Anyways, Tuesday morning something happenned at the Prefecture of Nice, and when I told my husband about it later that day, he actually turned away from his soccer game and said "Oh, la honte. La honte pour la France."
The Prefecture is kind of like the DMV, city hall, Immigration Services and an embassy all rolled into one big mass of miserable concrete and huge metal gates and guards and civil servants who all seem relatively or extremely dissatisfied with their jobs - their jobs which, I might add, allow them to hold the fate of every foreigner in their hands. That's one long sentence to match the long line outside the Prefecture of Nice every Monday thru Friday.
I have had the displeasure of going to the Prefecture at least once a year since my arrival in 2001. Let it be known that in 2001 I had to make the trek 3 times due to lack of savvy about what the hell you are doing at said Prefecture. I could go on and on- in fact, I will; but let me just say that at first, the unknowing and spoiled American, I reacted with outrage and indignancy at the arbitrariness of the "service" and furthermore the almost constant lack of efficiency. Now, after over 5 years, I have become humble after taking a bus at 6:30 am on cold mornings to ride 45 minutes outside Nice and wait in line with all the "black" Africans and the "north" Africans (these are the kinder of the various terms that the nicois use to refer to these immigrants), all of whom speak French because they once were french colonies (you see the irony of course). If you arrive by 7:30, to wait in line outside a gate that opens at 9 am, you have a good shot at actually being seen that day. If you arrive at 9, or later, forget it. It doesn't matter where you've travelled from, they close when they close, and if there are 100 people still waiting, too bad, come back tomorrow. There is always a look of confused and mounting dismay on unknowing foreigners (most North American exchange students) who roll up around 9:30 and you see the shock on their faces when they see the line snaking up and down the hallway. They start looking for someone who speaks English to explain to them what is going on.
Let's go back to the step-by-steps: when they open the big outside gate at 9, everyone runs to get to the doors into the building. Runs, I mean, RUNS like their life depended on it, runs as if someone is behind them with a gun. The only thing i have ever experienced in the States that resembles it was a U2 concert with general seating at Saratoga racetrack and the lighting of the Christmas tree at Rockefeller center one year when I almost lost my life in the crowd. Anyway - the mad dash: you may think you are above it all, but if you don't run, you will drop back 20 or 30 people in the line, even if you were right up against the gate at 7:30. And that means you don't get seen at all that day, or you wait for 6 hours in a waiting room which I can only describe as highly depressing and unpleasant. So you run, you run, like cattle for a feed, and women with children and elderly people just get passed by. It becomes violent, people yell and scream and elbow each other and push and shove, often in so many languages that no one knows what the heck is going on. It is the most sickening experience of my year, going to the Prefecture. As I said, incredibly humbling. You are at the mercy of the system in the country you want to live in, and thus play by local rules. And if you are American, it cuts you no slack at all, except that you stand out, because the "white" people in the line are few and far between. Remember that all the British are in the EU and so no need for all this nightmare. But the North Americans are students mostly, and so they go into a different line inside and thus avoid the worst of it: when the doors open at 9, there is another mad dash inside the building down a long corridor to yet another metal gate, an overhead door like a garage door. At this point the line becomes defined because there are stantions with ropes, and it forces people into a "single file". I have seen people come to blows at this stage. It is, needless to say, alarming.
A few minutes after 9, the metal door is raised and people will even crawl under to try and beat out someone they feel has wronged them, which, essentially, is everyone. In front of you is a desk, with a woman behind it. This is the Number Woman. She asks you why you are here, and checks to see that you have all the papers that you will need. If you don't, you are sent away to make photocopies or take a photo or pay your fee or whatever in a different part of the bldg, and, if she doesn't like you, the Number Woman won't give you your number. It is wild. But if you have all your stuff, she gives you a ticket, and you sit down and wait to see your number start flashing on the digital screen blinking and buzzing at you with a counter number to go to. You go, sit down on the other side of the bullet proof glass, and stare at the person on the other side who can make or break your day or life. I have gone 12 times I think in 5 years. Each year for my job, and 3 times the 1st year due to my cluelessness. The wedding required 3 different trips spread out over 2 years. Usually the night before I go I can't sleep because my stomach is in knots knowing that i have to go. It is just so humiliating. What do our immigrants in America experience? That is what I think every time I go.
Tuesday morning an American friend of mine went to the Prefecture for her annual renewal of her Carte de Sejour (visa). At 9:25 a.m. I saw her number come up on the LCD display of my phone - I looked at the clock. "Good for Abby!" I thought. If you get right in there because you're there really early and you run like a sprint star, and have all your stuff, and you are renewing, you can be out the door by 9:30. I've done it many times recently. Thus I assumed she was calling jubilantly to say she was done - it's what we all do when we walk out the door of the Prefecture. We breathe deeply, we smile, we go to the bus stop and gaze fondly at our shiny new visa, knowing that we don't have to come back for another year - and then we call someone to share the glory. However, Abby's story was different. In fact, people came to blows, as they often do, and so this time a new development: the police were called in. The people involved were hauled off, and to "teach people a lesson", the Prefecture just shut down for the day and sent everyone away and served no one. Hundreds of people just had to leave. Imagine the pandomonium. Unspeakable, she said. Who was being taught a lesson I'm not sure, as every day hundreds of people come, and I can't imagine that they are going to put up signs with photos of the people being hauled off by the policed saying "Behave, or this could happen to YOU!"
3 days later I still can't believe it. This stunned me as a first in my experience and furthermore really bad luck for Abby. So to come back to the beginning, when I told Thomas, he said "oh la honte, la honte pour la France." I couldn't agree more.
