16th Posting  -- Driver's License
Autor: Buster Hale | Publicado: 2011-10-20T10:47:00-03:00

Getting a Driver's License. The next time you complain about getting or renewing your driver's license in the States, I want you to think about what you have to do to get and/or renew your license here. My international driver's permit from AAA was only good for 6 months and then I had to get a Brazilian driver's license. But I had to wait to start the process until  my national ID card arrived. So when the ID card arrived in early August, I officially started the process; I had already had my Mississippi driver's license translated by an official interpreter in Campo Grande. DETRAN, the Mississippi Highway Patrol station equivalent, is almost 5 miles from the center of town and is only open in the mornings. So most people here hire a despachante to handle the process; despachantes are authorized to act before government agencies.


So I made copies of all my documents and delivered them to the despachante, whose office is right down the street from the school. Nothing happened for several weeks until one day he called and said to come to his office at 8AM the next day to go to DETRAN to get my picture made. After waiting for almost an hour for him to arrive, we went out to DETRAN to have our pictures made. It was a nice, air-conditioned building, but I am not sure that I could get back out there. When it was my turn, the girl asked for my passport which I had not brought. I said that I only had the ID card. She called her boss who got on the phone with someone in Campo Grande who said that the ID card would serve (do). Then the girl asked me whether I wanted to look in a mirror on the wall before she took the picture; I said no that it was just a driver's license. After the she took the picture, she showed me my picture on the computer screen and again asked me whether it was alright. Apparently Brazilians are very particular about their pictures; I didn't even put on my glasses to look.


Several weeks go by and one Friday morning I get a frantic call at 8:15 from the despachante saying that I needed to be in his office agora agora (right now). I had been preparing for class and quickly got dressed to drive to his office. When I got there, he took me to a psychologist's office to have a psychological exam; the appointment was for 8 and I was almost an hour late. The woman was very nice and gave me a series of psychological tests (I am not making this up). I had to draw a tree on a piece of paper and then answer 10 questions about my tree such as was my tree dead or alive. Next I had to write a paragraph about my life. I also had to take a pattern matching test in which I was given three symbols and had to find them in  a page full of symbols. I had to take a timed test to draw bars as fast as I could and then draw a dash when she said pause. Finally, I had to take a test with 40 questions with figures to test my reasoning; by the end of the test I was cross eyed with all the figures and just guessed at the last three. After almost an hour of all these tests, the psychologist asked me a few questions about how long I had been driving and then said I passed. Thank goodness! One of the fellow teachers said that he failed one part and had to take it again; he did not concentrate enough on one of the tests!


The following Tuesday I get another frantic call at 9:15 from the despachante saying that I had an eye exam at 8:10AM; he said he tried to call me earlier but the phone went directly to voice mail. Anyway the doctor was in a "eye hospital" about a block from my apartment. Even though I was over an hour late, they took me and I was in and out in about 20 minutes. Before I saw the young ophthalmologist, I had my blood pressure taken (normal), had a standard eye exam (I still don't need glasses to drive), a strength test in my hands, and had to stand on one foot and then the other. When the girl told me that I would have to bend my knees, go down to the floor, and then back up, I told her I would fall over. And I did. She just laughed and said nobody can do it. After this, I saw the doctor who just shook my hand and asked me what I did in Corumbá. I told him and he said I passed. 




"APTO" means I passed.


Four weeks later my license arrived, almost three months after I started the process. Now I have all my Brazilian documents after almost six months in the country.