bureaucracy in action

Day 1 and we embark on an adventure. Today is the day that we go to the visa registration office to register my passport. I have to say, the last two times I’ve been here the passport registration looked something like this. A man named Alisher, who owned a car and worked as a hire driver for random Americans (and was probably someone’s cousin) would show up at my apartment. He would take $30 and my passport and would return the next day, without $30 but with my passport that contained a hand-written piece of paper with someone signature on it. That was my registration; this time, we do it officially. We take a hire-cab, like an Ueber one can hail on the street, that for 3 somoni (about 50cents) runs up and down the main road and picks people up. We go to the bank to pay the visa registration processing fee. Can we pay at the actual office? Maybe, but only under the table and they will charge more. So we go to the bank. The bank has no power. Can we go to a different bank? No this is the one. When will the power be back? Maybe, lunchtime; maybe, after lunchtime. We are told to wait. As we are waiting my research assistant start filling out the necessary ‘form’ to process this fee. He has to redo it 3 times, due to making some errors in filling it out. There is still no power. Rather than waiting, my research assistant (let’s just call him Jonbek, well, because that’s his name) tells me we’ll do an interview. I was not informed of this, I am fully unprepared, but whatever. We meet two women, they cannot be interviewed together, so one agrees to wait.
The interview takes place in a park, which I think I used to come to last time I was here. Then, we do the second interview, because there is still no power at the bank. This interview is inside an office in a giant, newly constructed office building. According to Jonbek, this building was built by some oligarch, who announced he was forming a separate political party. Within a week, he was accused of multiple whatever crimes and was never seen again. After the interview, we grab lunch and head for the visa registration office because, apparently, the power had been restored at the bank.
We come to the visa office and head for a tiny window. According to the man behind the tiny window, we are missing photos; there must be photos of me to process the passport registration. We are sent to talk to the supervisor in the back of the building, but the security guard will not let us through to the supervisor without said photos. Conveniently enough, the photo office is located in the residential building next door. I swear, someone just cut a door in the outer wall of an apartment and called it an office. I find myself inside a small room, two desks, two desktops. My picture is to be taken against 8 white pieces of paper taped to the yellow wallpaper as the ‘screen’. This process takes 5 minutes. We head back to the visa registration office and are told, from the man in the window that they are only accepting passports after 3p. why after 3? It is unclear. And because Jonbek earlier claimed that Tajik tomatoes are the tastiest in the world, we are off to the market to procure some delicious tomatoes.
The market of course is a zoo, as expected. While picking up some fruit, a small boy with a giant wheelbarrow runs over my foot and causes an eruption of yells from all the stall vendors who are all closely watching me buy fruit (no worries, foot is ok). Then, I am stuffed into the ueber-like cab to be taken home. The thermometer reads 37C.
Interestingly, the cab runs along the main road which is lined with cops, about every 2 block interval, who randomly stop passing cars, likely to extract bribes. The cab driver, whenever nearing such a post, would pull down the number of the dashboard indicating he is a cab. Not sure if it was to avoid having to pay money, or because this activity is illegal. Regardless, I’m home, with interviews and no visa registration. Stay tuned for tomato verdict.