Governmental adventures....

I like adventures. I like doing random things. I like finding creative ways of solving problems. Where can I get all that and so much more?
At any governmental building in Egypt....
The summary of my most recent adventure....
I am probably the one crazy person who does not hate doing anything related to governmental paperwork. I am the crazy girl who willingly offers to help you get you shit done at the "ahwal al madanaya" or the "mogamma". I actually enjoy doing these things.
I am sure that I am somehow crazy.. but I think I also enjoy seeing how you can always get things done.
You can jump over any roadblock you face....
Yesterday, I woke up early, ran some errands and then picked my friend up to get her anything that says she is Egyptian.
She has a weird problem.. she cannot get a tourist visa because she is Egyptian, but at the same time she cannot gwet anything issued saying that she is an Egyptian. She needs her father's Egyptian birth certificate to prove that she is Egyptian, but they will not give her her father's Egyptian birth certificate because she has nothing with his name on it saying that he is her father.. except for her foreign Canadian birth certificate.. but for some reason that is not enough....
So, she is in a catch 22 from hell....
Our work has tried to solve this for her so that she is not here illegally and they failed...
I, of course, offer my assistance....
We run around at the "ahwal el madanaya" (civil affairs".. and they are useless.. they send us off to mogamma and tell us a million different things to do. We get to mogamma and we find out that everything we were told at the civil affairs place is wrong..
We sit in the office of the guy with the 3 stars and eagle (the important guy) and we waste time and he is trying to help us and trying to find her father's file.. after a while he says it is in some other archive place and it will come tomorrow...
He tells us to not waste time and to go to the Dokki police station... He says that there they will print out her father's birth certificate (even though they should not give it to her)...
So, we head for the police station... I will never be able to describe that experience fully. It was a small room filled with a million smelly people. They were all loud. They were all bitter. For some reason they did not like us... They yelled at us. They yelled at anyone who spoke to us nicely. They yelled at anyone who wanted to help us. I was scared. I wanted to cry.. So, I run to the man in front of the computer and I tell him I am scared and I do not want to stand in line.. and I asked him to print the paper we needed. And he did it!!! (Playing vulnerable works!!!) He said he needs to do it because we are foreigners and he needs "to take care of us". I am sure the people that were yelling probably would not have liked knowing that we got our shit done before them all!!! ;o)
Well, we dash back to the mogamma... we run into the 3 star and eagle man's office. We catch him before he leaves.. He starts playing Um Kalthoum for us.. and explaining the songs to me... and he gets some guy to write out a paper saying
"That her father is Egyptian. He has not denounced his citizenship and neither has she, and there is no problem for her name to be registered in the civil affairs registery"!!!
I will not comment on the fact that he has a copy of her father's birth certificate in the computer that he could have looked at and printed. I will not comment on how stupid the wording of the document was. I will not comment on the fact that every step of the paperwork has to be done at a different building. Iwill not comment on how every document needs at least 3 stamps and a signiture to be anything. I will not comment on how nobody knew what they were talking about and how they all wasted our time...
I am not sure what I will comment on...
Well, my friend is halfway to being officially Egyptian.
Next Saturday, ahwal al madanaya.. bright and early!!!!