A morning at the Dept. of home affairs

(My feet: three months of wearing sandals over a European summer...)

Greetings from a wintery, but sunny Joburg (yesterday the mercury hit 23 degrees!)

Well I spent this morning at the Department of Home Affairs, Edenvale branch, applying for a new passport. Edenvale is a rather run-down satellite city of Johannesburg about 15 minutes from my folk's house.

Going on past experience, I expected a chaotic morning, but to be honest I was quite impressed.

The initial scene inside did appear rather disorganised with people standing all over the place looking bewildered, but a large bossy, matronly woman went asking people to sit in the chairs provided - "I promise you no one will jump the queue," she barked, before giving a very stern lecture to a few guys in football jerseys who I think are couriers for companies that carry out passport services, warning them about pushing in.

A middle-aged, white-haired "tannie" (Afrikaans for 'auntie') behind the counter checked my application. She reminded me of one of those librarians one used to encounter at the public library - silver hair, thick glasses, an officious manner but quite friendly, if you got on their good side.

I had my right thumb print electronically scanned (I was impressed with the technology), moved to the next counter to pay the application fee, then had fingerprints taken in the old fashioned ink way and then had to queue again for the last step: 'live capture'. This involved having my passport photo digitally taken, signing my name digitally and giving two more digital thumb prints.

The whole process took about an hour and in two weeks time (so I have been told) I will receive an SMS telling me to pick up my new SA passport with 32 empty pages!

On Friday I have an 8am appointment at the US consulate for my B1 tourist visa. Hoping it all goes smoothly. From there we can start applying for our other visas...