Temporary Permanent Invisible Licences

The process of going through processes in Doha – is amusing at best! It seems everything of importance (licences, permits, bank cards etc) are temporary – until the ‘real’ ones come…sometimes the temporary things are replaced with other temporary things – but the second temporary things are permanent for a bit longer…. if you understand that – you should come over here and start a support service for expat living!

The day we went for our first temporary licence – we were taken by the obligatory bus to the department of driving and licensing and road thingys…. it all looked legit with a big building and all – except we were ushered into the makeshift ‘el dodgy’ office with old fashioned touch typewriters (Arabic of course!) sitting on 5 or so old school desks. We all stood randomly in this rather warm room smiling in confusion to each other…and took ‘turns’ in handing over our important papers to the ‘guys’ who were translating the English to Arabic for the licences…(I assume). Once that long process was taken care of and all of us able to go to the ‘real building’ we made our way to the respective women’s and men’s areas to take our eyesight tests!

Consequently the segregated gender sections are next door to each other and if you’re nosey enough you can look into the other room anyway! The sight test was a bit of a concern for me (Kerry) as I’d heard on the grapevine that you have to cover each eye separately and read aloud the letters and numbers on the screen…. in Australia, we simply stand at a distance and read with both eyes. I have myopic vision in one eye and virtually no sight – which is irreparable…so I was a little uneasy about having to do the test and was conjuring sneaky ways to get around it on the way….I had every intention on cheating somehow!

Standing in the room – the head honcho in her black robes and face covered was ordering us to move here and there and sit and stand and put bags down and wait in line and generally a bunch of orders that we didn’t understand well and so we did as best we could and made our own order! Then it came to my turn!!! I sat nervously as she gestured to me to take a circular piece of paper from the desk (which were just round scraps of paper from other eye tests … eewww!) Covering my bad eye – I read quickly through the letters which ranged from smaller than I’ve ever seen on an eye test to bigger than the air con units! (I was told that if you just fluently speak any letters in English – it throws them and they just give you the licence…. That was going to be my next trick! Except she continually changed the screen – even before I’d finished my lines – swapping from huge to small and middle sized letters AND NUMBERS!!!)…I was starting to get worried that I would fail this test. She asked me to cover my other eye by demonstrating roughly with a circle paper over her own face…. which was a funny sight! Little black head with white circle eye! I tried to cheat, by sitting a little to the side and thought she couldn’t see me move – but she did…’’straight, straight, look, look” or something along those lines she uttered. I sat very straight and quietly moved the paper aside to let a bit of vision through….”no, no, no, cover, cover, you!” I started to laugh at the whole situation and told her I couldn’t read the letters…. She said “what you can’t see????” and was quite terse with me…I ended up just telling her calmly that I have a medical condition with one eye and I have little sight, but I have perfect peripheral vision because of this and that…and basically my flow of English stumped her…She threw her hands in the air – muttered something in Arabic and stamped my papers and told me ‘GO!’…Some of the others were laughing at the debacle – but I got my licence!!

I met Michael in the shared hallway afterwards who has his own story to tell! We all ended up waiting back in our bus for over half an hour until the licences were printed and returned. We paid 250 QAR each for the privilege of receiving our under the table licences which actually only cost 150 QAR (South Africans paid 50 more! – South Africans seem to get the raw deal with most things here for whatever reason). At this point in time – we have no licences (just a photocopy) as we have had to surrender them to get the REAL ones…Its funny to think we just surrender things here and there and trust blindly that all will be returned and in order! I’ve heard it said a few times now and tend to agree – the Muddle East!