The Long Unending Line

In Latin America lines are everywhere.  You can avoid some lines with planning and timing, but there are some lines that you must join.  We learned years ago that when we would go to an office for one thing, and the person behind the counter would send us to get something else, that we should take out a piece of paper and write down everything they said that we needed.  This did not work all the time, but it cut down on several trips back and forth.  Costa Rica has one of the most bureaucratic societies in which we have lived.  This is not just a problem for foreigners, but it also affects the lives of Ticos.  Go here, go there, buy these stamps, deposit this amount of money in the bank and get this signature.  There are bank lines, bus lines, check out lines, hospital waiting lines and government paperwork lines just to name a few. We know that there must be other countries that are worse, but we have not lived there yet.

Sometimes the line is not the issue, but rather the bureaucracy of the office.  This will depend on the country you are in and what you are trying to do.  Recently upon arriving at an embassy to do some paperwork, I was informed by the worker at the gate that this type of "tramite" could only be done on certain days of the week and that this was not the right day!  The information was dispensed with an attitude that implied that, if I were halfway intelligent, I would know the days to do this type of paperwork.

 When we arrived on the field and went to get a national drivers license we presented our US drivers license and our International license that we had gotten for about twenty-bucks from AAA.  The International license just happened to be opened to the page that had Chinese characters on it, and when the traffic policeman looked at it, on would have thought that he was holding the shroud of Turin in his hands.  When one of the other policemen behind the counter asked about scheduling our driving test for the license, the first worker exclaimed, "NO, this is an INTERNATIONAL LICENSE!"  Within 20 minutes we had our national drivers license without taking any test at all.  The license itself was a little booklet with about 6 pages with all kinds of interesting information on the inside. This, of course, was a small town with little history of foreigners and International drivers licenses.  Unfortunately this is not a common experience in dealing with bureaucracies.

Another incident happened when we went to open a checking account.  When we explained that we wanted a checking account that both of us could use, it caused quite a stir!  First they tried to open an account with checks which required that we both sign every check.  We explained that what we wanted was a joint account where Annette could write her own checks in any amount any time she wished.  The young man behind the counter assumed that  I (Mike) did not understand what I was asking.  (my Spanish was still pretty basic)   The bank employee called me aside and began to earnestly explain to me that with this type of account my wife, Annette, could write checks, withdraw money from the account and that she would have full privileges over the account.  He went on to say she would know how much money was in the account and that I would not be able to control her spending! This was comical to us because Annette has always done our finances and has always done a great job.  The one thing that I still do not understand about the incident was when they explained that one of the negatives would be that she could EVEN deposit funds into my account.  I thought about that then, as I still do now, and wonder--do a lot of people just randomly deposit unwanted funds into other peoples' accounts?  If they did, would that bother me?  We got the account open, but only after 3 or 4 more trips to the bank.  I knew for months that I was the talk of the bank employees, because I was the poor gringo that did not know what I was getting myself into.

We must make up our minds not to let the lines or bureaucracy take away our joy.  Remember that we are not being singled out, but that this is just the "pan de cada día".  The sooner we accept this reality, the sooner we will assimilate into the culture where we live and work.  With acceptance of this reality, our stress levels will go down allowing us to see what God has to show us, or better yet allow Him to make us into what He wants us to become!

Remember the recent paperwork at the Embassy, Annette and I returned on the correct day, bright and early.  We felt proud of ourselves because we had arrived early enough to be the second ones in the long line that was forming outside of the gate. We were proudly given passage into the gated area of the Consulate to "finish" the paperwork.  A very nice lady waited on us, charged us the correct amount of money for the paperwork, and we thought we had conquered the job...when she politely told us that we could return on Friday morning to any of the three windows to receive the processed documents...OH WELL


Hang in there in these days of change. God is still in control.

Grace,
Mike and Annette