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Dispatches From the Departures Gate: No Passport, No Cry

A missing passport has a remarkable ability to transform even the most seasoned traveler into a surprisingly convincing improvisational actor.

“We’ll let you into Jamaica,” said the head of security at Kingston International Airport, sliding my worthless passport back towards me beneath the glass window. “But it’s on you to find your own way out.” 

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It was 3 a.m. on a hot, sticky night in the Caribbean in March 2016—a simpler time. I was a 29-year-old corporate drone traveling to Jamaica with two friends to celebrate surviving the polar vortex that overtook Manhattan that winter. I’d managed to get on the JetBlue flight after convincing the befuddled customs agent at JFK to allow me to board the plane, despite my lack of an up-to-date passport: “Don’t worry, I know a guy,” I told them confidently.  

My passport was over a year expired; my driver’s license, too. I hadn’t even noticed that my passport had expired until roughly three hours prior to my scheduled flight. Still, I hadn’t been lying. I did know a guy: a charming U.S. Embassy representative in Kingston, who, when I called in a panic before my flight, assured me that my lack of paperwork wouldn’t impede my imminent travel plans. All I had to do, according to him, was show up at the embassy upon arrival, and receive a notarized travel letter to return home: “Don’t worry, mon. We can’t wait to welcome you to Jamaica.”

I remembered his words precisely; a beacon of hope delivered in musical, lilting Jamaican Patois over the phone. But his name? Not so much. It was the first of many unforced errors (well, aside from actually renewing my passport on time) on this entirely avoidable foray into international illegality. But the embassy wouldn’t open for hours, so I waited on a wooden bench outside Arrivals at Kingston’s Norman Manley International Airport, watching the sunrise and pondering my fate. 

When I arrived at the embassy at 7:15 a.m. sharp, there was already a line of hundreds snaking off the front entrance. I was expecting this—the mystery man had told me to form a separate queue for international visitors. Alas, I didn’t feel too comfortable cutting ahead of a line monitored by armed guards (not to mention general line etiquette), so I filed to the back. 

And, not for the first or last time on this adventure, I started sharing the tale of my own idiocy with my fellow queuers. How I’d believed I could just arrive and depart with a permission slip. How I was currently undocumented on the island (in fact, there was no record of me ever departing New York). In true Jamaican spirit, the crowd was with me.

“Hey, she has no papers here, she’s stuck,” the man beside me yelled ahead. “And she’s not Jamaican. Let her up to the front.” A wave of momentum propelled me forward amid encouraging laughter from my fellow early-morning risers: “Good luck, girl, I’ve been trying to get a passport here for years.”

When I arrived at the entrance, the government official was kind, yet (understandably) confused. Her questions were reasonable: Who did I speak to on the phone? What did he say about a letter? My answers were, I soon realized, less reasonable, because apparently, seeing a notary required an appointment. No appointments were available for another three weeks—a time frame that was not feasible for my bank account nor my........

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