The Car!

Thursday night Brandon pulled into our garage.  We haven't had anything parked in it for the last six weeks except bikes, so it was pretty cluttered with car seats, strollers, lawn mowers (we have three), yard equipment, and toys.  I cleaned everything up so that he could park our much-beloved and much-destroyed Honda Pilot at the third home it's had overseas.

The car has been in Tashkent for longer than we have but it's spent the whole of that time sitting in the embassy parking lot, waiting for bureaucratic processes to declare that we were allowed to drive it.

The processes have been frustratingly slow, especially since we'd been assured that they would be much faster.  First we had to be accredited.  I had turned in paperwork the first week in June to get the process done, but somehow it wasn't done.  I'm not sure if it was pre-paperwork or if I turned it in too late or if it just wasn't turned in, but we were not accredited by the time we arrived, which I thought was supposed to be the plan.

So first we had to get accredited, which is the process by which we legally establish our presence here in Tashkent.  We're not tourists and we're not Uzbeks and we're not working for a company, so the government has to recognize Brandon as a diplomat which allows him and us (because we're his family) to stay here and not get kicked out.  It also affords us some protections from various government processes.

After we got accredited, we had to get Uzbek driver's licenses.  We've never had to get local driver's licenses before, but we do here.  Brandon informed me that we have to have these documents, our American driver's licenses, our accreditation cards, and car documentation whenever we drive, which sounds like a lot of paperwork to me.

So with our accreditation cards and Uzbek licenses in hand, Brandon had to pay the registration fees.  On the day when the fees were ready to be paid, Brandon had forgotten the check book and also enough money to pay with.  I spent a half hour scrambling to figure out how to get the money to him so that he could bring the car home for the weekend, and finally had a friend's driver take it to the embassy and give it to his boss who gave it to Brandon who couldn't get it himself because he was in a meeting.

Brandon took the money down, paid it, and the car was ready to have its plates attached, which required a trip down to a government building to finish the job.  The embassy staff went to start the car and it was dead, which crushed our plans to have the car for the weekend.  They assured Brandon that the mechanic would look at the car first thing on Monday morning, and I made other plans for weekend transportation.

Monday morning the mechanic wasn't at work because of a death in the family.  Tuesday nobody looked at the car.  Wednesday they decided that the battery was dead and charged it.  Thursday morning they put a new battery in the car and Brandon forked over more money.  Thursday afternoon the car got plated and Thursday evening the car made it home.

We celebrated by taking it out Saturday night to a party at the British Ambassador's house followed by dinner.  We have survived reasonably well without a car for the last month an a half, helped out significantly by our sponsors who have an eight-seater minivan and a driver and a willingness to let us use them both (thanks, Sarah!).  Tashkent has an Uber-style app that works with taxis, so that has helped too.  We also live half a kilometer from a grocery store, so that has made getting food a whole lot easier.  And really, six weeks is much shorter than the five months we spent waiting for our car in Baku.  So I shouldn't complain.  But still, it really is great to have a car again!