Wednesday, June 8:
As many of you know, the container with our furniture still hasn’t arrived. However it is already on Jordanian soil!
What happened? The first part of this story is ‘water under the bridge’: the container was loaded aboard a ship that didn’t sail to Jordan but to Malaysia instead where it had a two week stopover on the quay.
In the last week of May we received an email from our agent informing us that the boat with our container had docked in the port of Aqaba. It would be off loaded and put on a truck to Amman. The agent kept us up to date via email and phone on a daily basis, sometimes even calling us twice a day. Such attention to service! We secretly harboured the hope that we would have our stuff before the start of Ramadan, but that would be a tight race.
And indeed, it didn’t happen. We then started to reckon with the possibility that we would only receive the container after Ramadan, so 28 days later, as labour is very slow during the Holy month of Ramadan.
Last Saturday morning we received a phone call that we should be ready to report at the Amman customs office at very short notice in order to sign for our container. The whole day nothing, just at the end of office hours we got another call that it would not happen that day but likely tomorrow: bukra, insh’allah … Sunday of course nothing happened but like the day before we got a call just before close of business that today unfortunately it had not been possible and so it would be the next day, Monday, insh-allah.
And lo and behold indeed on Monday suddenly, ‘Yes!’ the telephone rang.: ‘Report to Amman customs office asap.’ We dropped everything we were doing, hailed a taxi and raced towards the office, or that at least was our intention. Unfortunately the taxi driver was suffering badly from the Ramadan fasting and seemed unable to find the accelerator. The cab ride brought us to south Amman in a new built area where we had never been before so we had to call our agent for directions a couple of times before we arrived at Customs. Here our luck changed for the better as an employee of our agent was waiting for us at the gate. We walked onto the grounds, which were un-Jordanian unclean we felt almost like we were back in Nigeria. Stench, dirt, throngs of sweating people queuing for windows manned by indolent officials. (Not surprisingly perhaps as it was almost 40 degrees Celsius and the first day of Ramadan). We signed a form that we agreed to let our agent handle the container than moved on to another office where our agent was looking for an official. Though our agent employee spoke broken English he was clearly well connected. He jumped the queue of sweaty people, got the required stamp and signature right away, turned back to us and told us that we could go home now and let him do his work: representing us during the inspection of the container where the value of its contents (our furniture) would be assessed. Our agent said he would ensure that we would have to pay the smallest tax amount possible. As he had impressed us with his display of finding the right official and getting signatures and stamps within ten minutes it seemed a responsible thing to do to follow his suggestion, go to our cool home, wait for his call to learn how much tax we had to pay and then return to the Customs office with the money in cash.
Of course, and we could have known this, all this was not going to happen on the same day and not on the day after either. What we did get instead were daily calls from our agent at 14:58 hrs. that: ‘unfortunately things had not gone as planned, as you know working times were 10-15 due to Ramadan, but tomorrow morning your container will be the first to be inspected, you can expect a call to report at the Customs office to pay your taxes around noon’.
I have started to write this blog on Wednesday, 14:00 hrs. and still no call. Even if we would be called now, we cannot get at Customs before 15 o’clock
Will it indeed be after Ramadan before this whole customs clearing is processed?
This whole bureaucratic lethargy is so annoying. We know this is the way things are done in Jordan. We can shout ‘Yalla, yalla’ but it wouldn’t make a difference this time. We are very pleased that we are informed properly, this makes it a lot easier to accept.
Because we have to wait so many weeks longer for our stuff we notice the effects it has on our social life. We would like to invite people to come over to our house, we would like to put on fresh clothes, we both are busy with various activities and cannot do those the way we want the to do as this requires our books, our stuff and all of this is in the container.
Of course, we are trying to make the best of it but notice that we’re stretched and try not to snap because of all the frustration. Sessions and workshops that were scheduled for early May have been postponed or even cancelled and now have to be rescheduled till after Ramadan. Not just annoying for us but also for those who had eagerly made appointments.
It’s an hour later now, I just had a phone call. No need to come to the office, the amount was paid for us by the agent and we will be billed. And though the amount it still is a hefty one, it is considerably lower than what we had anticipated.
During the telephone message it was hinted that now the container is released by Customs it might be on our doorstep even today.
As it is now 14:55 hrs. this is too good to be true and indeed it isn’t. A few minutes later the telephone rings again announcing it will be tomorrow, insh’allah ….
Secretly we are relieved by this delay as we were invited by friends to break the fast with them (iftar) and not a chance we can cancel to at the last moment.
Now it is Friday and this blog will be released shortly.
Yesterday afternoon at 13:00 we received a call from our agent that their team would be at our house in half an hour. For a change they delivered promptly: at 15:00 hrs. our house was full of boxes .The party has started … we can unpack, install ourselves, create our home in Jordan!
lucyinjordan 
And even before the end of Ramadan….
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