It’s been a crazy fortnight. I could tell you all about the German and Korean cultural evenings, the preparations for Uganda, the creation of websites or the amazing provision of a visa extension… but to start, I will tell you about downtime.
As with anything in life we need holidays to relax and refresh - even if we are doing the most satisfying job in the world we still need change. In this case we’ve been having lectures and preparing for going to Uganda and now it’s time for a bit of a break before I run headfirst into a different world and culture.
So the downtime takes me to Johannesburg - a delayed, two hour, upgraded to business class flight away from Cape Town. I’ll be here until Wednesday, relaxing and preparing. Having been here one night already I’m pleased to report that I can’t think of a nicer way to spend my time than to relax in the lovely company of my good friend from my church in England. There are touristy things to do of course and a few tasks, like getting my hair cut, so I fully intend to make the most of the time here.
Dipping into the ‘could tell you’ bag again I pull out my visa extension (or technically a study permit). I had all the paperwork I needed and headed in through the morning rush hour traffic into Cape Town. Having waited in line for about half an hour I got to the front of the queue and handed in all my forms. I’ve heard that typically they are incredibly picky and will find any slight issue significant enough to send you away, but the guy was friendly as he went through. Only a few of the documents were certified copies, which was meant to be a requirement, so I wasn’t confident.
It was when he said “I’m looking through here and I just can’t find the copy of your passport that we need” that I was thinking, “uh-oh, that’s because it’s not there”. It turned out that he was happy to go and copy it which he did. A few minutes into sitting there we had a short dialogue: “Christian?”, “Yes”, “Born again?”, “Yes”. I wonder now if this was some sort of free pass to a study permit for YWAM. In addition though I flew out only two days afterwards and don’t return until June. A problem when you have to pick it up in thirty days (or so I thought). I mentioned this and after a brief discussion he said I should bring my ticket and go back the next day. Within 24 hours of going there I was in possession of an extension to my permit until the end of April 2008. Pretty much unheard of and a big relief - I’ll be staying here then :-)
This week there will be more opportunities to post so I’ll leave it at this for now.