: Upon listening to instructions from officials, hangers-on and others:
Meet early in the Ministry of Interior at the reception, go to the very last counter in the building, receive a letter in Arabic that (I know now) grant me residence permit in Jordan for one year, but I need stamp and plastic card etc. so I go to Shmeisani Police Station, where I am directed to second floor and received by a big group of policemen. One of them speaks English.
He tells me that I have received completely wrong instructions. I should not have come to this police station. Instead I must go across town to a special laboratory in Wasfi al Tal Street to have a blood test. The apparent reason is that we foreigners are importers of HIV and MERS and Ebola and what have I.
The wrong place
The taxi finds the lab and after climbing a staircase and conquering three offices I get a certificate with a nice stamp stating that I have none of the mentioned diseases (I guess – it’s in Arabic). That costs 30 Jordanian Dinars (JD) (or approximately 42 US dollars) plus the stamp of 0.5 JD.
There was no actual blood test, only a piece of paper, but what the heck: I now venture back across town to the Ministry of Labour in Abdali for work permit, according to a piece of hand-written paper from the kind policeman in Shmeisani.
Two floors up, three offices and luckily a kind person that speaks English. He tells me that I am in the wrong place. This office is only for domestic workers. It actually looks as though: full of sri lankans and philippinas. He writes in Arabic another address and I climb down in the street and into a taxi that takes me up to Jabal Hussein.
Teacher or doctor?
The taxi driver points at a building with the usual Jordanian coat of arms on the front. I enter, walk to the reception and eventually have someone English-speaking attending to my case.
He asks: “What school?
Me: “What?”
“Him: “Aren’t you a teacher?”
Me: “No”, and take out the hand-written note with the address.
He looks at it and says that I am in the Ministry of Education but the address states “Ministry of Health”.
I’m not a doctor either, so I ask him what to do now. He doesn’t know but thinks it may be an idea to try the Ministry of Labour – where I just came from.
Taxi troubles
Out of the building, into the street, where I wave down another taxi that takes me back to Ministry of Labour in Abdali. Two floors up where I find an English-speaking person, other than the first one who misguided me. He tells me that I am still in the office for domestic workers but ought to go to the Ministry Office in Jabal Hussein and writes the address down (in Arabic) on a piece of paper.
Down and out, taxi, to a new address in Jabal Hussein which happens to be the correct Ministry of Labour Office for suspicious journalists like me.
A kind lady in front of a pc enters my data in the system, tells me that my case will be brought before a committee, gives me a number, and instructs me to come back in a week’s time with the number. I shall not forget!
Out, into a taxi and a war of destruction starts immediately. I have walked straight into the danger zone of one of those young taxi drivers who insists on driving without the meter on.
I win the first battle. We drive, but about half-way he starts the next battle: Give me extra or I’ll stop here, he says. I say something that can be shortened to two words starting with “f” and “y”, pay him what the meter says, get out of the car and write his license plates’ numbers down, knowing that there is some official institution somewhere where you can report taxi drivers that try to avoid paying taxes. But finding that place…. Hmmm! I let the matter rest.
