Bureaucracy

Today was a big day - I collected the sticker in my passport staying I can stay here for two years.  Given the importance of the work that the immigration office does in Harare, you would have thought it would have a slightly more auspicious entrance than this.  I'm sure that there must be cupboard space somewhere for all the box files.  Surely. 

This was also more of an insight into Zim bureaucracy, which is renown for being painful - this time it also caused marital embarrassment on the part of my husband.  Upon arrival you have to fill in large ledger (they love a ledger) with details such as name, address, passport number and phone number - to stand in line.  So I (naively) questioned the requirement for this information to receive the reply that this is the process, which brought out the three year old in me of 'but why, this doesn't make sense'.  My husband still quite liked me at this point, until I proclaimed not to have a mobile phone number, then as I finally conceded to owning a phone, I locked myself out of it trying to retrieve the number.  This is when my husband disowned me, especially when the lady behind in the queue tried to take the pen and complete her information whilst I was still mid way through the phone questioning.  I explained, firmly, that I was still using the damn ledger.  She got the point.  

Once my husband had started talking to me again (it didn't take long, we had an hour to wait which would have been quite dull if we weren't talking), we were free to see Harare.  It was like being somewhere normal, there were shops - with things in them that you wanted to buy.  I even tried some clothes on.  And we had lunch at a nice eatery, it was like being on holiday and we had a fantastic time.    

Later this week we have to go to the tax office to find out about bringing our belongings in, I have a feeling my husband will insist on doing the talking.