Vehicle License

As many SGU students have found, it is very helpful to have a car around Grenada. Back in March Megan and I made the choice to purchase a Suzuki Escudo (aka Sidekick with right hand drive). I noticed when we purchased this little SUV that there was a good size sticker on the front windshield with an expiration date of June 30th clearly marked on it. As the end of our stay for term 1 came up I inquired about how to get our car re-registered before we left so it wasn't expired when we returned. I was told "You can't register a car early, do it when you come back." With this in mind we took off for CA thinking when we came back it'd be no big deal to get this taken care of.
Thursday (we flew in Wednesday) we drove over to the police station to get our drivers permits renewed. With how relaxed all of Grenada's laws are we didn't really see anything wrong with this. (Although it wasn't the smartest move we've made). We hadn't even gotten out of the car yet at the station when the fun began. A man approached us wearing jeans and an un-tucked polo shirt. People often try to make a buck buy 'assisting' tourists with common tasks in lou of a fee. Since we both already knew what to do to get our permits we tried to brush this guy off but he kept on rambling on in a sort of way which made me think he was more likely speaking Swahili then English. I did notice after a bit though that he started pointing at our 2007 registration sticker.... wait for it.. OH right of course! Then I noticed the words FINE and FEES coming out of his mouth. Feeling rather stuck and not sure whether to follow this guy or hop in our car and run the other way we chose to follow him into the police station as he didn't seem angry or show any intent to do us wrong. We got our permits to drive no problem. This guy speaking some local variation of English walk talking a million miles a minute to the police officers behind the counter. Eventually (after a LOT of talking), I finally figured out that when the "license sticker" NOT a "registration sticker" has expired Grenadian Police take is EXTREMELY seriously. "THAT VEHICLE IS NOT TO BE DRIVEN ANYWHERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" What also came out of our uh.. discussion... was that we had to DRIVE the car to be inspected, and the inspection place closed in less then 15 minutes. So I can't drive it anywhere, but to get it licensed i must drive it... eventually it came out that the police must write me formal permission to drive my car from one location to the inspection location and back home with specific time limits. After getting this permission I asked "OK after I get it inspected, then what?" They said "DRIVE IT HOME AND PARK IT!!", followed by the previous rant of not driving the car anywhere. The police told me I had to walk back down to the police station Friday morning to get ANOTHER permission from them to drive the car to the Carenage (15 minute drive north near the capitol) to pay for the sticker and pick up the sticker.
Megan and I zoomed off to the inspection thankful they didn't fine us for driving around in such a DANGEROUS car. Obviously any car with an expired license is likely to explode at any second killing thousands. We got the car inspected at what was a typical Grenadian style joint. Picture a warehouse with a few broken down cars parked at odd angles and brush growing up through the hoods and interior. Then add the general scene of a chop-shop, add a some rust, and throw in one large black man with his feet up on a desk leaning back watching a "LIVE FOX News! AMAZING CAR CHASE!!". Some moron in Texas decided he didn't want to stop when the cops wanted him to and this Grenadian Inspection guy had a hard time un-gluing his eyes from this spectacle to even acknowledge we were there.
The inspection went fine other then our horn not working which is odd as it worked perfectly fine prior to our departure, (and started working again today). We drove back to the police station since our permission didn't expire for another 45 minutes. I showed them the green inspection report and that everything had passed after a police lady took it from us looked it up and down with her nose in the air. I asked if I could get permission to drive the car to get the sticker tomorrow morning. The police refused again and again, "we can NOT give permission today for tomorrow".... my reply "but the permission is hand written with the date and time frame the permission is valid for?" They didn't care. Eventually one more mellow police officer chimed in (I think sensing the stupidity in this) and said "sorry it's just protocol". So we left annoyed.
I got up early-ish Friday since I had a work meeting at 11 which I was hosting. I rode my bike back down to the police station to get the permission to drive to get the license sticker. I was greeted by a new group of officers. In their typical fashion they accuse me of doing everything wrong until I prove otherwise, and even then they look at me with contempt and suspicion. I was asked immediately "HOW DID YOU GET HERE!" I replied, "with the bike parked right there". (the sweat dripping from my forehead, the nice three ridges of hair which my helmet formed, and the sweat everywhere else apparently wasn't enough indication). "WHY! do you want permission?!?" We continued round and round for a while and eventually got to the point where this police man just didn't feel like giving me permission. He told me to walk, or take a bus. "Why don't you ride your bike?" me, "because it's a long ways and I was told to come back here to get permission from you". He never gave me permission. I turned around and left frustrated and saying something along the lines of "this is REALLY stupid" which was followed by a shout out "WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE!"

The laws in Grenada are simply each police person's opinion. They may be written down but that doesn't matter because no one would ever bother to reference them. Every cop has the authority to dictate the law as they see fit, or to what fits there mood. This guy apparently felt lazy and didn't like me so he was a pain in the ass.

The ONE good piece of information I got out of this encounter was that the office with the stickers closed at 3pm, just enough time for me to finish my meeting and catch a Reggie bus to the Carenage.

When I arrived at the appropriate building in the Carenage I asked at the front desk on the first floor, where do I go for the license stickers? She kindly replied second floor. Thanking her we went up stairs and I was quickly reminded that there are two main areas up stairs as this is the same place I had paid for the transfer of title in March. Megan stood in line for us as I went back down stairs to get clarification since the line was LONG and slow moving. "Do we stand in the line up front or go around back to the offices?" When I was here in March we stood in line only to find out we should have got straight to the back offices first. She said, "go straight to the offices". Great! so I went back upstairs, pulled Megan out of line and we went to the back offices. We found the correct unlabeled desk and asked about a license sticker. "You need to stand in line and pay for it first, then come back to me." ugh... OK so back to the front we went. We waited in line for about 45 minutes, paid the license fee which was $260 EC... about $100 USD. While paying we noted a sign on the glass "$500.00 fine or 3 MONTHS prison time for expired registration... EEEK!!! We got the sticker and I noticed the expiration still said June 30th. I asked why and he said "You're LATE!" I asked "Well I was gone all summer and I was told I could not pay early. Can I pay this early next summer so I am not late next time?" The reply, "You can only pay between May 16th and June 30th." Me, "can I move the due date to be earlier so I can pay it on time?", "No."
So NOW I get it, Grenada has so many levels of bureaucratic "protocols" that no one has any idea why they are the way they are (nor do they care), nor any authority to question them (much less change them).
We now know the hoops to jump through, regardless of how silly they may be Grenada's police force apparently takes auto insurance, and license stickers VERY seriously. As a side note though hopping into the drivers seat with an open bottle of beer in your hand is totally A-OK, as is hanging off the back of any vehicle driving down the road. Drinking at any age is apparently totally acceptable. Cars that spew out more smoke then a coal power plant get the green thumb, and vehicles which generally look like they are about to fall into a million pieces pass inspection year after year.

It must be a Grenada specific requirement for all cars, a self destruct mode which activates with an expired license sticker. This of course would cause far more devastation they the hundreds of drunk drivers or people hanging off of cars.

It could have turned out much worse, but it still wasn't exactly a walk in the park either.

ahh the Caribbean life, isn't it great?!