Paperchase #9

I called DIF Tijuana again and spoke to the assistant again to see if the 'decision' had been made. Nope, it's now going to be Tuesday 26th August.

Here's the issue, I explained to her: In order to do our psychological and socio-economic assessment, which is a four or five hour long series of interviews with DIF, we both need to be here. Ahmed is here right now, and will be going back to Abu Dhabi on Thursday 28th August. A date that we cannot change, as he starts a new semester. And he cannot just hop on a plane and fly back on a whim, as he has to work and has classes. Not things you can just skip out of. Especially if you're the teacher. And especially if you've already taken the maximum amount of leave possible, received favours left, right and centre from people who've covered classes, looked after our cat, our car, our lives back in Abu Dhabi - (N.B. Thank you everyone who's helped us out on that, I feel immense gratitude to everyone who's helped us in the past year). His next possible holiday won't be for another month, at least after he goes back to Abu Dhabi. Another month of us sitting here, separated, papa missing out on baby's development, mama and papa missing each other terribly, etc etc. I started to cry on the phone, and Licenciada Alma Rojas, bless her soul, really sounded like she could understand our situation.

But, being the assistant of the coordinator, who, herself has no power to control these things, all she could do was listen and sympathize.

I asked her if she thought there might be some way, if this supposed decision is actually made on the 26th, we could do the interviews on Wednesday 27th? Not that I held out much hope, since they'd been fobbing us off with: "The decision will be made next Monday/Tuesday/ Wednesday/Thursday/Friday" (Apply to the phrase whichever day falls about three days hence) since June. She said she would do everything she could, admittedly very little, but still, to help us make that happen.

So we are now on tenterhooks, praying for a last minute resolution.