Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Why?


Yet another obscure border crossing.....




The border post is at the end of a long dirt road with at least a queue of 70 trucks lined up - a road which is knee deep in snud (snow and mud all mixed together) just wet enough that it oozes into over your shoes and down into your socks.



The border post itself is nothing too flash (except for the massive flat screen tv). The guard who is supposed to stamp me out of the country doesn't want to do his job - or, more likely, wants me to pay him so that he will stamp my passport.

There's a gaggle of tiny old women (I'm actually a giant compared to these women) all covered up in huge padded jackets and hats - what few teeth they do have are gold covered and their ethnicity is unlear - not chinese, not persian, not european, not mongolian but something in between.



I have been instructed through grunts and pointing to sit down and wait. The guard saunters past me again, I point at my watch and make a stamping of passport motion, but he just shrugs his shoulders and goes off to have a cuppa and watch the TV. I take to circling him, on my 10th circle he starts to get angry and stomps back to his post. Still won't stamp my passport and I still won't pay. I take to standing in the window area of his counter so that no-one can get through - about 20 furious truck drivers try to push past me but I ain't moving and I ain't paying a bribe. This tactic seems to work and I get my stamp and head out into more snud.



You have to catch a bus betweeen the two border posts - not allowed to walk. The only other person on the bus is an old guy who has a huge white hessian sack of something huge, heavy and jellylike. I can't tell if it's a dead pig, a live person being smuggled, a dead backpacker who didn't pay the guards bribes, an alien or just a large sack of jelly (or if my imagination is just over active).



2 more stamp checks before I can leave country A. Then a small rickity wooden bridge across a barely flowing mud river/puddle absoluely filled with rubbish. Mist everywhere so you can hardly see 100m - and rolls of really old barbed wire that seems to be aimed at making a fence. Although why anyone in their right mind would want to either escape into either of the countries that this border covers is beyond me.



Across the bridge and the uniforms of the guards has changed. Their demenour hasn't though. The initial border post is basically a phone box with a bit cut out of thr front. I felt a bit sorry for the guard as he was jammed in here - it was no Tardis. He has a look at my passport, nods. Reaches down and gets out one of those old phones that was used in WW1 to contact the bigwigs from the trenches. This phone has seen better days - it's covered in black tape to hold it together and the receiver is about twice the size it should have been because of this. The guard has to wind the phone up, which is a challenge because he is wearing huge mittens and the handle for the winding thing kept faling off. Then when he got the winding up bit done the cord connecting the receiver to the phone machine bit kept falling out - it seemed quite difficult to re-attach the cord while wearing mittens but he wasn't going to give up or take his mittens off. So he persisted and I was trying not to laugh or freeze. After about 5 failed attempts he threw the phone down and just waved me through.



Another guard house check 50m on and then I enter the first of 2 portable classroom type buildings. The first closet sized room was empty to I pushed open the next door but was prevented from entering by a guard that bawled "Docktor" at me. Then an older guy with an alcoholics nose and smell, but wearing a white coat so I figured he must be a doctor, escorts me into an even smaller closet like room and demands my passport. While he's checking my passport I take a look around - I can't understand any of the writing but there is one poster of a chicken which is coughing and a big red cross next to it. "Ah, Bird Flu", I think. But as I clearly didn't resemble a chicken with a cough I seemed to pass the medical (although I did hide the open weeping sores on my arms as they might think I had the plague or something). I presume the "Doctor" went back to drinking vodka.



Now I am allowed into the main room. In the room are 10 guards sitting around looking really bored. One of the clone like guards looks at me and says "moolannee janey". OK, I think, Big Brother is alive and well. So I go through the usual paperwork checks and triplicate form filling (sans carbon paper) while being closely watched by all 10 guards. "You pay money" says the only guard that seems to be allowed to speak - "OK" I say and hand over my $12. "No" he says, "At Bank". "Bank?", I say and look around and make a quizzicle face - I've not seen a bank at this mistly, snud covered end of the world. Then he gets up from behind the partially glassed desk, goes into another booth, puts up a sign which I can decipher as "Bank" - so while wondering why, I go the 1m to the other counter and hand him my $12. (It's $10 for the visa and $2 for the bank fee). "More" he says, I know full well it's $12 but he seems satisfied with $1 extra dollar (I figured at 10c per guard that was a cheap shake down...) and I really, really need this visa stamp. "OK" he says, "X-Ray now", I'm thinking "I have to be x-rayed?", no but my bags do. The guard pulls a plastic cover off a cold war relic of a machine and i put my bags down. Nothing happens for about 5 minutes then another guard (not one of the original 10) comes in through another door (how many more are out there?). This one is clearly more senior as she gets to operate the x-ray machine. So my bags go through, very slowly as all 11 guards present have to have a look and it's only a very small screen.

My bags seem to be OK, and I get handed my paperwork - passport plus 4 seperate receipts and stamped bits of paper. Then the far door opens and in walks a bear of man in a red jacket (albeit a slightly crumpled bear of a man), he sees me and his face breaks out into a huge grin, as he reaches forward to shake my hand and grab my other arm he says "I am Oleg. Welcome to Turkmenistan".


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