Knock-knock-knockin’ on..

Having been told I must present myself at the US Embassy to give a blood sample the previous afternoon, I’ve set my alarm clock for 06:00 in the morning. I wanted to make it back at the office by the time tea is served at 10:00 a.m, so I left my building before anybody else did, treading as politely as i could, the only form of apology available for the noise my shoes were making!

When, 45 minutes later, I arrived at destination’s end, four rows of the chairs that hold 5 person each were filled with individuals who look good and cold. Their eyes trailed after everybody coming through the embassy’s checkpoint: The [employee ID] badge wearing skinny girls who refused to acknowledge our presence. The badge-wearing young men whose walk reminds one of the slow-motion walk uniformed heroes walk with on TV. And finally the big bways who guard the gate that made gun-fire noises every time its opened. Neatly attired men and a woman who seem to enjoy the attention more than the subject under discussion, and laughed about it with a brief interruption in which one of them called out for the “stand by” and the stand by responded.

I took my place, on the row infront of the hall whose inside wall was bearing part of Lady Liberty’s head and a welcoming note. On my left sat a petit girl whose Motorola mobile phone, whose batteries she complained about later, seem to ring every other minute. On my right is a young man wearing the type of scarf that got Rachel Ray into trouble some months back. Soon we were friends. We started with the cold, the whether change and the respective clinics we went to. We then proceeded to what we were in for. The girl said she was giving blood sample for an immigrant visa which her Eritrean fiancée applied for in her stead. They met in Asmara, she told me, when she was there.

“So you are going as a Refugee” I said, driven to sarcasm by the VIP treatment these people are getting in a supposedly “enemy” territory, “I’ve heard on the news how our government is working over-time to facilitate visas for you guys”.

“I came here three years ago” she said with a shy smile