Passport fun

Well, I finally spoke to someone at Pretoria Home Affairs. Because of the strikes, and because it turns out that London sat on our application for WEEKS before sending it to Pretoria, there is NO WAY we will get the passport in time. In fact, she will probably not even have had her birth registered by then. They are still trying to determine our citizenship, which will take a few more weeks.

So - the question now becomes... do we just take her in on her British passport (illegally, because she will be returning permanently) or apply for a temporary emergency passport (which will cost us MORE money)????

Life improves, or does it?

After the disaster that was Nellie's dinner on Monday, last night was better. Wow - that post generated a lot of emails! And interestingly, it was the first time I've had equal amounts of conflicting advice.

Anyway, we did the same routine as the previous two nights, except that I started half an hour earlier. It wasn't easy and we did have a few tears, but nothing major. I made a concerted effort not to make it a trial for her, but to stick to my guns. It seemed to work. It took an hour, but she ate beautifully in the end. Given that she'd had a bottle of milk an hour before supper, I was really thrilled at how much she ate - a bottle of food, a small yoghurt, a fruit pot, a small box of raisins, a small bread stick, and one of Mommy's biscuits.

(And she was very cute yesterday! See her post on her site about the day. We did some more videoing, so will try to get that up on her site in due course.)

I rang Home Affairs again this morning, to find out about the progress on her birth registration and passport.... only to discover that... wait for it... they are all on strike AGAIN! (or is that STILL?). I seem to have the knack for choosing the day to call!

Turns out that civil servants in SA are on the rampage about pay increases. I sympathise. When you realise that a nurse who has been working for 22 years, and is the major breadwinner in her family of 6, still gets less than £500 a month, it kind of puts the inconvenience of Nellie not having a passport into perspective. Yet, on the other hand, SA is a third world country where unemployment is at 30%. Where are all the civil servants expecting this extra cash to come from? The government has increased its offer from 5% pay increase to 7.25%. Strikers have reduced their demands from 12% to 10%. But that's still a way off from reaching a compromise.

While this battle rages, government schools have been closed for a week; state hospitals are moving patients to private ones, only to discover that the private hospitals are also closing; neo-natal units are unable to help all but the most critically ill babies; Home Affairs departments are closed in both Cape Town and in Pretoria; train, taxi and bus services are either not running, or running in a drastically reduced fashion, especially in Kwa-Zulu Natal; refuse collections have been stopped... the list goes on.

Here I am going on about Nellie not eating when my home country has come to a grinding halt because of injustices in the civil servant pay structures. I think their pay is an offense to God, and yet at the same time, I don't see how to improve their situation without making drastic cuts to essential services. Yes, there is a lot of corruption in government, and that needs to be dealt with if we're ever going to solve this problem. But to what extent, and how much of a difference it would make to available money for salaries, I really couldn't say.

I'm praying that this doesn't deteriorate into something like the strikes in the UK in Thatcher's day. I'm praying that a solution can be found that is good for everyone.

And yes, I'm praying that Nellie gets her passport in time and eats something too, between now and then.

More pics and TONS of frustration

Thanks to Ash for these lovely pics!

This is Nellie with Bradley, one of the other kids our childminder looks after. He's been like a big brother to Nellie, and she copies everything he does and says, and follows him everywhere. She also bullies him when she can - takes toys from him, pushes him off chairs, that kind of thing.

Latest skill - sitting the right way around on toy cars/ motorbikes and pushing herself FORWARDS, not just backwards! Doesn't she look so proud of herself here?

And a new favourite activity - playing with the straps on her pushchair/ car seat. She knows where & how they're supposed to fit together, but she doesn't yet have the fine motor coordination to put them together. She's trying though - it's better than a puzzle! It keeps her occupied for long stretches of time, which is especially useful when you're standing in a long queue!

Speaking of queues... we stood in one for over an hour this morning trying to sort out her SA passport etc. What a saga! We registered her birth & applied for her passport back in SA in March last year. We thought we were being clever. As it takes 4-6 months to process (you just gotta LOVE the SA Home Affairs department's efficiency!) we were told not to check up on the applications until at least 6 months had passed. This we duly did. After 6 months, we called. No sorry, they have no record of our application. We faxed all the receipts etc to prove that we had made the application. No sorry, they have no record of our application. We must apply again, and no, sorry, they will not refund us our fees.

So, we duly applied again. This time from the UK, via the SA consulate in London. But it took us a while because you can't download the forms off the web (although it says you can) and their phone system is an automated one that does not allow you to leave a message. Oh, and you can't go in to their office - they don't accept visitors without an appointment, and you can only make an appointment for a passport application once you have the forms and an application number.

In frustration I eventually wrote to them to ask for the forms. Forms were duly posted to us. We completed them, and sent them back. They were sent back to us because we'd missed something off (which was not listed in the 'supporting documents you need to send with your application' list. Then - silence. Nothing. So, 2 weeks ago I wrote to them again, explaining that as we are planning to move back to SA at the end of June (and they lost our documentation the first time around) I'd like to know where we are in the process. And then... silence. No response.

Yesterday though, I finally get a call. Didn't I receive a letter from them on the 20th March? No, I did not. Oh, well then they'll have to post me the forms again because we missed a spot where we had to sign something. (AAARRGGHHH!!) Ever so sweetly I ask whether it won't be possible for us to come in to the office to sign them - explaining again that they'd been lost the 1st time around and that we needed them done ASAP because we're moving home. Oh yes, no problem. Just come to the office any time in the morning and let the security guard know who we're coming to see.

So - early this morning we arrive (they only open at 9am and there was already a queue). The guard/ doorman is only letting people through who have an appointment and whose name appears on his list. (I just have to say how typically African this mentality is - we only live by the letter of the law, not the spirit of the law!) However, after explaining that we'd been called by one of the clerks and what we needed to do, he eventually let us in...

... where we proceeded to wait for about 30 minutes or more for the clerk we needed to see...

... only to sign the form in 2 places where (and get a load of this) there was no indication that we needed to sign and no line on which to sign...

... and then to discover that there was YET another form we needed to fill in that was not on the 'documents you need to send with your application' list...

...which requires us to fill in the ID numbers of both of one our sets of parents. Yes, like we carry that sort of info around with us all the time. I don't even know Graeme's ID number, and I'm supposed to just remember my parents' ones too?! And am I allowed to use my mobile phone (cell) to call them to get the info? No, phone use is banned in the Consulate. So, I duly ignored that rule and called my mother... (I figured one ID number was better than none.)... 3 times because reception was so poor she could barely hear me and I didn't want to shout as that would attract attention to the fact that I was illegally using my phone....

AAARRRGGHHH!!!

And then, after all that, we STILL have to wait 4-6 months for the application, even though it's now been 2 months since we started this whole process with the Consulate!

Very sweetly, and trying very hard not to lose my rag with the poor clerk (after all, SA civil servants do not have minds of their own or think for themselves, they only do exactly what they are told to - nothing more, nothing less), I asked if there was any way we could speed the process up (given they'd lost our documentation and we need Nellie's passport by the end of June so she can legally enter SA because her British one isn't good enough if we're moving back permanently because she doesn't have residency yet....)? No. At least, there isn't any way it can be done from the Consulate. (I mean - COME ON!! - this is the CONSULATE for crying out loud!!!)

No, what has to happen is that WE have to phone Pretoria Home Affairs ourselves, explain the situation all over again, and hope and pray we get a nice clerk on the other end of the line, because they're just the London Consulate Office, and apparently Home Affairs will take more notice of us than of them. Hmm... ja well no fine. (Now there's a good old South African expression!) If we do get a nice friendly clerk (CHANCES?!), then we might be able to get it early. If not, then we will have to apply for emergency travel documents for Nellie.....

I'm very tempted just to ignore the whole thing and pretend we're going home on holiday so she can get a 3 month visa. Her application OUGHT to be done by then... right? Or is that hoping for too much from our lovely government?