Immigration Sichimication

Every couple years all of us on the AZ team have to get our work permits renewed. This might seem as straightforward and as fun as sitting at the DOL in the States to try and renew your drivers' license... and you'd be half right. It's definitely as fun as that but not so straightforward. In the morning we found out that Kelly's work permit was ready after months of waiting and checking. We spent the day at the immigration office in order to find out that actually they lost my file and also forgot to add our girls to Kelly's permit so now we have to start all over. Luckily they are generous with extensions, otherwise we'd probably be getting kicked out of Zambia!

But I'm not writing this blog to complain. I just want to share my continual amazement at the "filing" systems that I see in Zambian government offices. I went upstairs to use the toilet and saw an entire hallway lined with piles and piles of files. I can't possibly believe these are in any particular order. I wish I could give you a picture but I didn't have my camera and I'm always a bit paranoid anyway about getting in trouble. At the end of the hallway people had actually just started dumping small piles of garbage right on top of these files... So are the files garbage too? This could certainly be fuel for a huge immigration conflagration if you ask me...

Anyway, had to be there I guess...