Smokey Abu Dhabi 1

I woke up this morning to a familiar smell that made me flash back - déjà vu style to my early informative years in Egypt.

Burning garbage.  

And a stinky thick haze kind of covered the city.  I thought about our planet in peril and wondered about what kind of toxins I was breathing into my already damaged 14 year ex -smoker lungs....can't be a good thing.  What I was about to find out was that a smoky sky in Abu Dhabi means a messed up bureaucratic laden day lies ahead!

Today I was going to do my physical for my residency visa.  For many- this would seem to be a straightforward enough a task but oh no.....not here.  It has taken me 5 months to get to this point.  I have heard stories of people who get this accomplished in days or weeks but whatever...here I am the final steps....Pass the Abu Dhabi Health Compliance test and I am home free.  What are they looking for?  Communicable diseases.  What tests?  Simply a blood test and a chest x-ray.  Diseases that will get you sent back home?  HIV, Hepatitis, tuberculosis...

So I tried to find the place to take the test - I was told by May our office manager to simply go to the Al Noor Hospital and you will be in and out in no more than 45 minutes and you will get your results the next day.  So I went to AL Noor which is by all rights a proper hospital - modern clean sterile in fact and cold.  

Wrong place - they told me "not here any more - go to Sheikh Khalifa Hospital...5 minutes from my office instead of the 25 minute drive to the end of the island...ok...so I drive back and go to Sheikh Khalifa Hospital.  Nope...."not here...you need to go to the health center up the street...but not today - it is a holiday.  Go tomorrow."

So here I am - its tomorrow and the city smells like charred Clorox bleach jugs.  I get to the health center with what I thought was all I needed (as I was told actually...) my Passport and my Visa Application I received on my way into the airport a few days ago.  I get to the place and it is 8:45am and there is a line out the door.

I wait in line about 25 minutes when I am finally close to getting into the room when this guy just cuts in front of me.  Now I know, having been a South End resident who took the Silver Line through Chinatown, that certain cultures have different concepts of queuing up in a line and what a line actually is.  Well this guy is from one of those special places on earth where it is "get as close as you can to where you need to go so you can get to where you are going before all those people in front of you."  I look at him...no....stare through him with unholy thoughts of what I would like to do to this guy when he turns to me and I tell him..."there is a line...we have all waited in it and it starts back there...” and he just looks at me with this injured suffered look on his face and tells me  " I am going to fall down....fall down" pointing to his leg as though it was shredded by shrapnel.  

I can't be bothered...I am so over dealing with this crap I just tell him "whatever man...you are more special than all of us...go ahead."  What is was thinking "well take you’re cheating self back to the end of the line and freaking fall down over there you lying sack of..."

Breeeeathe.....stay calm....cultural differences.....ohmmmmmm.

Finally I get up to the counter and the guy tells me "copies...not original” I told him "but.....there’s nothing like the real thing..."  

"Copies" he tells me again.  "Where?" I ask.  He motions out of the room...."out there” oh no.  Here we go.  "Am I going to have to wait in that line again?"  No...You go and come back and I will give you your number.

So I go to make copies...I look left...I look right....down here over there.  Nope.  I ask a guy who works there and he motions back towards the security desk where the line I just waited in wraps in front of.  Nobody there.

I go upstairs and see this is where the women go for there tests...much more quiet and less chaotic and sure enough there is a copy machine.  I wait around it only to find I need coins - of which I have none.  I go downstairs where there is a cafe and I wait around the register trying to get change when another guy who works there catches on and tells me to go back into the room I came from where there is a desk with change.  I walk back in - people in line looking at me like I looked at the line cutter and I realize it is the same guy who turned me away who has the change.  He is the one guy everyone in that line is waiting for a deli style ticket so they can get up to a processing counter.

He gives me my change and I go back up to the machine.  there are a couple guys in front of me from one of those "no line cultures" when this Emirati guys comes up behind me and almost cuts the guys (and me) off because they are beneath him of course but realizes that I know better and will say something if he cuts in front of me....or maybe I had that psycho killer gaze on my face again.  He is tortured....he gets really jittery...he can't stand waiting there...he simply must cut off these guys...but the psycho killer is there....he refrains.  Good move.  I get my copies and go back to the guy at the desk walking past all the other guys with psycho killer gazes because they now think that I am cutting them off.  But I give it right back at them..."I did my time...you wanna piece of this?" I am thinking.

I am starting to think I could probably survive just fine in prison.  I got the stare.

Anyway....the guy looks at me and says "there is a line!"  "But you told me I didn't have to wait in it again!!!"  "oh....oh....you already waited....Ok ok...here’s your number"

Wheeeeew.

I sit down....waiting comfortably.  They are calling number 150....I have 250.  Crap.  If only I had had copies....next time I will know better.

it takes almost an hour...I watch the comedy I just lived through repeated over and over again by countless people approaching the man at the desk...."number two hundred fifty....window six!"

Yaaayy....I get up there I sit down and the lady behind the veil says to me "250?"  "Yes" I reply.  She shuffles papers and looks at me again..."250"  "yup....250" I show her my ticket.   She shuffles more papers...."sir....it is two hundred fifty"  "OH!  DIRHAMS!" I show her my ticket and we both get a laugh and she chuckles and giggles with the woman next to her.  Ok...I pay the lady....she takes my info and takes my picture and hands me the papers and tells me to go around the corner.

Another line.  I wait about another 45 minutes or so when I get into a Doctors’ office.  An Egyptian guy - we relate to one another have a little chat he wishes me merry Christmas (it was orthodox Christmas the day before and he guesses I am a Christian from my name although not obvious really) and off I go...into another line to get my blood drawn.  it takes another 30 minutes or so and this guy shoves a freaking horse needle into my arm and draws a few vials of blood puts my stickers on there and tells me to "go to room 15 for x-ray"  I walk out...go down the hall and there it is....room 15....there are a line of chairs so I wait at the end of it.  This guy comes to me and points to the end of the room "line!"  Oops.....sorry.  Didn’t see it but now that I am getting the stare from everyone in line....I know.  I haven't really done my time.  Not really.

So I go to the end of the line which actually wrapped me all the way out to the atrium I was in when I was trying to find the damned copier.  Long line.  When I get close to the end of the line these guys open side doors and usher people backing up the line to snake the line outside the building.  Wow am I thankful as I watch the line for the x-ray backing up like the gas station lines during the oil crises in the 70's.

I finally get my chest x-ray done after waiting about 90 minutes and off I go.  Wow I think - not the 45 minutes May suggested but I am glad it is over as I walk passed the line of people not snaking way out the front door.

Poor bastards.

I get to the office and open my newspaper and read about what I just lived through.  "Long lines at health centers as long as 9 hours in some cases"  whoaaa....mine only took three and a half.  I feel lucky.

I go back the next day to get my results and after my second trip there they were ready and I passed!  Yay - I am done!  but today the lines were 3 times as long as yesterday and I am shocked at how incredibly screwed up the whole notion of protecting the public health comes at the cost of people who have come to this country simply to work are being kept from doing so for a whole day.