Tramites. I learnt this word in my first week in the country. Tramites means something like paperwork, admin, bureaucracy, vital pointless things that keep the world ticking over. I've never bothered to look the word up, or even ask.
But I do know that when someone says you need to sort your tramites, you take every piece of official paper that you've ever seen - from your GCSE Physics Certificate to a signed, translated, countersigned Register of Birth - and you write off the rest of the week.
So it was with some trepidation that we set off to 'sort' Leah's Argentine passport, and picked the Tuesday of my half term as a good time to start.
As it can take anything up to 10 working days to simply buy a stamp and an envelope in Argentina, we wanted to get things started right away with something as substantial as a passport. We'd been told that there was an especially efficient service for 'Mothers and Babies under 2' (yes, I know a baby over 2 is not a baby), so to have any chance of taking advantage of this service, we thought it best to allow a little over 22 months.
In the end, it was a bastion of efficiency. Or maybe the following reflects our now really quite low expectations. Our day passed something like this:
10.01 Leave house, bang on time (give or take a minute).
10.05 Arrive at train station. Train is arriving, it is cold, little one is now screaming, therefore decide to board train without getting a ticket that would frankly take an age.
10.35 Arrive at Retiro. Speak to utterly unsympathetic man who, quite rightly, totally ignores our sob story about 'Crying baby, must get to Passport Office' and, sympathetically make us pay only one fine (about a pound).
10.37 Board the subte/underground/tube.
10.50-10.59 Arrive at our destination and walk to Central Police Station. Clockwork so far...
10.59 Arrive to massive queue. Heart sinks.
11.00 Ushered around corner to 'Mother and Babies Under 2' smaller room. Heart leaps.
11.01 See in smaller room another substantial queue. Heart sinks again. Stereotypical Latin America queue this is too: wider than it is long, everyone appearing to have been called simultaneously. The fact that the lady behind the desk was speaking to everyone at once only fueled this 'We're all first' behaviour.
11.01 - 11.17 Queue in order to collect form that we need filled in. Leah still fine.
11.18 Fill in form. Leah building up to a scream. Is she hungry? Tired? No, it's just the frustration at seeing 15 ways in which this system could already be made more efficient, but not having the language to explain them. I know exactly how she feels.
11.19 Start queuing again to hand in our forms. Frustration builds. Leah now crying.
11.20 I go to the Gents. There is barely a urinal, no paper, no soap, no running water. Above the mirrors is a sign: Have respect and leave this room as you would your house. That's ridiculous, I think. It would cost literally thousands of pesos to leave this place like my house. My house is lovely. I walk out.
11.28 Hand in forms. Told they are all fine, but we need a photocopy of our passports, our Document of National Identity (DNIs) pages 1,2,3,4 and Leah's Birth Certificate.
- 'Oh, sorry, I didn't know,' I reply, a further indication that I'm British, apologising for nothing: nowhere did it say you should bring photocopies of these docs. 'Where is the photocopier?'
- (Note: NOT indicating a photocopier across the room) Go outside round to the left and there's a photocopier in the kiosco about two blocks down.'
- 'A question? Why don't you have one here?'
- (She stares at me by way of a reply.)
- 'Couldn't you put something on your website?'
I am then informed that there is no website, and that the only computer (not actually a question I had asked) was behind me. She held out her arm as if introducing a child she was especially proud of (I recognise the gesture). Indeed, in an adjacent room there was a working computer.
11.31 Go to photocopier shop. Along with the other hundred of people, including those not in the 'Mothers and Babies Under 2' section. And there's no rushing to the front here. People clock you as queue-jumpers from earlier in the day, and, like a train ticket official they studiously ignore your pleading-Oxfam-ad-I-have-a-helpless-child-in-my-arms looks. Rightly so.
11.55 Photocopy docs.
11.59 Return to original original queue. Wait...
12.15 Forms checked. Thank you, we just need you to pay. Outside, round to the left, at the caja.
12.18 Small queue at the caja, we pay and return to the original queue.
12.31 Receipt checked. Thank you, now all we need is your daughter's photo. Please wait outside the Computer Room. 'Computer Room' is said in that irksome way a Headmaster would show Ofsted Inspector's around the schools new Diversity Unit, paint still drying on the walls ,a veritable Benetton Advert of Perfect Shiny Students arranged for one hour only. 'Look, the Handsome Black One is playing with the Bespectacled White One!'
It is often mentioned, scathingly, that the Central Buenos Aires Post Office does not have a single computer. No database, it runs like a giant medieval library, messages sent from one end of the building to t'other by a network of pulley systems. Clearly a computer or two would speed the inefficiency up a little over there.
So it was not without irony that our, until now comparatively rapid progress through the admin stages, ground to a halt.
There were only 3 of us in this queue. But as I peaked my head around the door, by busy heart sank once more... at the sight of a middle aged woman one finger typing the monton of details into the shiny new PC. Approximately every 15 'inputs' a look of panic covered her face, and she said, (OK, she said this almost inaudibly, and in Spanish, but we both know I'm right).
- Oh no. It's done that again...
Backspace, backspace, backspace... Start again. S...E...N...O...R...F...E...R...G... You get the picture. Once Katie's and my info was one finger input, it was finally time for Leah's photo.
First they took a print of Leah's thumb. It looks like this * actual size, then the photo.
Hilariously, and I guess obviously, I couldn't be in the photo. Also, the camera was fixed at adult height, meaning I had to kind of hold her, sideways, roughly at the height of a human head, listening to a voice from behind the screen give me instruction: 'Mas alta.. a la derecha'
A large flash indicated that we must have finally hovered over the X zone.
- 'And that's it', I ask, ever the optimist.
- 'Si, una cosa mas' she replied. Just one more thing. Go outside, she explained, past the caja through the back to the huellasdacticles.
- 'Wow? The what?'
- 'Huellasdacticles,' she said, by way of wonderfully detailed explanation.
- 'Ooo-kay.'
For consistency, it's about 1300 now...
So, outside, through the back, down a corridor where we were greeted by the sight of a truly enormous queue. British style, and single file straight, but enormous. Hearts now too tired to do anything interesting, we resigned ourselves to spending the rest of our lives there.
Then, in our exhaustion induced state, an angel appeared from a side room, took us oh-so-gently by the arm, and ushered us through the walls to the front! The front of the queue for the huellasdacticles!
Fingerprinting, is the answer to the question. They need our fingerprints. Of course they do. We turned a corner to what put me in mind of a cross between a 'confession extraction' room and a sheep shearing rig. It was filthy, an old wooden desk sat unmanned, with nought but a pot of tar with a stick in it and a flat wooden palette.
Someone materialised, took Katie's finger print, took our forms and that was that.
13.32 Stop your watches.
As far as our experiences of admin in this country have gone, this is without doubt the high point in terms of speed, efficiency and tar use. I kid you not.
