Dispatches from the sunburned wastelands

Haven't we been down this road before? Going through the whole process of gathering all the necessary paperwork,paying all the fees, getting all the fingerprints done, going for medicals...And when you're within sight of your goal, something happens to slow you down, or make you start all over again. Dealing with bureaucracy when applying for permanent residency is never easy, but who would've thought that it would be the non-governmental persons that would cause us grief here in Oz? I had to get an eye-check done (to satisfy the oh-so-very-thorough immigration doctor that an injury i received 34 years ago would not cost the Australian taxpayers any money), not at an optometrist, but at a real, honest-to-goodness eye-specialist. (I asked the Dr whether she was aware of the fact that it sometimes takes months to get an appointment to see a medical specialist here in the capital...). Anyway. Our excellent GP arranged an appointment for me at an Ophthalmologist in the affluent suburb of O'Connor. I had to wait for almost two hours past the appointment time before the Dr called me in. Whereupon I was briefly told to get the hell out of his office, because dealing with these immigration cases was not the sort of thing he did any more (he only did it back when he still needed the money, he said), and there were all kind of possible legal difficulties that he wanted to avoid. All the while talking down to me in a stiff, upper crust way, as if I was some charity case refugee that could not speak English properly. I was flabbergasted. Now what? Back to our GP, I guess...the saga continues.

Posted by HannesB at 9:27 PM Comments

I got a phone call on Friday from a recent South African immigrant. She was feeling homesick, and desperate for someone to talk to, so she started paging through the phone book until her eye caught a South African-sounding surname (mine). So she called me. And I answered, and listened, and sympathised. We went through the same process, not once, but twice. And it is never easy to move to another country - everything is different, the smells, the sounds (those awful birds, she wailed), the food in the supermarkets, the medicines in the pharmacy...

Immigrants usually go through all those well-documented steps - the euphoria of a new and fascinating place to explore; the sudden realization that your not on holiday anymore, that this is real; then the doubt starts to set in (did we make the right decision?); you want to pack up and go ;home; you begin to romanticise all the good things you left behind (conveniently forgetting all the good reasons you came here in the first place); but slowly, you begin to accept your decision, and life goes on, until one day, you wake up and realize you understood the political joke the radio host just made.

We've been here for nearly two years now, and I still don't feel like I am "home". Maybe you never do...

Posted by HannesB at 8:35 PM Comments