International child adoption must be easier. So must be abduction. But he has four legs, isn’t potty trained, and weights about a thousand pounds. If only I could tuck him under the airline seat…
I have called the USDA at various intervals since I first decided this horse could not be left behind in the Qatari desert to an uncertain fate, which was more or less the day I bought him. Each time I got a different answer. When someone at the USDA animal import office finally picked up the phone—definitely not the first time I tried—I had an optimistic conversation with one Dr. Buck, who seemed to think that he needed three days quarantine when he arrived in the US, as long as a European vet did some certain sort of paperwork on top of the Qatar paperwork. Grand, I thought. That’s easy.
Then I called shipping agents. First scenario: 60 days in Dubai, then 7 days at US quarantine. Second scenario: 15 days in Europe, then 37 days quarantine in the US. Third scenario: 24 hours in Amsterdam, 7 days quarantine in the US. The sixty days in Dubai had something to do with a fluctuating interpretation of the presence of African Horse Sickness in the Arabian peninsula. (But it turned out for these purposes, Qatar was not indeed part of the Arabian peninsula. Who knew?) The 15 days in Europe had to do with the European interpretation of Screw Worm, a disease easily treated with one dose of horse aspirin equivalent. The 37 days in US quarantine had to do with the American interpretation of an equine venereal disease known as CEM (contagious equine something-or-other). It’s sexually transmitted from stallions to mares and causes abortions, but apparently if he stands next to a European horse on a shipping pallet, to the USDA this counts as a possibly infectious scenario. (And no, they can't lose themselves to the air of springtime and eagerly jump the barrier between the compartments...quarters are too tight.) The Europeans were always a bit too promiscuous for Puritan Americans, even when they’re just standing next to you…
With the exception of African Horse Sickness, all of these
diseases already exist in the US, and a recent CEM outbreak brought Kentucky
breeding farms to a halt just a year ago. But laws lagging behind realities,
they go onward with the quarantines, because if for nothing else, they raise a
lot of revenue for the USDA.
When I was offered scenario #3 in mid-March of this year by a shipping agent, the shores of America seemed suddenly close, and in a great whiff of excitement, I gave the agency the go-ahead to start booking the trip. I felt like we’d be on a plane tomorrow.
But then the problem of international import-export regime cooperation moved out of the realm of the hypothetical into a new reality: getting actual people on the ground in Amsterdam (the European transfer point), JKF airport (the destination), and Doha (the origin) to agree on a set of procedures and blood tests.
I called the agent every few days: “I’m waiting on America.” “I’m waiting on Europe.” “I got word back from America, but now I’m waiting on Europe to respond again.” A few days turned into ten, and once word was confirmed that representatives on the ground would approve the horse’s health condition based on certain blood results, it turned out that the Qatari office that processed the final schedule was on vacation.
And here began the latest lesson in the culture and sociology of the Arab world. In a small country like Qatar, there actually is only one person who can organize the export blood tests in the whole country. His stamp, which only he can wield, is the only official one to get the process of blood tests underway. This particular vet was in Sydney, on vacation. (At least he wasn’t under the ash cloud in Europe!) When the agent announced to me that he had returned, I asked her if I should go to his office in person. “Oh, no,” she said. “I’ve emailed him.”
This is a laughable statement, which prompted me to call her boss, who explained to me she hadn’t done many shipments out of Qatar, and had really only done things out of Dubai. In the UAE, he explained in his British accent, things mostly worked normally. After apologizing for the slowness and explaining the problems they routinely encountered in Doha, he blurted out to me: “What’s wrong with that country, anyway?” I responded that I had been working here for four years, had been unable to answer that question, so I was leaving on the cargo pallet with the horse. He laughed. And told me to engage all local resources I knew to help out his inexperienced colleague.
One phone call and a trip to one vet clinic got me the cell phone number of the gate-keeping vet in question at the import-export office, recently back from his vacation. One phone call to him, with the proper Islamic greetings in my pigeon Arabic, relevant (or irrelevant) thank you’s, apologies, flattery and reference to how the other vet who gave me his number was a good friend, he faxed me the paperwork within an hour. Nothing like a bit of kowtowing and obsequiousness to get things done...
No small accomplishment, this.
Since the agent in Dubai had been waiting nearly ten days for this paperwork, and I managed to secure it in a couple hours, her embarrassment spurred her into action. The next morning, we had a shipment date: May 28th. It was, indeed, about two weeks later than I had planned, but the international relations lesson and the Arabic sociology lesson had taken two weeks.
At seven a.m. the next morning, I was at Dr. Yousef’s office, going over paperwork and planning the blood tests. When I gave him my business card and he saw that I was a professor, he asked what I taught at Qatar Foundation. When I responded “politics,” he chortled and responded: “That’s trouble!”
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