This just in...

Are gender bias and cultural differences the best I can do for my first day back? Sadly, no.

While I was gone, one of our students began her travels home to Tanzania. Her plane tickets (bought by the University) showed that she had to transit through Italy. She had been told here in Costa Rica that she would not need an italian visa in order to fly through there. So she departed on Saturday on the same flight as several University colleagues (including a University executive) for Caracas, Venezuela where they would all be transferring to different flights. When she arrived in Venezuela, Alitalia barred her from entering her connecting flight to Italy because she had no italian visa. Apparently, her ticket required her to fly into Rome, take a flight to another town in Italy, and from there on to Tanzania. This means, according to migration laws, she would not be transiting but entering Italy and would therefore require a visa. The university executive tried to argue her case, but this was Venezuela, so Spanish was a necessity for arguement. The executive had to leave to catch her flight, so she took the name and number of the customs official and called another university official from her flight. He does not speak spanish, so he called around the management team until he finally got through to my boss. She called the number immediately and got a recording saying that the number (a cell phone, as it turns out) is not permitted to accept international calls. My boss then tried to call a local operator in Venzuela in the hopes she could be connected to the phone number in that way. No dice. The operators for landlines are government employed. Cell phones are privately owned, thus the operator was not permitted to forward the call. And my boss had only been given the first name of the customs agent. So there was no way to find her.

What happened to the student in the end? Get a load of this:

We. Don't. Know.

Fantastic, isn't it?? Apparently, they're just hoping she'll be deported because international law stipulates that you can only be deported to your home country. Which means she'd get to go home in the end. In the meantime, I guess she's just stuck in Caracus. It's very expensive to get stuck in Caracus. That happened to one of our students on his way here. He had to spend 6 days there. He almost ran out of money. My student has got a husband and three small kids waiting for her back home. Keep her in your prayers.