Livin' On A Prayer

It's Monday now, and I'm supposed to fly this Friday. I had a call from the Embassy on Saturday - I nearly fell off my chair to find a government related business actually open and advertising it on a Saturday, but anyway - and spoke to a woman by the name of Teresa, who said there was one form missing from my application. She said I could pop in whenever it was convenient (but obviously the earlier the better) and fill it out without making an appointment or bundu-bashing my way through any other lines of red tape.

So I did that this morning, and she confirmed that everything is now correct and good to go - we are just waiting on Home Affairs in SA to confirm I am who I say I am, and once they do, my certificate will be issued. She seemed quite confident that I will have it before Friday, provided HA doesn't make one of their legendary fuck-ups and accuse me of being an identity thief or worse.

As for my plans once I get to the other side; things are a little more complicated than they were last week. I am now going to have to apply through the official emergency channels, which means I will have to stay in SA for 3 weeks as opposed to 2, assuming they accept my case as an emergency. If they don't, I will be stuck there for 6 weeks. Shoes' cousin's contact for a passport in 2 weeks fell through. I therefore have to factor the cost of a flight change into my plans as well as a week's extra leave, which means I will be unable to go to my cousin's wedding at the end of this year.

I guess at the end of the day, this was never going to happen without cost, both financial and otherwise.

To be honest, even though I'm a bit panicky about our skyrocketing debt and am already regretting not seeing my first cousin get married, I want to go home so much that everything else seems trivial in comparison.

Finally though, it seems like I will probably be flying on Friday, rather than possibly with a healthy dose of longing. I'm not breaking out the champagne just yet - I'm going to wait until I have that Golden Ticket (aka Emergency Travel Certificate) in my hand, and then down a whole bottle! 4 days of anticipation to go, 4 nights of restless sleep and disturbing dreams. 3 weeks of putting myself back together at the end? I hope so.

The Agony and (hopefully in the near future) The Ecstasy

I have't written for a few days, cos I've been dealing with a personal crisis and instead of blogging, I've been desperately e-mailing friends and family. I thought about cutting and pasting the main gist of those e-mails here, since I'm not really all that keen on going through it all over again, but I suppose that sort of defeats the purpose of a blog, doesn't it? This is my space to write whatever I want to write, so if I don't feel like getting into it in depth, I don't have to.

So I'll be brief. Those of you who have been reading my blog for a while will know that whenever my group of friends and I try to travel, we encounter disaster of some sort. Expired passports, lost passports, nearly missed flights, not getting visas in time - you name it, it happens to us. And our travelling group is only 7 strong - I hate to think what it would be like if we tried to co-ordinate a group of 15 of us to take a trip together.

Anyway, this time it is me - again - and it is my passport that got stolen along with my handbag on Thursday night last week. I was at the pub with my new workmates. I went because I thought it would be rude not to go, but since there were only a couple of them there, and I'm on detox (well, I was - after that I had a drink), I wasn't really in the mood and it wasn't like it looked to be a majorly exciting night. After an hour, I decided to leave. Five minutes before that, an Indian man came up behind me and brushed my back with his coat. I turned to him and he said sorry, to which I replied no problem. My bag was on a ledge next to me - we'd all put our drinks and bags down there. He slung his coat over the ledge, and left shortly after, taking my bag with him. It happened only a few minutes before I decided to leave, but it was enough for him to get away with my bag and my life's contents that it contained. I remember thinking, you know what, this has never happened to me in SA. In fact, my friends and I have been victims of more crime over this side than in CT... but no matter, that's not the point.

To cut an exceedingly long story short, I am now waiting to see if the SA Embassy will a) issue me with an emergency travel certificate and b) if it will arrive in time for me to fly home next Friday. If I do get it, I would then have to apply for a fast tracked passport once I get to SA, as the certificate is like a one way ticket and I can't leave the country again on it. There is also the matter of my UK visa. If I do come right on all counts, and get my passport within 2 or 3 weeks, I can't afford to wait another 15 days for my visa to be restamped in my new passport. So I then have to fly back to the UK without a visa, and try to talk my way back in by providing proof of my life here.

All in all, it's an absolute nightmare, and feels very unfair, considering that this time last year, Shoes and my friends were all preparing to go to Turkey and I found out I couldn't go because my passport only had 5 months validity left in it instead of the pre-requisite 6. That time, everyone went to Turkey and left me behind in London. I am therefore having the most horrific sense of deja-vu as I plunge into this nightmare all over again, and am just trying to concentrate on the fact that it's not over yet, rather than allowing myself to imagine them all leaving for Cape Town while I wave goodbye from the station.

I haven't seen my family in a year and a half, and if my plans now fall through, I won't see them for another year. But I've managed despite the odds to remain mostly positive about it. I have to believe there is still hope for me to go. The alternative at the moment is something I don't really know how to deal with, so I'm just choosing to believe in miracles. I've prayed every night for that miracle, and I really believe if there's a way, it will be done. I've done everything I can.... now I just have to sit back and wait for God to do the rest!

Keep your fingers crossed for me.