Back in November of 2008, faced with the need to begin travelling again post-baby, I made a largely fruitless trip down to Trinidad to renew my passport.
After the easy, smooth, frictionless experience of having it extended while I was in London, I found the arduous two-to-four-day process in Trinidad horrifying, and as I mentioned before, without ultimate success.
Why, in 2010, with Trinidad’s 2020 deadline for ‘progress’ looming, the process being demanded for acquiring official paperwork needs to be so cryptic, so time consuming, so mired in pointless wasted bureaucratic niggly wiggly nonsense, is beyond me.
The worst part is, if you are a Trinidadian and living in Europe or North America, you can post in your passport and documentation, and have the whole kit and kaboodle posted back to you. If you are resident in the Caribbean, you are basically fucked.
You cannot post in your documentation, you must go to the expense of traveling to Trinidad and submitting yourself to the demoralising experience that is this unbelievably time consuming process to get your paperwork.
When I was in London, I got my passport renewed by taking it in one day, and returning for it a day or so later. There was no line, no snarky, cocky or indifferent desk worker to contend with, and certainly no feeling that those behind the desk were just LOOKING for a reason to send you back empty-handed.
At any rate, I go again.
Off I go next week to attempt to get my permit to fly, because my flying off is imminent.
In a moment of synchronicity, two needs confluenced and the means to do it appeared from nowhere, so Big Mami goes once more into the breach.
I see myself getting on the road again, wanderlust and itchy foot are beginning to become overwhelming.
Gear by gear, cog by cog, pieces and parts of my life’s machinery and God/dess inside it, is working itself into the beginnings of order. Can’t always see the course, but just because I can’t see my direction, doesn’t mean I don’t have one.
God willing, by the end of next week a major part of the requirement needed to get myself up and moving again will be sorted out.
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