Fun and Games with Colombia's Bureaucratic System

Saturday 05 September, 2009


Forget the guerrilla, narcotraficantes and paramilitarios - what's really going to kill me is Colombia's insiduous bureaucratic nightmare.

Even though I know that rants about foreign bureaucracy are only really interesting to oneself and other people who have experienced something similar (and usually, not even them - who wants to relive the horror?), I am going to inflict my tale of woe upon anyone foolish enough to read on.

8.20am: Arrive at university campus. My university is private, huge, shiny, and new. It shits all over UTS. It also has some tight security: there are checkpoints at every entrance and you need a swipe card to get in. I do not have a swipe card. Instead, I have to hand the security guard my passport so that he can verify my identity. I watch him rifle through the pages. He stops at my Russian visa. Which, as well as being a visa, has no photograph. He points at the visa number. "Is this your número de identificación?" I snatch the passport back and open it to the information page. In the front. I have to go through this all the time. No one seems to know that personal details are on the first page of a passport. Once a security official tried to write down the number of my French entry stamp as my ID number.

8.25am: The security guard uses two fingers to laboriously type out my name. He then takes five photographs of me with his webcam. The sun is directly behind my head for all of them. I am the faceless woman. On second thoughts, if I decide to hold up the uni, they won't know what I look like...

8.45am: Manage to extricate myself from security and arrive with some relief at the Language Centre. Am here to pick up some simple forms. Very simple - the coordinator, Fucking Juan Fernando as I call him (though sadly not to his face), told me they would take two minutes to prepare. Fucking Juan Fernando is a liar. Last week I came to the office only to be told that some other mysterious person who was conveniently not on campus would have to sign my forms. They would be ready tomorrow.

"Fucking Juan Fernando," I said to him, "I'm leaving town today. My full time job starts on Monday. This is my only chance to sort this out and you promised me it would only take a minute." He says it will be ready by 5pm. Seeing as the office I need to lodge the forms at closes at 5pm, I find this to be a very cruel compromise indeed.

I do what any sane person would do in the face of this crap - I take off to spend 4 days at a coffee plantation and leave the forms to Fucking Juan Fernando. I refuse to miss out on my country weekend getaway just because he is incompetent.

8.45am: FJF's secretary tells me he is not in until 9am. "He told me he starts at eight," I tell her. She shrugs and examines her nails.

8.46pm: Sit down outside to wait. As I sit a huge hole rips in the knee of my old faithful jeans. These jeans have been good companions on this trip. They've ridden horses, has salsa spilled on them, been shat on by monkeys, and soiled in all manner of sordid ways. Their untimely demise is a little sad.

9.15am: STILL no sign of FJF.

9.20am: Wonder if the hole in my jeans is god's way of commanding me to make a pilgrimage to Zara.

9.21am: Decide that it is. Hey, this selective religion thing is great!

9.25am: A bumbling English girl who is clearly in her first week of Spanish shyly approaches and asks if she can interview me for her homework. I am delighted to help. She asks questions such as, 'what is your name', 'where are you from', and my personal favourite, 'how are you... physically?'

9.35am: Fucking Juan Fernando finally shows up at work. He has the nerve to smile and make small talk. I oblige so that I can get my forms and get out of here. Did I mention that I have to start work in half an hour?

9.40am: FJF does not have my forms ready. Despite promising me that they would be ready by Friday (Today is the following Thursday). Despite my emailing to ask him to let me know if they won't be ready. My blood begins to boil.

9.45am: Fucking Juan Fernando spends far too long typing my name. He asks my address despite the fact that I emailed it to him as per his request last week. Then he tells me that the same mystery person needs to sign my forms and is nowhere to be found - will I be around this afternoon?

"NO!!" I explode. "I HAVE A JOB TO GO TO! THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE LAST WEEK! WHAT THE FUCK IS THE MATTER WITH YOU? DO YOU JUST LIKE WASTING MY TIME, IS THAT IT, HUH? HUH, FUCKING JUAN FERNANDO??"

What I actually say is, "I would really appreciate it if you could work this out this morning. I have a job."

Pussy.

9.55am: FJF asks me to wait "five little minutes" while the gets the signature. He is clearly expecting a pat on the back.

10.30am: In Colombia, "five little minutes" means, "however long it takes but we won't tell you the real estimate because we don't want you to go off somewhere to enjoy yourself."

FJF comes out beaming and hands me my forms. I snatch them out of his hands and thank him with a huge fake smile. At this point, I am thanking him for not making me wait any longer.

10.35am: Scurry off to the agency. Arrive. Adorable Veronica is there, ready to process my documents. Adorable Veronica looks like a Latina doll. Her Colombian accent is totally charming as well - here they speak in a musical lilt, occasionally dropping their s's. I like it but sometimes I find it hard to follow. In such cases I use my fallback policy: agree, smile, nod, hope they don't ask my opinion.

10.50am: Things get ugly. Veronica tells me I need to fill in forms, then go to a notary to notarize my letter authorizing her to broker my visa. Oh yeah, and I have to pay an astronomical amount of money for this process - 383,000 pesos. That's fine, I say smoothly, I have my credit card. "Oh no," says Adorable Veronica, "you have to pay in cash."

"Veronica," I say, as her adorable factor rapidly diminishes, "You told me that I could pay with credit. If I withdraw cash it will cost me $20. That's 40,000 pesos, Veronica."

"I know," she says, with a shrug.

I know what's happening here. This trap keeps getting laid for me, and I keep walking into it. Colombians are all very nice and friendly until you actually require them to do something, at which point they tear their smiley masks right off their own faces, M:i-2 style, and show you the true gaping horror that lies beneath.

11am: I'm sent off to get my letter notarized. I have never been to a notary before. Despite writing a series of articles about Colombian politicians being given notaries in exchange for their votes to reelect the president, I am still not entirely certain that I know what a notary is. Or what a notary's office even looks like; Veronica's instructions were a little vague (or maybe it was just the accent).

11.15am: I come across a building with NOTARIA written across it. Is this it? Inside is total chaos. Picture a Centrelink office at peak hour. Now, imagine it to be grubbier, make everyone a screeching Colombian and remove any and all sense of order. There are ten to fifteen people clustered around every desk, all bellowing. In fact, it's hard to know what's louder, their voices or their outfits. The girls working behind the desk all have huge hair, fake nails, diamante earrings and clashing spandex ensembles, all of which more than adequately fill in any gaps your imagination might leave regarding their expansive cleavage and fat rolls.

A sweet old man directs me to what is passing for the queue and I claim my position, elbowing in between two pushy older women who think that they can edge me out. Uh-uh. I know how to play this game.

11.20am: The notarizing process commences. My simple letter is stamped with three huge stamps, handwritten on by the notary with my ID details, and I am required to sign it twice. Then I have to fingerprint it. The office might be old-school but the technology certainly isn't - I have my index fingerprints scanned twice by a high-tech little gadget, I have to sign a plastic computerized square with a pretend pen no less than FIVE times, and am then photographed with their webcam. All just to get one measly piece of paper authenticated. The whole process is complete bullshit, of course.

An older señora next to me stares openly and suspiciously at my Australian passport. She is wearing more gold jewellery than I have seen all year. I smile brightly at her and she frowns at me, her powdery foundation caking into her wrinkles. Whatever... I'm done!

The hour and a half I set aside to complete paperwork that everyone assured me would be done in "two minutes" seems woefully inadequate. It took me three hours. Three hours, and all to avoid actually applying for my student visa myself at DAS, immigration office and bane of every traveller's existence. It took me three hours, and I cheated: I didn't even go to the immigration office myself. All this trouble was to enable an agent to apply for my visa on my behalf. I have been told that going to the immigration office is hell on earth and to just pay the agent and be done with it, I would be saving a lot of time, money, and my blood pressure.

Frankly, picturing it takes me to such a hideous black hole of bureaucratic horror that I'm scared if I think about it too much I might go completely isane.