Blessed are those with passports...

Blessed are those with passports...

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• Tribal hang-ups must cease

• A nation locked in negativism

• Zimbabwe's scattered marriages

• Now recruiting: traditional healers and prophets

• The double life of exiled Zimbabweans

By Norah Spie

QUESTION: What is the most important item when you are in a foreign country?

ANSWER: A passport.

Everything starts and ends with that little green book. Having gone through a very stressful ordeal after losing my passport, I learnt the hard way that it is the most valued document away from home.

A few years ago, a Zimbabwean passport was on the most wanted list of criminals from other African countries. It seems funny now but the Zimbabwe passport could get you to places and open the right doors, but as we know its all in the past now.

I lost my passport but I was convinced it was stolen so that’s what I told the authorities. The staff at the Zimbabwe embassy in London did not make it any easier for me. I was asked to prove that I was Zimbabwean.

Well that’s easy, I thought, so I spoke in Shona and expected to move to the next step. And of course with a surname like mine that made the over-worked staff even more determined to make sure I was who I was claiming to be.

They wanted to see my ‘chitupa/isithupha’ and original birth certificate. Fair enough, we don’t want any Harry, Dick or Tom walking into our consular office and claiming to be Zimbabwean.

I had all these documents but not with me. Like most people do, all the important documents like school certificates, birth certificates and so on are kept in some safe place at home, under the bed or in a picture frame!

My only problem here was that “home” was a thousand miles away. I asked if they could accept a faxed copy and although I knew the answer to that I still begged.

After making a frantic call to my parents, they could only find the chitupa/isithupha and a copy of my birth certificate. Where was the original? Two days later I got the documents delivered by courier. Surely with the metal I.D and a copy of a birth certificate it should be proof enough.

I made another trip to the embassy and was met with the usual long queues and faces of desperate fellow countrymen and women. I was feeling confident that this time I would not be turned back. I had the police report, the chitupa, a certified copy of the birth certificate, the correct passport photos, and the exorbitant fees.

As I patiently queued, I was chatting to other people and every situation seemed more complicated than mine, so I relaxed.

Civil servants are the most difficult people to charm. I was hoping to go to the counter with a man because woman to woman normally backfires especially at airports! Just as it was about to be my turn, the gentleman closed his counter so my charm offensive was not going to work. Luckily the lady who finally served me did not dwell on the fact that I did not have the original birth certificate.

After giving my finger-prints, I was told my new passport would be ready in six months. Six whole months! I had to travel before then so I had to pay a top-up fee to get an emergency travel document.

There was one girl who was trying to get a travel document for her father who was stuck in some North American island and he could not travel to the nearest embassy without a passport obviously as the nearest was New York. She tried to explain this to the embassy but they insisted he had to find a way because they could not help.

I expected them to deal with her case with a little compassion. Besides diplomatic duties, an embassy is also there to assist its people who live away from home.

In their defence, I know they might not have the resources to cater for our all our needs especially in places like London , New York , Pretoria where there are thousands of Zimbabweans.

In less busy offices like Paris , I found that they tend to be more compassionate because they do not get that many enquiries and all sorts of weird requests like people overstaying and expecting the government to fork out money to fly them back to Harare .

I am looking for Mudede’s direct line so I can ask him why he said the registry of foreign births should be paid in Harare (after paying at the embassy) in American dollars only.

Yes, if you require a passport for a child born outside Zimbabwe, then the Mudede law requires you to pay in USD. I find this extremely contradictory especially when they don’t allow us to send hard forex into the country.

I rang the Chief Consular Officer at the Zimbabwean embassy in London and he said he did not have the answer but coolly advised me to ask Mudede. I then asked a senior passport officer in Harare how we should obtain the 50USD and was told to "find other means". This to me meant that I should resort to the forbidden black market. (I wouldn’t want to cross Gono’s path -- would I?) I also understand they won’t even take a bank draft or a travellers’ cheque -- hard cash is what they want!

As we need visas for most of the countries in this world, I am sure most of us have noticed that civil servants all behave the same. It's like their main objective is to frustrate us.

tried to make a list of countries where we can visit without needing a visa and the list was shockingly short, so in a typical defensive behaviour I decided that I shall not grace any country that requires me to go through the laborious task of applying for a visa with my presence. It’s their loss.

Mind you its just as hard to obtain a Zimbabwean visa for non-Zimbabweans and we have one of the strictest immigration controls only that we don’t get to know about it until you visit home and you are given 30 days! I’m sure the next thing they will be saying is that all Zimbabweans resident outside the country require a clearance before coming home! That would be the day.

Norah Spie's new weekly column appears here every Wednesday. You can e-mail her at n_spie@hotmail.com. Her new book, Parallel Lines, is available at many good bookshops and you can also order it online from AMAZON

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