A Post With No Pictures (just so you know how good you've got it)

I got three things today:
1) soaked
2) an umbrella
I took advantage of a brief lull in the intense Algiers showers to run out on some errands. I knew I ran a risk. The sky loves to rain here, and it had been pouring all morning. One of my tasks, yes, was to buy an umbrella. I managed to check that off the list, the wet, unreadable list, after the skies opened before I found a guy on the street selling one. So I bought the first umbrella I saw, and I dare say that I got the ass-kickin'est $3 umbrella this side of Bangalore. Or maybe not. I will send you a picture when I get them uploaded. I did manage to get the umbrella operational before the real deluge happened.

I was taking a short-cut through one of the hospital campuses when the rain fell harder than I have ever seen. Really. Even with the king of umbrellas I felt compelled, as did everyone else, to take refuge under the awning of a building. It lasted ten minutes or so and was like the kind of pressure you dream about for your home shower. And I'm not going to sit here and criticize the Algiers infrastructure for having senseless road design for a place that gets this much rain...sorry, I said "road." Riverbed would be more accurate. Or canal, as the presence of sidewalks (for the cars to park on) allows the water to be channeled more directly at pedestrians.

That was pretty spectacular, and I was happy to have witnessed it (and my feet stayed dry! Hooray for waterproofing spray!). But then I got to the other side of the campus, and the door was locked. I know, that sounds strange. Here in Algeria everything has a locking door and a doorman. The University. My home. Banks. Bookstores. The hospital. And this doorman had decided to lock up and take off. So there is a steel gate with slats, so both those wanting in and those wanting out could see where they needed to be but not get there. Really. Locked inside the hospital. I waited for about 15 minutes before finally deciding to scout the perimeter, which led me to find a guy by a door who let me out. He slammed the door behind me and when I turned to look it was just a little spot of steel in a four-story cement wall. But I was free! Its like they didn't want to let anyone out before they were sure we all contracted something horrid.

3) my récépissé
Which is like a receipt for the carte de residence. Or like a provisional carte. It is a piece of paper that says I can stay in the country for another three months while they fix me up a carte. It has my picture stapled to it, so you know that shit's for real. I'll get you a picture of that, too. What this means is that I get to successfully leave the country and, supposedly, successfully reenter. What I think this really means is that at the airport, when I want to come back to Algiers at the beginning of January, I will go to pick up my boarding pass and the person will ask to see my visa. I will present the person with this récépissé (it is all in Arabic) and argue through two and maybe three layers of hierarchy that it really says I should be let back into the country and it is really valid FROM Nov. 22, not UNTIL Nov. 22. They will not issue me a boarding pass in time for the flight, I will have to talk to some kind of "international desk" and various police/security officers will examine my paper. I will get frustrated but will keep calm. It will take 32 hours to get all straightened out.