This is a tale of woe that I've finally decided to type up and share with my faithful blog followers. It's a bit insane and a lot of tragedy. Please note that such incidents happen in EVERY country in the world. There are pickpocketers everywhere, some countries just deal with the after-effects of pickpocketing better than others.
In other news, I've had a crazy couple of weeks. I was pickpocketed. Pickpocketed. As in, some jerk stole my wallet that contained: my passport, 2 US Bank cards, my Kazakhstani Bank card, my US driver's license, and 36,000 kazakhstani tenge (about $240 that I had just taken out to pay my host family for December rent). The event itself was nothing serious. I didn't even notice it had happened until a few hours later. But the task of trying to file an incident report with the local police was awful. I'll give you a play-by-play. It's a long story, but stay with me to the end. It'll be worth it.
Dec. 3, 2010
4:30 Leave my work office to go to the library in the city center to conduct an English club. I buy a magazine on the way, put my bills back in my wallet and put change in my pocket for the bus ride. I put by wallet back in my purse and cross the street to the bus stop. I'm not sure how to get to the library, so I ask a bus driver if he goes where I need to go. As I'm talking to him, a man on my right jostles me repeatedly. I think nothing of it. I'm in a hurry, I figure he's just trying to get on the bus. This bus is going where I need to go, so I get on a different bus.
4:45-5:15 I endure the world's longest bus ride to the library. I pay the bus driver with change from my pocket and sit down. The route is more roundabout than I had thought was humanly possible. We go to the outskirts of the city before coming back to the center. English Club was supposed to start at 5:00. I'm quite late.
5:15-5:25 I get off the bus in the city center and walk ten minutes to the library. For some strange reason all of the club participants are still there, patiently waiting for me.
5:25-6:25 I conduct a thrilling English club. Okay, not really thrilling. I don't really like leading English Club, but you gotta fake it til you make it, right?
6:25 Club ends and I gather my things to leave. I realize that my wallet is not in my purse, and I panic. We search the classroom, but my wallet isn't anywhere. I call the Peace Corps Safety and Security Coordinator. She asks me for some details, makes sure I'm not panicking too much, tells me to call home to cancel my American cards, and tells me she'll call my counterpart (the co-worker that's my host country partner) and tell her what happened.
6:30 I call my poor mother stateside where it is 6:30 AM. I have her cancel my credit cards and insist that it's no big deal and I'll get everything sorted out.
6:40 My counterpart Nastya calls me. She's coming to pick me up and take me to the police station. As per Peace Corps protocol I need to file an incident report describing the theft, and get a "receipt" that serves as a temporary ID. It will explain why I don't have a passport or visa.
6:45-7:15 Nastya and I arrive at the police station in the city center. We spend a considerable amount of time explaining in length what happened to the guard at the door. He can't let us in the building until he's signed us into his little book. But he can't sign anyone in that doesn't have a passport. Conundrum. We beg and plead and retell my story, and the guard tells us that because the theft likely occurred at the bus stop (where I was jostled) we have to go to a different police station. The bus stop is in a different precinct of the city, outside the jurisdiction of the central police station.
7:15-7:25 Nastya and I grab a cab, and high-tail it across town to the precinct containing the aforementioned bus stop.
7:25-8:25 We go through the same routine with the guard at this station as we did with the guard at the last station. We explain why we're there, what paperwork we need to do, etc. Everyone is very interested in the American that had her passport stolen, but no one seems quite sure how they can help us. We get shuffled between offices and end up in a department supervisor's office. He can't help us because it's "very late", so he shuffles us down the hall to a different office.
Nastya and I sit at one end of the office with an officer that seems like he might actually help us. In the corner there are two local men being interrogated by an officer. My counterpart and I pretend like nothing's amiss, and tell my story to the officer helping us. He writes down my address, phone number, etc.etc. in his book, and then says that he can't help us. Because we don't know where the theft occurred, the only thing we know for sure is that I noticed my wallet was gone at the library in the center of town. And that's - you guessed it! - in a different precinct. We have to go back to the station we had been at earlier.
8:25-8:45 More than a little frustrated, Nastya and I catch a bus back to the city center, to the police station we'd already been at, to try to fill out an incident report.
8:45-9:45 More than an hour has passed since our last visit, so of course the guard shift has also changed. There's a new guard at the door that we need to explain our story to, and we once again have to explain over and over again why I don't have a passport number for him to write in his book. We finally convince him to let us in and he directs us to room 308, where someone will help us. If there's no one there, we should try room 312, and if there's no one there we should try 413.... Yeah.
We search the halls for someone who will allow us to file an incident report, with no luck. Lights are on in most offices, but the doors are locked. We stand knocking at one door for 5 minutes before someone finally opens. We have found a captain of the department that deals with theft and robbery. We explain our story to him, he's terrible amused by the fact that I'm American, tells me he loves me in English, asks me if I have a husband, and then refuses to fill out an incident report for us. He'd like to help, he wishes he could, it's just that all reports need to get stamped with a department seal. Unfortunately there's only one seal, which is in his supervisor's office, and because it's 9:30 his supervisor has already gone home. He tells us that if we come back in the morning at 9, he can get us our paperwork in 15 minutes, no problem.
Slightly defeated, Nastya and I head home and agree to meet at the station the next morning at 9:15.
Dec. 4, 2010
9:15 I wait in the snow for my less-than-prompt counterpart and the director of my organization. My director Lena interned at this police station last year, so she's hoping some of her connections will help us out.
9:30-10:15 Nastya, Lena and I explain our story to the guard at the door and ask to see the captain we spoke with the night before. The guard tells us that there is a "very important" meeting being held, so we'll have to wait 30 minutes. Half an hour turns into 45 minutes, and it's clear there's no meeting happening. Officers have been filing in and out of the building all morning. Lena goes back to the guard and demands that we be helped. The guard relents and lets us in.
10:15-11:00 We find the captain in his office, and ask him to fill out the incident report. He tells us that he was mistaken the night before and can't actually fill out a report for us. I'm not a Kazakhstani citizen, therefore I have to do everything through the Migration Office. We argue for awhile and insist that I get a report taken care of at this station. I call the Peace Corps Safety and Security Coordinator, she yells at him for awhile and insists that he help us. Captain Unhelpful relents and takes us to his supervisor to have us talk to him.
11:00-11:45 Nastya, Lena and I start to explain my story to the supervisor, but before we get very far he stops us. He wants to know who I am, how old I am, and what exactly I'm doing in Kazakhstan. He's never heard of the Peace Corps, has no idea what a volunteer is. Lena patiently explains to him over and over again that I am a volunteer that works with her organization to do organizational development. But the supervisor is still stuck on the fact that I don't get a salary. He uses words like "psychology", "brain wash", and "magic" and seems to think there's something very unsavory about volunteerism.
Regardless of what he thinks of my financial situation, he'd like to fill out a report for me. But he can't. It's the week of the OSCE Summit in Astana (Kazakhstan holds the 2010 Chairmanship for the OSCE, and the summit was held in the capital), so the entire world is watching Kazakhstan. He explains that if he fills out a report, it could get in the news and everyone will hear about the American that had her passport stolen in Kazakhstan and the country will look bad. He'd love to help, really, he just can't.
I call up the Peace Corps Safety and Security Coordinator again to have her talk some sense into the man, but he refuses to take the phone. We argue for a few minutes, and he gives in. But he won't be writing the report. Our friend Captain Unhelpful will do it instead.
11:45-12:45 The next hour is spent in the Captain's office writing out a theft incident report. As luck would have it, there is no official report form. Instead, I was handed a 2 blank sheets of printer paper and instructed how to write the official heading at the top ("To the chief of police of the city of Shymkent from American citizen Katherine Whitmore residing on Valixanova Street, Building 225B, Apt. 36...."). On the first sheet I write an "announcement" that is a brief paragraph explaining that a theft occurred. The second sheet is for the "explanation of the announcement" in which I go into further detail about what occurred. The police won't provide a translator, so I have to do these reports in Russian.
Lena, Nastya and Captain Unhelpful crowd arround instructing me how to write my story in a grammatically correct fashion. They argue about grammar, the Captain tells me he loves me and asks why I don't have a husband, etc.
Finally I finish the two reports and we get them stamped by the supervisor. Before they're filed away forever, I ask for a xerox copy of them to send to Peace Corps. The Captain informs us that there is not a single photocopier in the entire 6 story central police station in the third largest city in Kazakhstan, so I take the reports across the street to a store to get them photocopied.
We ask about the "receipt" that will explain why I don't have a passport or visa, and he says they need 24 hours to get it processed. Come back tomorrow.
My coworkers and I leave the station, and head back to our office. I call the Peace Corps and the Safety and Security Coordinator (SSC) is outraged at my treatment. She keeps talking about what an "injustice" my treatment has been, and she says she's going to talk to the chief of police about it and get back to me.
6:00 At the end of the day my director and I are leaving the office when the Peace Corps SSC calls. She has just talked with the chief and he also thinks my case was mistreated. If my director and I go to the police station now, he will get us the forms we need. It should take just a few minutes.
6:30 My director and I arrive at the police station and there is an officer waiting at the door to escort us up to the chiefs office. The Chief is very nice, and at least seems to be genuinely helpful. He issues me an official apology on behalf of the city of Shymkent for my treatment and vows that they will find the man that stole my wallet.
I am many things, but naive is not often one of them. At no point did I think my wallet would be found. People don't steal American passports and just give them back.
He asks what the man that jostled me at the bus stop looks like and I explain that it all happened so quickly and seemed so inconsequential that I couldn't say for sure. He was 45-50, my height, skinny, had a black leather coat and a black hat on, and was vaguely asian. Maybe Kazakh or Uzbek, I couldn't be sure. I figured it was the end of that conversation, and we moved on to talk about the paperwork I needed.
6:45-7:15 The chief presents me with the receipt I need to serve as my temporary ID. My director looks it over and notices grammatical errors, so we head up to the room where they type these sorts of things and fix the grammar. Everything has to printed in both Kazakh and Russian, and then get the official seal and signature of the chief, so it takes awhile. But finally I have the a temporary ID.
7:15-7:45 We thank the chief for his help, and try to leave, but he insists that I help them find the man that took my wallet. I am escorted to a room with a computer that has a program containing the picture of every person arrested in Shymkent ever (or at least since this program was installed). They narrow the search to "age 45-50", "asian nationality", "male" and "theft" and pull up pictures of everyone matching this description arrested in the last year for theft. There are 568 pictures. As the chief, a dozen officers, Captain Helpful, our friend the supervisor, and my director cluster around me, I'm instructed to look through the pictures and point to the man that stole my wallet.
I explain that it all happened so quickly that I didn't get a good look at him, I don't remeber very well, it seemed unimportant at the time, etc., but the chief insists that his picture is probably here.
All I can think about is Kazakhstan's less-than-acceptable human rights record. All I can think is that if I pause too long at any one picture, that man will be in a secret prison tomorrow. I don't need anyone to disappear on my account.
I page through the pictures and apologize again and explain that I can't really remember what he looks like well enough.
7:45-8:45 No matter!! If they don't already have the picture of the pickpocketer, I'll reconstruct it! They start up a different program that allows you to reconstruct appearances one facial feature at a time. This stuff is straight out of CSI. We start with head size, and page through 12 pages of different heads to choose from. Then we move on to eyebrows, lips, eyes, noses, chins, hair, face shapes, everything.
Again, all I can think is that if this picture ends up looking like any real person, they'll be dead. Or at least in jail for eternity.
I construct a face that looks like a strange mix of Cameron from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and a Kazakh, and call it good enough. They print 45 copies that will be sent out in the morning with the day shift officers who will be instructed to keep their eyes out for this face around the bus stop I had been at.
8:45-9:00 After finishing with the computer programs, I'm taken back to the supervisor's office (who previously wouldn't help us because he didn't want to look bad). The chief stops in to invite my director and I to dinner at his house, and to insist that this supervisor drive us home and take us out to dinner on the way. We politely decline, but are generally ignored. We thank the chief and he goes home for the day.
My director hints not too politely that it's late and we should be getting home. The supervisor agrees, but needs my help first. He pulls out a 400 page manual to his new fancy hunting watch. The manual is entirely in English and he needs me to translate it. Unfortunately he doesn't have his watch with him, it's at home. So he needs me to go to his house to help him work his watch. My director and I somehow talk our way out of a visit. But he makes us promise to come back next week.
9:00-9:45 He gives us a ride home in his 1980 soviet Lada car that he personally spray-painted in camouflague. He drops my director at a club where she's meeting her friends, and then I spend the next 15 minutes insisting that I can't go out to dinner with him, and that he needs to take me home. He tells me he just wants to "hang out", he has a "very clean heart", and "just wants to be friends". A 15 minute drive home turns into 45 minutes as he weaves through the city asking me what my favorite kind of flower is, what kinds of presents I like, where and when we will go out to dinner. He wants to stop and get beer so we can "hang out" and I can tell him about life in America. I finally tell him I have to be taken home right now, or else I'll catch a taxi instead, and he relents. He makes me take his phone number, and makes me promise to call him. If I don't he'll get my number from one of the dozens of forms floating around the police station that have all my personal information on them. Finally I got home, talked him out of walking me to the door, and insisted that we're good friends and will hang out some time.
Insane, right? I mean, who does this happen to? What did I do to deserve this constant battle with bureaucracy.
Update: My friend the "clean-hearted" police supervisor texted me last week to ask how I'm doing. Needless to say, I didn't respond.
Wow.
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