Don't Hold Your Breath

Ahhh, another day spent engaging in a complicated dance with The Bureaucracy. This time RD & I went back to the neighboring city, with the diocesan lawyer/accountant, hoping to pick up our visas, after delivering the infamous photos, of course. Well, after 4 hours of back and forth, up and down, (luckily I couldn't help on this stuff, so sat and waited, reading my book and checking my watch).

More copies of documents were required, including all the BLANK pages in our passports, and finally the lawyer made (we thought) one last trip to the bank to cash a check on the diocese to pay the remaining charges. When she hadn't returned after 45 minutes, (the bank is right across the street), I began to fear she had been kidnapped. No, it turns out that the bank demanded a certain official paper issued only to Mexicans, but since we need the visa because we are foreigners, we do not possess that paper. Too bad, the bank will not issue the money until that paper is presented.

But Iris is resourceful, and somehow came up with the necessary documents for each of us. We really owe this lady and she only charges the diocese a pittance for all her work.

I began to entertain the office workers recounting the story of Gian Carlo Menotti's opera, The Consul, whose hero (or his wife, I don't remember) after many arduous and fruitless efforts to get a visa to flee a communist country, finally commits suicide, as the phone begins to ring with the visa granted at last.. They laughed, and said, no, no, this won't be quite that bad. Getting close, though. We return next week....to be continued.