Ecuadorian Politics in Action

In addition to running programs in the community with Ecuadorians, all Manna Project Program Directors are expected to take on other organizational tasks. Several of these tasks include (I should know, I just wrote the job descriptions for all of them) the Donations and Resource Manager, Short-Term Volunteer Coordinator, House Manager, Social Chair, and Chief Financial Officer, among others. My organizational job this year didn´t have as fancy of a name but was equally difficult and time consuming: Visa Guy. (To clarify, if I had been female my position would have been Visa Gal. We don´t discrimate...). In many other countries this would have a very basic position with 2 probable tasks: 1) Merely send someone to the ministry with a few bucks and to ask for a visa extension, or 2) Send someone out of the country for a couple days to return with a new visa. Though these may not seem to be the most convenient options, at least with those options you know what to expect....

What is especially difficult about obtaining a visa in Ecuador is the fact that laws change every few months (we won´t even go into the fact that currently Ecuador does not have a legislative body and therefore no new laws should be enactable). This in itself would make things complicated for anybody; furthermore, it makes things complicated for all the different ministries that work in the visa business. What this means is that every single government official that you ask always seems to give you a different answer. Despite all this, however, I managed to jump through all the hoops and actually keep everybody in the country legal until the end of July (I´ve even got Zak and Annie legal until December, Luke until May ´09, and Mark and Seth legal until July ´09).

By this point I was feeling pretty proud of myself, until my whole visa world (and as the MPIE Visa Guy it´s a big world) came crashing down on top of me. After having told all the new PD´s to enter the country as tourists and then apply for the visas within Ecuador (which we had found to be an easier process than applying from the US) the laws changed yet again requiring anyone entering the country as a tourist after the 7th of July (our PD´s entered the 11th) to only be allowed 90 days at which point they must return to their home country (aka the US in our case) and apply for a visa from there. (Oh, and by the way the 3-month visa that I was going to apply for to finish out my last 6 weeks in Ecuador no longer exists).

Since I had just written all those operational job descriptions I talked about earlier, the new Program Directors were here, and my visa world was crushing me, Mark decided to dole out next year´s operational jobs, and took the Visa Guy job off of my hands. Mark, brilliantly, went straight to the Minister of Foreign Relations to plead our case. Thankfully, she heard him out and, on the condition that we would never again apply for a visa within Ecuador (or until the laws change again in a few months....), agreed to grant visas for our 5 new PD´s when they apply in September. Now we don´t have their visas yet and things could most definitely go awry, but at least we have the Minister´s word that they will review our applications.

He was not, however, been successful in obtaining a visa for me. This left me two options: 1) Stay in the country as an illegal immigrant and pay a hefty fine, or 2) flee the country. I chose option 2 and it is for that reason that I write to you from Máncora, Perú (and without photos). I will be roaming around Perú for the next month or so until I go back to Quito on the last days of my tourist pass only to immediately turn around and fly back to the US completing my 13-month commitment to Manna Project International - Ecuador.