It shouldn't come as a surprise how most venezuelans despise doing paperwork. Bureaucracy and corruption are the bread and butter of daily life. Things as simple as renewing your ID are such a hassle that one can understand why people flee this wretched place without any papers. It is a bold choice. But one that doesn't benefit people who abide by the rules.
This is a funny thing to say. I mean I love giving myself to dumb luck for too many things. I think it is a problem of Romanticism. This idea of enjoying random things happening was something that I developed during high school. It is interesting and really annoying at the same time. But it is just that believing on chance. You can call it a gamble habit of sorts.
It brings is to today's event. My passport appointment was set for today May 17th. There was no hour for this. You have to understand that going to an office such as SAIME (the thing that regulates IDs and passports for people around here), you'll be subjected to cattle treatment. What's that? Well, the watchman of the place will herd people into lines until the place opens and the work starts. Once this happens, you'll be herded again till you reach the cubicle of destination.
Here you can see lines for kids, elderly and average citizens. I took the shots from my place in the passport line. In places like this, you can spot a lot of mistreatment towards people. There's some sick pleasure from clerks in public offices to do this. Like doing that services was something of power. But let's not get too technical on that since ranting is not my goal.
The fact is that something happened and I'm not too sure if it was true. Let me explain. I went there and thought my whole day was going to be that line. It wouldn't be weird. I did something I learned from my days of first response training. My mindset was on the worst possible outcome for this. Maybe something along was bound to happen but that way I would be surprised by it. What did happen was that we were about 8 people in line. You might think why.
Well, the prized Venezuelan passport has a cost of around 200$. It is a bit more. Let's say 215$. And I'm talking about a document that will be legal for 10 years. There are shorter options, but taking into consideration that getting this one saves you lines for 10 years, I think you can guess why people go for this.
Also, 8 people in line isn't a surprise. When I did the online request, there were 0 people in queue for the document. It is that expensive. I bet there are even more expensive passports around the world but maybe none of them will take you hours of your life. Let alone take long to be printed.
To the surprise of everyone in queue, this happened really fast. One by one we stepped into the cubicle to hand over a paper generated by the web page and present our ID. It was checked by the clerk and then the rest of the process went by. Photos and fingerprints were taken. It wasn't even 9 a.m. and I was already out of the place.
I needed a moment to understand what had happened. I went into a government office and came out unscathed. Nobody yelled at me. There were no problems with my documents and the whole process went smoothly.
And here I thought I was getting into a circle of hell without Virgil's aid. And I took a selfie to commemorate this moment.
However, now brings the true test. Waiting. They said one month for the passport. But that much isn't always true. Hopefully, my document won't fall into the hands of extortion as it is usual with something as expensive as this in the hands of corrupt officials.