American Visa Information - application, interview, timing

Here is some basic and helpful information on American visas that you might need to know.  I am writing this because this information is not clearly explained on embassy websites.  You're welcome.

If you are required to have a visa to enter the United States, the first thing you should do is check to see what length of visa your country gives to Americans.  The American visa is issued based on reciprocity, so whatever your country does for Americans, America will do for you.  Sort of.  Here is where it is tricky, and confusing, and not at all clearly explained on embassy websites.  Say you are from Chad, Africa, for example (that is where my husband is from.)  Chad will issue visas for 3 months to Americans.  So America will issue a "visa" for 3 months to Chadians.  I've been referred to this website:  travel.state.gov  but really I don't find the information that is needed there.  So find out how long of a visa your country will give Americans.  Ok, now that length is the "visa" that America will give you.  The American "visa" is different from most other visas that I have encountered, and they don't explain this well on their websites.  The visa, say it is for 3 months, gives you permission within those 3 months to travel to the USA, to arrive there.  Once you arrive you go to the Homeland Security desk and its there that they give you a stamp that says how long you can stay in the states, often this will be 6 months for a regular visitor visa.  So say your American "visa" is given to you today, July 9.  It will say that it is good from July 9 through October 9 (for 3 months starting today.)  You can travel and enter the USA on October 9, and there they will give you a 6 month "period of authorized stay" so you can stay in the states until April 9.  So technically, your American "visa" is expired as of October 10, but you get to stay in the states for the next 6 months on that expired visa.  Stupid system, right?  So even though Chadians get a 3 month "visa" they get to stay for 6 months in America.
That is not how a visa works in any country I've ever had a visa in (and I do have a fair collection of them in my passports.)  For example, my visa for Mali, I sent in my application and said I wanted to enter Mali on October 6th.  They gave me a visa with a starting date of October 6th.  And it is good for 5 years.  So starting October 6th, I can come and go in and out of Mali as I please for the next 5 years.
You need to understand the difference between the American "visa" and the "period of authorized stay" stamp thing.  Its 2 different things in America, whereas in most places it is the same thing.
If you can only get a 3 month "visa" for America, make sure to wait until 3 months or less before you want to enter the states to schedule your visa interview appointment.  Otherwise they will issue it for 3 months starting that day, and if you want to travel 4 months from now you can't.  You have to enter the states before the 3 months is finished.  Why can't they just explain this on the embassy website?

Also, to apply for an American visa, the application is all done online now.  It takes an "estimated 75 minutes" to fill out, but I found that it was more like an hour and a half, and I type fast. (yes, I filled it out for JP but it's allowed to have help.)  Its a lot of basic information about you.  Your name, parents names, family, birth dates, places lived and traveled to, schools and job histories, why you want to go to the USA.  And then there are 5 screens worth of questions that I find ridiculous at best and offensive at worst.  Basically asking you over and over if you have any connection with terrorism, drugs, prostitution, espionage, etc.  I mean, who is going to say yes???  Really... its pretty over the top.
After you finish the application, which also requires you to upload a photo that follows very specific guidelines, (the photo is the one thing that is very well explained, they are quite detailed on this!) you have to pay the visa fee of $160 at a local bank and have the receipt from that to electronically schedule your interview at the embassy.

For the interview, you need to bring your confirmation page, passport, a paper copy of the photo you uploaded, and supporting paperwork.  You have to show them that you have either the money to pay for your trip or a financial sponsor, and that you have good reason to return to your own country after the trip.  If you are a young unmarried person from a 3rd world country who doesn't own a house or a business and who doesn't have a really solid career, you shouldn't even waste your time applying.  They think that you'll just stay in America.  I know this because JP's first visa try from before we were married was denied.  Even being married to an American doesn't make it easy.  To get a visa (in 2011) he had to show all kinds of supporting paperwork and then they left him hanging for 6 weeks not knowing if he'd get it or not while they did "administrative processing."  This time was quicker because he has already been to the states once and returned to Africa, so they aren't so suspicious now I guess.  They gave him an immediate "yes" answer at the interview.  He had to go back a couple days later to collect the passport with visa. Actually it was me who went to collect the passport, anyone who has the receipt they give you can pick it up.  That's how I know what it looks like in the room.

On the day of the interview, you go in a waiting room with all the other people getting interviewed that day. Here in Bamako they have appointments available for something like 42 people per day.  Eventually someone calls you to a window, and you talk with the person through a pane of bullet proof glass.  You hear them through a speaker system that reminds me of ordering at a drive through restaurant.  We already saw that they are very suspicious and worried about security because of those 5 pages of ridiculous questions, and this just goes to prove it.  I guess maybe they need to take drastic security measures because I know sometimes there are attacks on US embassies, but this seems kind of dehumanizing to me.  Like visiting someone in prison - you stay on your side and we'll stay on ours.  And the waiting room is after you have already passed through airport-like security.  You aren't allowed to bring a cellphone or even a USB key or mp3 player with you.

I feel like the whole system is set up to make the applicant feel like "nah, forget this, I think I'll just stay home."  It is a lot of hoops to jump through.  Compare this to my Mali visa application where I simply mailed off my passport to Washington DC with a one page simple application form with a picture and the fee.

So that's some information that I would have found good to know before we went through the process.  Any questions?  I'll answer if you write a comment.

test correcting funnies

This week I gave a little test to my level 1 English class.  It was 2 pages long, mostly writing short sentences, and they had 30 minutes to complete it.  I've found that it is very helpful for me to get an idea of what they've learned and what they haven't learned, and it helps them see what they need to study more.  I make corrections with a red pen (I love using the red pen, it makes me feel so teacher-y) and they get the tests back so they can use them to review and study.  There are always a few things I find in correcting that make me laugh!
So here are the latest finds:
In response to the question "Why is Eliza happy?" where I was looking for a reason using the word because, (Eliza is me, my middle name is Elizabeth and Erin is foreign sounding and difficult for most Malians to say) one student answered, "Eliza is happy because she is not hungry."  We are in the middle of the month of fasting of Ramadan, so I am guessing that this student was NOT happy because he WAS hungry!  Another student said that Eliza is happy "because the students are not boring."

We start the test with 5 dictation sentences.  I read each sentence 3 times and the students have to try to write what I've said.  I tell the students to try to write something, even if they don't understand the sentence they should try to write the sounds of the words I am saying.  I get some really creative spelling out of this. The best 2 from this round were:  "Diazman" for Jasmin. (one of the characters in our book is named Jasmin, so I used this name in one of the sentences, the letters "dia" make a "j" sound here!)  and "wacte" for walked, which I thought could have earned credit if only we were using a phonics program.

We are working on past tense verbs, and I gave the base form of the verb "think" and one student put it into the past tense as "thrink" and I find that somehow funny, maybe I'm just amused by creativity.  Another student put "thinked" which isn't really funny, just plain wrong.

I also got another misspelling of "chicken" this time it was "ticken." I use chicken as an example a lot when we are doing oral sentences (ie. "my favorite food is chicken") but I guess they don't see it spelled out enough.

Ahh, just a few weeks left of me teaching English before we move!  I am going to miss it so much, but I think I will teach again somewhere in the future.

plumbing woes

If you can't tell what this is, it's a patch of our bricked courtyard that has been torn apart to get to the problem pipes below.  Just 3 1/2 weeks before we move out of our apartment, we've had to pay a plumber to fix this problem!  I think in the states this is the kind of thing the landlord would take care of, but here the renter is stuck with the bill.  In the states this kind of problem might not even occur.  The plumbing parts available in Mali seem like they all come from some cheap dollar store or something.  I would gladly pay more for quality parts that would last a reasonable amount of time, but they just aren't to be found.  So in my almost 5 years in Mali, it seems like I've had way too many visits from a plumber.  Our water was only cut for a few hours, and then the problem was fixed and the water was back.  Our water bill for this last month living in the apartment should be less I think; we'd noticed that the bill kept going up and up each month and the problem was this slow leak that needed fixing.

village Sunday

I spend all day last Sunday in the village.  I left home at 7:20am and didn't get back home until around 6:30pm.  I went with them to church, you can see it in the picture above.  The newer cement church building is just a 5 minute walk from their house.  There was lots of singing.  I had my Bambara song book with me, so I could sing along to the songs that were  in there.  There were also special songs presented by a women's group, a children's group, and the youth choir group.  Those special songs are always as much about the dancing as the singing.  Visitors were made to stand up and introduce themselves, so I had to do that in Bambara but they don't expect you to say much.  The pastor preached a message in Bambara that I understood the general idea of, but didn't catch most of the details.  I remember a time that I couldn't understand some of the details in French, and I can now, so I think of that to encourage me in my Bambara learning.

After church the older daughters in the family started to cook lunch, so we ate quite late.  It was rice with peanut sauce - my favorite!  I was given my own plate and a spoon, but you can see the boys gathered around a big bowl of food eating with their (right) hands.
I spent the whole afternoon sitting in the shade and listening and chatting.  Several different visitors came by to greet the family.  Sunday is the only day that the dad doesn't go to his gardens to work, but after church he went to the next town over to check on a friend who had just had surgery, so he wasn't home most of the time.  The mom was there to chat with me, and you can see in the picture that she kept her hands busy, too.  She was unbraiding Zaena's hair.  The old braids were pretty tiny, so this took a long time.
When it was around 5pm and I said I was thinking about heading home, I was offered a ride on the back of a visiting friend's motorcycle from the village to the edge of Bamako, a trip of about 40 minutes.  Knowing that there is a lot of traffic on Sunday evening, and that traffic heading into Bamako can be scary to face on a motorcycle, I declined and took the Sotrama (a public minibus.)  The family sent me off with a bag of mangoes, fruit from their trees.  Oh, and a sunburned back and neck.  Even though I was in the shade under trees all day, the top of my back that my Malian top left exposed had turned a deep red.  By the time I got home my face and chest were looking pink too, but the next morning it had all changed to normal colors again.

hanging out in the village

I love this boy's smile!  You can see a green cloth wrapped around Samuel's right forearm because he broke his arm several weeks back when he fell out of a mango tree when he was picking mangoes.  The cloth is doing nothing, except maybe reminding people that this arm shouldn't be used.  At first it was wrapped in a splint made of wood and cloth, but I think its almost better by now.  The little girl is his niece, Masitan. These 2 are my favorites in the village where I go to visit each week.

This is Fatoumata, a friend of the older daughters.  One of the older daughters does foot henna as a way to make a little money.  Women often get their feet decorated to go to a wedding.  The traditional style involves cutting bandaging tape into thin strips and using it to make intricate designs.  When all the tape is stuck on, they mix some kind of leaves with mud or something and apply that.  Then some nasty chemical that smells like perm solution and burns goes on.  The untaped part turns black. The whole process takes several hours.  I did this once, it was with my mom when she visited in 2011.  That once was probably enough for me.  There is another style, a painting of flowers that is done with black hair dye.  That is much quicker and easier, and I'll try that sometime if I get a chance.

study break with Moussa

Our little neighbor Moussa is pretty cute when he isn't screaming and crying.  He lives with his mom and dad in a magasin (like a storage room) about 10 feet from my window, and spends much of his day hanging out and playing and mostly crying about 5 feet from my living room and kitchen windows.  I am seriously ready to have our own private peaceful courtyard again!  I blame the crying on a lack of parenting skills- he has clearly learned that if he fusses and screams enough he will get whatever it is that he wants.  Moussa and our dog Teddy are buddies, and I am impressed by how good Teddy is with this little one who is not always gentle.  Sometimes Moussa comes in the house to visit.  He has gone pee-pee on my floor a couple times since he doesn't wear diapers.  But usually he just hangs out for a while and checks out all of the interesting things in our house.  He is especially interested in our water filter- its amazing how you can turn a knob and water comes out and keeps coming out.  That was another wet puddle I had to clean up.  He is at a stage where he is trying to talk a lot, but most of what comes out of his mouth is just sounds.  A few weeks ago he started trying to repeat the "cou-cou!" I would greet him with when I saw him peeking into my kitchen window.  At first he was saying "tou-tou!" but he finally got the "k" sound down, and now he will come to my window and shout "cou-cou!" before I even notice him there.
In the picture you can see JP taking a little study break to visit with Moussa.

it's rainy season!

Here are a couple pictures of us after we got caught in a sudden downpour while out on the motorcycle.  We got soaking wet and couldn't help but laugh.  There's nothing you can do about it, so why not laugh?  We thought back to another memorable time that a big rain caught us off guard: A few weeks after we were married we made a trip to the local outdoor market to buy some household supplies.  I wound up wearing a huge clothes washing basin on my head and trying to hang on to a long broom while JP did his best to see as he drove home.  It doesn't make much sense to try to wait it out because the rain could continue for hours during rainy season.  We will be very thankful to have a car one day!