Tinay Part II

Exit from Jordan

After 10 years in Jordan, Tinay felt it was time to move on. She only had one choice for her next destination at that time – London. She thought that she might have a chance to make it better in that famed city. She visited London once before, while working as a Nanny to Jordan’s royal relatives – this is one of the perks of her job, something that she talks about only in passing, as if traveling with royalty (even if she was just one of the staff) was the most natural thing to do. She accompanied her ward in one of their trips to England and from there, she got the idea that England might just hold more promise for her.

The bare-footed barrio girl who was refused a half sack of rice by her own uncle was about to start on the next great adventure of her life. From the tiny kingdom of Jordan steeped in a culture so alien from her own, Tinay is now going to one of the richest nations in the world – a country which once held power over a third of the whole world. What fate awaits her there? At this time she did not know. But one thing was certain – she was not bare-footed anymore and she had a host of exciting opportunities for her to better her life and her family’s.

Her exit from Jordan alone makes for another interesting story, which proves that the gods must really be watching over our heroine. Upon her resignation from her job in the hospital, she planned to exit. In Jordan, employers hold the passport of their foreign workers (at least that’s what Tinay knew the protocol was). To put her plan of exit in motion, she “borrowed” her passport from the hospital (which was her employer then), in the pretense that she needed it as proof of identity. In truth, she wanted to use it to apply for a visa to the UK.

To give you an idea about how Tinay behaves when she sets her mind on something, I must tell you that she does not look at the obstacles. Thus, the guts to apply for the UK visa, without knowing what will happen next. Well, her visa got approved within that day that she applied. According to her, she just tried and when she got it the same day, she was flabbergasted!

With that fantastic news came a “happy problem” – she could not return the passport to the hospital anymore as it had a UK visa stamped on it already – proof that she lied about the reason for borrowing it. She reached the point of no return – she had to exit or else. Remember, she resigned already and her time in Jordan was almost up.

Again, she applied her tried and tested formula: TRY. She initially tried to exit via Israel (I don’t know why she could not exit legally from Jordan. I think it is because her visa requires her to return to the Philippines – something that she didn’t consider doing at all). She traveled by taxi to Israel. Unfortunately, she was not allowed to exit from there. She went back to Jordan and decided to wait for a few days. Shortly after her failed exit, she attended a party where she met a friend of hers. This is how Tinay is. Faced with a seemingly insurmountable problem of not knowing how to get out of Jordan to her next destination, she still had the energy and enthusiasm to party – which worked to her advantage in this instance, actually.

This friend of hers whom she met in the party, is also a Filipina and is married to a Jordanian military man. She told the couple about her failed attempt to go to England via Israel. To make a long and winded story short, the military man offered to have her cleared to leave Jordan – just like that! So she made it to the land of kings and knights in 1996.

More to follow… Read about how she found love and lost.