Viva la Vida

On Wednesday we got John Arne's residency card. This is a big deal.

The Honduran government issues a temporary certificate until the official card arrives to the applicant. This is only after expensive lawyers, acrobatic bureaucratic hoop-jumping, and everything taking at least five times as long as it should. John Arne has had the temporary paperwork for seven years now. Each year the certificate needed to be renewed, but instead of replacing it with the necessary card he was given an updated temporary form.

I've only been party to this madness for the past year and a half or so, yet that's plenty. Here's a very brief rundown of my involvement in JA's quest for a residency card:

In December of 2006 we stopped in La Ceiba on our way to Guatemala to investigate the card delay. They asked for a new picture and told us it would be ready in a month. On our next visit, when we thought we'd be picking it up, we were told that they needed his fingerprints. Next trip we were informed they were missing an important paper called an "inscripcion" and that we'd have to call Tegucigalpa to request the main office send it to La Ceiba. In May of last year we went hoping things would be sorted because we were about to leave the country and wanted the official card for our re-entry rather than the flimsy paper. Nope. At this point I asked Immigration Man on Utila if he could help. He said he'd be going to Tegus and he'd look into it. Since we got back from Norway/USA in October, I've stopped by and made phone calls a couple more times. We went to the office in La Ceiba once more last November and I begged again for Utila Immigration Man's assistance. (He is often not there for weeks at a time, so if his door is open I make it a priority.) Monday I.M. calls me and tells me that there is absolutely no record of John Arne in the main office in Tegucigalpa, despite the fact that he's had residency for seven years. He says we have to dig up JA's original residency papers, acquire a bank document saying he's financially secure, and go to the La Ceiba office before Wednesday (two days later) when his current paperwork expired. And he says that this "inscripcion" that we have been waiting for Tegucigalpa to send to La Ceiba is actually a form that we've had in our house the whole time. Gah. (Felt too similar to one of my least favorite movies..."Dorothy, you've always had the power to go back to Kansas!")

We needed to visit the coast anyway because of Bine's six month check-up, so we sucked it up and got on the ferry at 6:20 am for a full day of errands, taxis, and La Ceiba lunacy.

First time we hit the immigration office, right as it opened at 9 am, we learned that the woman wouldn't be in for another hour. Ran other errands. Came back and found a new person working there, which could either mean that we'd be starting ALL OVER or that perhaps this one would be a bit more organized. Amazingly it was the latter. But there was, of course, a hitch. After forty-five minutes of waiting we sat down at her desk.

Me: "My husband has been waiting for his residency card for a long time. We had his picture taken for it over a year ago and visited this office many times but it isn't ever here. We were told that there is no record of him in Tegucigalpa, so we've brought in all the paperwork to start again."

New Immigration Lady: "Ok. Well, first let's look through the residency cards that have arrived here in the office just to be sure."

Me: "Okay, but every time we visited the woman who was working here before looked for it."

NIL: "Just one second. (Flips through a stack.) Here it is! It has been here since May of last year. It expires in a month and a half."

This would be hilarious if it weren't so grating. Good news is that NIL said she could renew his card for us through May of 2009. We'd just have to wait another hour. After seven years, an hour was a piece of cake.

Here are some pictures of our day in La Ceiba, taken on JA's iPhone.

Bine and me, early in the morning, on the ferry to the coast. We were both still a bit sleepy.

The mountains of the mainland as we arrived in La Ceiba's port. It's a beautiful trip when the sea is calm.

First stop was at Dr. Moreno's office for Bine's six month vaccines. I was a little nervous about it after reading about that recent autism/vaccine related lawsuit in the States.