Leje Qendrimi (Permission to Stay), Pt 1

It's the very tedious part about living outside one's passport country --- going though all the forms and documents to gain permission to stay long-term in a host country.  

And we have been spoiled in that Albania has a very generous policy for Americans living within their borders.  Just before we arrived, they changed the law to allow Americans to stay up to one year without applying for 'leje qendrimi' (permission to stay).

With our one year anniversary approaching in early September, it's time for us to start the process so, as Ellie says, "They won't throw us out."

The first documents we need to produce are birth certificates for the kids.  It seems straightforward enough but no, not here of course.  These certificates need to have been issued within the past three months, so the copies we were given at the time of their adoptions wouldn't suffice.

Though both Ellie and Reni were born in the capital, when they were placed in orphanages in different parts of Albania, their registration moved to the city of their new addresses.  And when we adopted them both, their registrations/records remained in the cities of their respective orphanages.

What that meant for us last week was that to get Ellie's birth certificate, we needed to schedule a trip to Vlora, 2.5 hours south of Tirana.  We had no clue where to find the offices where her records were kept, nor how one exactly procured such a document.  Thankfully we have our colleague, Mandi.

Before we left Tirana, he wisely suggested we look at an old copy of her birth certificate and it would tell us in what neighborhood within the city of Vlora the orphanage resides as all records are linked to the lagje (neighborhood). After some phone calls and asking around, we found the neighborhood office above (after passing it twice -- I won't comment on the overgrown shrubbery obscuring the sign).

After much waiting for our turn, we discovered that to get a copy of her birth certificate, we needed to go to another office in a different part of town.  Back to the car we went, more driving, more looking for parking.  Then we found it.  Nathan remembered it from 7.5 years ago, but I honestly couldn't tell you if I had been there before or not.  Wherever we were, it was b-u-s-y.

Ellie shot this photo out of the back of the car while we waited in the parking lot.

After finally finding the right window, the clerk searched for Ellie's name.  She searched and she searched.

It turns out that since we adopted Ellie, Vlora computerized all of their records.  And the funny thing is, computers require exact spelling matches to answer queries.

The staff looked in the original ledger from December 2006 (a giant book containing line after line of handwritten records) and Ellie was there.  Nathan and I were there.  Our names were spelled perfectly correctly.  But in the computer? You guessed it, our names were misspelled. Two keystrokes and our trip was for naught.

In spite of many apologies and admission of fault, the office did not have the authority to correct the mistakes.  They couldn't pick up the phone and make a call. We were told we would have to go to the official Registry in Tirana and provide all of our documents to show how their record should be corrected before a correct birth certificate could be printed.

So on Friday Nathan and Mandi made their first visit to correct the record. I will spare the details but suffice it to say, the process requires visits to 3 offices in as many days while requests make their way up the chain.  THEN we can go back to Vlora and try again.

This is just the beginning...(read Part II here)