Stamps

Remember Michael Palin in the movie Brazil?  The tribute to bureaucracy?  I think they had Kazakhstan in mind when that movie was conceived.

It started before I left.  I turned in my medical form and was promptly told it needed to be stamped to be official.  Stamped?  By whom?  What kind of stamp?  No one could really say.  Just "stamped."

So I called my doctor's office and asked if they had a stamp.  Yes, they had two:  one with the doctor's signature and one with the name and address of the practice.  Which one would I like?  Well, give me both just to be on the safe side.  My forms were now stamped and, therefore, official.

When you enter at Passport Control, they have you fill out an immigration card which they promptly stamp.  If you have one stamp, you have 5 days to register with the migration office; if you have two, you have 90 days.  However, no one can figure out why some people get one while others get two.  NIS Human Resources had to run all over in Astana making sure that everyone had two stamps on their immigration cards.

The Kazakhs love their stamps.  All papers are stamped at least once.  For the medical tests I had to have to prove I was fit to work in Kazakhstan, I had to go to the Interteach clinic to get one form and have it stamped which allowed me to turn that in for other forms with additional stamps.  I now collect stamps!

In the midst of all this craziness, there are many moments of humor and human kindness.  Nikolai, a German of Kazakh descent that sat next to me on the plane, wouldn't leave my side, making sure I got the right papers at Passport Control and insisting on meeting the NIS people who were there to pick me up at the airport.  He wanted to make sure I was in good hands.

Today, a big, tough looking Kazakh nurse was taking care of me at the clinic.  She didn't speak a word of English, and my knowing "good morning," "thank you," "hello" and "goodbye" (in both Kazakh and Russian) was only getting me so far.  She wanted me to pee in a cup.  Through our gestures and facial expressions we created a humorous dialogue, and she started giving me sly smiles on the side.  She became my new best friend at the clinic and smiled and waved every time she saw me afterward.  Most of the people here really want to take care of the helpless English speakers.

I know that somehow this obsession with stamps is left over from the Soviet regime, but I wonder how long it takes for the empty rituals to fade away?