Deported!

May 28, 2008

Almaty, Kazakhstan

My colleague Susanna and I are on a mission to evaluate World Banks Central Asian AIDS Project.

We arrive at Almaty airport at 4:30 am. Present our letters of invitation we received from the World Bank and passports to immigration to get our visas. “Where is the registration number from the Foreign Ministry?” asks the officer in Russian. Susanna, who speaks fluent Russian, asks what he is referring to. “This letter is not valid. I cannot give you a visa.” No amount of discussion will sway him. A stunningly beautiful Kazakh border police officer wearing a military-issue miniskirt and 5-inch spike heels tells us professionally, but firmly, that she is going to deport us. Susanna tells me later that she didn’t understand at first what she was talking about because she had never used the Russian word deportirovat before. Our passports were confiscated by another border guard who appeared to be about 15 and we were asked to follow him. From there a Turkish Airlines official told us that we had to purchase tickets for $800 apiece. Despite our digging in our heels he finally gets Susanna's credit card and disappears into the crowd. We stand there looking each other. “Uh oh. What have we done?! “We are then asked to follow Cadet Boy, who still has our passports, to the plane. Another Turkish Airlines official screams at us to get on the plane without delay. We tell him that we have to wait for our card. Then we hear another border guard murmur that we don’t have to pay for the flight when we are deported. So then we really wonder if we are being scammed. But we insist on waiting for the card anyway. Finally First Turkish Airlines Official comes back and is pissed off because Susanna’s card won’t work. We are relieved and end up signing dodgy looking promissory notes that we will pay back Turkish Airlines. On to the plane where the flight attendant takes over our passports and promises we will get them on arrival in Istanbul. After an uneasy 6-hour flight wondering what is going to happen to us, we arrive and are taken to a special “Deportee Office,” where a jaded looking border police tells us that he is legally bound to send us back to Stockholm. However, as I pointed out to him, there is nothing stopping us from just leaving the airport and entering Turkey as tourists, as long as he gives us our passports, which he does, which was nice of him. We were terribly relieved they didn’t send us back to Stockholm since we had been traveling for 12 hours. We go through customs (with me first purchasing a visa to enter Turkey), and immediately book a ticket to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan for later in the evening (Kyrgyzstan doesn’t require any letters or previously issued visas). We then go check in to a hotel on a marina near the airport, I sleep while Susanna calls hotels and travel agencies to let them know our change in plans. Then we go have a lovely fish lunch and a glass of Turkish wine, and finish up with some shopping. We then get on a plane and head to Kyrgyzstan, hoping that things will work out better there…