Part 3
by Raia Jennifer Dela Pena-Landicho
Aralynn Mcmane
The second part of this narrative should be titled “The story of our European Awards adventure or how Aralynn Mcmane became Sinag’s fairy godmother.” :)
I could go on and on about Ms. Aralynn Mcmane but really, this would not have all been possible if she didn’t go the extra mile for us. First off, she said that since the WAN-IFRA is a Paris based organization and it would be easier for them to coordinate the visa applications directly, that I should apply with the French embassy instead of the Austrian embassy. I immediately checked online about the requirements and processing period of the French embassy, it was shorter than the Austrians (around ten days processing) so I emailed them and surprisingly got a reply the next day that we have visa application appointments for September 21! Our awarding was set for October 12 so that was just enough time for processing and everything! There was hope yet! So we went about our work – birth certificates and financial documents prepared, visa invitation letters were sent by WAN-IFRA thru Ms. Mcmane to the French embassy. So everything seemed all ok. Come September 21, we calmly and confidently went to the French embassy for our interview. I never thought that the hardest part of our struggle was yet to begin.
Let me contextualize the whole visa application process. I have never applied for visas as an adult. Most of the visas I got were given as a minor – US visas, Chinese visas, Russian visas. I remember it was my father who always arranged everything for our travels as a family. When I hit my twenties, and up until recently of course, I never had much thought for travel abroad. We did go on short vacations but these were all within the country and never more than long weekends. I was preoccupied with a lot of things, work mainly and then later running my father’s newspaper and then getting married, having a baby, starting a business, father getting cancer, taking care of dad (he died last 2010), picking up the pieces of my life after that loss and going on with the business. Why would I ever think of going on a European tour in the midst of all that?
And yet, when we got to the French embassy that day, all these facts of my life were made suspect by the person who interviewed us. It seemed to him we were a family of potential illegal aliens who want to migrate to France. I guess that was the assumption. And so he proceeded to interrogate (not interview), yes interrogate, let me emphasize that, us on why we live our lives the way we do and why we never travelled and why we suddenly all want to go to Europe when we have never travelled as a family outside of the country so far.
The nightmare of the Schengen Visa
I never believed that applying for visas would be such a traumatizing and horrifying experience and yet, I can say with certainty that I have never been so insulted and humiliated in my life. First off, that place felt like some torture chamber of sorts. You had to go though guards and a police to get through the door. They had a big and heavy metal door to the interview area. That door, I now call the door of doom. There are 5 windows inside but apparently only 4 windows that are used. You approach these windows for interviews. The people who interview you are behind thick glass enclosures and they use mics to speak to you. The whole place is set up so you can hear everybody who is being interviewed and thus, you can hear everybody who is being berated, humiliated and interrogated. The room is full of tension and fear. The fear is so thick you can almost smell it.
If there is an art to supreme rudeness and cruelty, the people who do interviews in the French embassy must be PhD holders of this. I have heard so much crap while waiting in that room, I don’t know where to begin.
They post signs in that room like “Kindly wait to be called” and stamp notes in your passport like “Kindly report to the French Embassy after your return” but there is no kindness or courtesy whatsoever in that room or in that process or in that office.
These people call you up and talk to you brusquely, they seem to purposely intimidate people prior to the interview so people’s guards are down or so that you are more vulnerable to their attack. For example during visa releasing process, they call up the numbers and say line up to submit your passports. Most people end up giving their claim stubs along with their passports, which is logical, but apparently not part of the process. So people making this mistake are berated and shouted at. “Passports only!!!” is said in varying tones of anger and condescension, all with the same effect of making the waiting game more excruciating for people waiting to find out if their application was approved or declined. If by some chance you were late and did not get to join the “line up” for visa releasing, if you approach the window to ask if you can still submit your passports, depending on the person’s mood, they can either accept your passport or say rudely that “ask the window that interviewed you if they will still accept your passport because you’re late!” I heard one lady apologizing and saying that perhaps they can still accept the passports since they came all the way from the province but the visa people at that embassy are impervious to people’s situations. That lady was just five minutes late and all they had to do was accept those passports but no, they just had to be a jackass about the whole thing.
Now let me get to our momentous interview. The person doing the interview works under the assumption that all you tell them are lies and proceeds with the interview with that line of questioning. To begin with, he didn’t even believe we received a real award. He asked details about the award but there were questions like “what did you give them to win? Did you join a promo?” I told him our company winning the award was featured in the Philippine Star newspaper but he said that would not help and he refused to see the newspaper I brought with me. It doesn't make sense, why would he refuse "hard evidence" such as a feature in prestigious national news daily if he suspected we weren't legit? I couldn't help but think that if he wanted proof that we were legit, a news feature that was sure to have been fact checked by the newspaper was good enough proof but he refused to consider that. I found it all so strange, how he was so belligerent about it.
He grilled my husband about our gross and net income last year, and asked me machine gun style, when we were married, what year and which Parish church -- as if to indicate that he wasn’t so sure we were really husband and wife. My husband, who’s not so good with English, asked if they could speak in Filipino since the person doing the interview was himself a Filipino but was coldly and rudely refused, with that person saying “No, you cannot speak in Filipino.” And yet, previous and later interviews we have heard this person doing while we waited for our results showed us that he even conducted interviews in Cebuano to some of the applicants when he felt like it. Everything seems so absurdly arbitrarily decided by these people.
Then he zeroed in on my mother, he said that our proof of income (bank statements, passbooks and income tax return) will not suffice. She had to show that she had money to travel, like her own bank account and other means of income. Needless to say, my mother was mortified by the whole interview. All she wanted was to see me receive this award. I never thought I'd have to put her through hell to do that.
I'm sure it's their job to scare the heck out of applicants all the time. But there must be a better way of doing this. I half think they actually enjoy doing this to people, a couple of other applicants before us (both grandmother types) came out of that window in tears. They were denied visas and were shouted at and humiliated by this person (they had the temerity to question the interviewer on why they were denied visas and that person loudly and curtly replied that "we cannot comment on that and if you want to appeal the decision, you can do so with the Ministry in France!" -- such a stupid suggestion, if you could call it a suggestion, since how could these grandmas appeal the consul's decision abroad when they were denied visas to enter France in the first place). It doesn't help that the visa section is a public space, so everybody hears everybody who's being interviewed. So if the interviewer is particularly vicious on you then everybody knows as well.
Oh and that person ended our interview with "come back and we will submit this application to the Ministry for consideration." And without any further acknowledgement whatsoever, he turned his back on us and left the window (he didn't even say anything like "thank you, this interview is over."
That person never even congratulated us for being the only Filipino company to win top prize in the internationally renowned World Young Reader Prize of the WAN-IFRA. It just makes me sad that there really are people like that. My son calls him a “bad person,” I don’t correct my boy or tell him otherwise. Kids should know early on that bad people really do exist.
Oh and one last thing, that interviewer even asked why it took me so long to travel again as last time I left the Philippines was to visit relatives in California in 2000. I told him I never had a reason to leave the country again until now, I think he thought that was strange and threatened me that they can check on the DFA for other issued passports that I did not declare, and I told him go ahead and check because I have no other “secret” passports. The nerve of these people! I almost told him that I haven't been applying for visas to first world countries since I became an adult because of all the horror stories about visa applications. And I don't relish the thought of being interrogated and humiliated before going for a tour or vacation. And now, I have my own horror story to add to the Filipino collective experience of visa application/humiliation.
I just sometimes get sad thinking that one of the happiest experiences of my life was marred by this awful experience. And yet I know, they will all just say it’s not personal, it’s just all in a day’s work for them but I said this before and I’ll say it again -- there must be a better way of doing this job. Because to intimidate and humiliate people on a regular basis for a living? That’s not much of a job.
Anyway, a part of me also believes as well that it wouldn’t have been such an “adventure” if there were no hurdles and cliff hangers to the story. In hindsight, the whole story of our international award and trip to Europe feels all the more like a” movie” of a sort because it had its own twists and turns, with bad guys, heroes and allies and the happy ending everybody wishes for. And this time, the happy ending is true.
TO BE CONTINUED...
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