The Passport Quandry

Posted in Pre-Departure by Dom on September 9th, 2006

So some of you may know, some of you may not. I didn’t even know until after TJ and I got back from Texas. Apparently FedEx had lost my Peace Corps passport application. See, I already had a passport but that doesn’t matter when you join the Peace Corps, you have to get a new one. The same in all aspects except that it says that I’m a Peace Corps Volunteer on the back cover and it’s only good for five years instead of ten. There are two options when applying for this passport, you can either apply as a new passport and go to the Post Office for verification and pay $30, or you can apply as a renewal, fill out one form, and mail it with your current passport in a FedEx envelope with the overnight label provided by the Peace Corps. After attempting the first, I went with the second. There is a time frame that they tell you as well. They want you to mail it in within 10 days of accepting an invitation. Well, because I didn’t want any problems, I did just that. As it happened(”as it was suppose to happen”) the day I got back from Texas, over a month and a half later, I found out it was missing.

I recieved an email from the Peace Corps’ country desk saying that the travel agency hadn’t recieved my application yet. Obviously, I became a little uptight and dug out the tracking number from my files. According to tracking it never left Atlanta. Great. This was on a Wednesday night. I called FedEx and let them know. Someone from less-of-a-phone-booth-more-of-a-warehouse called me back almost immediately requesting a description, which I happily gave. I then proceeded to call every business day until two days ago, the seventh. On that day I finally broke down and mailed in a new application and a form explaining that I’ve lost my passport. As it went I had to mail it through FedEx the second time as well, because all of the Peace Corps regular mail is heat treated for anthrax. For some reason UPS was never brought up.

I have tracked that package and I know that it was delivered yesterday. I included a not, per a lady at the travel agencies request, explaining my situation and requestion expedition. So now with two business weeks until my departure day, all I can do is hope. No ones discussed what happens if the passport application doesn’t go through in time, so we’ll just have to see. I’ve been told a tale of one of these passport’s not being recieved by the Peace Corps for two years since it was sent. As long as it turns up, that’s really all I care about. Though I feel now that I’ve sent in the form explaining that it is lost, I’m a marked man.