Our funny country

So it is time to get a police clearance certificate. I trot off to the boss and says that I will only be a minute, just have to get a set of finger prints done. Being super duper efficient I downloaded all the necessary information from the SAPS website AND got all the paperwork ready ahead of this visit.

A very friendly constable in the charge office directs us to an office for PC Certificates, PDP`s and Vehicle Clearances. Upon arrival we find two officers deeply involved with a cell phone. We tell them our story & I pull out my paperwork and then they start a conversation in one of our 11 foreign languages. I can sommer hear they are missing the point completely so I chip in. They very friendly tell me that they are only conferring with each other that I am at the wrong office. So they direct me to another office down the corridor.

Much to my delight I see a white lady and thank the Lord for small miracles:)
So she completes a form and tells us to go back to the office we just came from to have our finger prints taken. Yes, I know!!!! Takes 3 people to complete a form and takes a set of finger prints. And only two of them  actually took part in the process.

Then we have to pay our R59 each. The finance lady is so not going to be the employee of the month anytime soon and sommer warns us ahead of time that her computer is slow. It took her a whole 15 minutes to issue a receipt - her computer unexpectedly hanged and it had to be restarted, eish! She did however apologize very nicely for the inconvenience.

So off we trot back to the lovely white lady who is busy working on the slowest computer known to man. I kid you not, it took the computer 7 minutes to print after she gave the command. After all the paperwork got completed she seals the envelope and asks me to go to the Post Office and send it to their Pretoria Head Office. They don`t do internal mail anymore:)

So an hour later I return to work with a blush on the cheeks and a "sorry it took longer than I anticipated".
We really do live in a funny country!