A more appealing title you never heard yet, right? Well, at times I would have preferred watching grass grow myself, but there are a few amusing moments in the retelling.
17 February: In New Zealand I sent to the French embassy for my visa. They gave it to me, kindly enough (France has always been nice to New Zealand since that nasty Rainbow Warrior incident) but it surprised me a little by saying I had to make an appointment on arrival to get my residence permit (carte de sejour).
12 March: The day after my arrival in New Caledonia Mme Siles (pronounced "SEE-less"; she's an important person at the Vice Rectorate here) took me to the Haut Commissariat to organise my residence permit. I was given a receipt (recipisse), a slip of paper glued into my passport, which was valid for three months. Oddly, it claims I'm not authorised to work here, but hey.
late-May: I was sent a letter telling me I could pick up a registered letter at the post office with my passport as ID. The registered letter told me I could get my proper residence permit from the Haut Commissariat. A few days later I went in with piles of paperwork, paid some money for a stamp to put on it, and got it. (The other assistants had arrived a week later than me, so didn't get their letter at the same time.)
Then I noticed that it expired on the 20th October, exactly the same date as my last day of working here. This struck me as either very stupid or very rude. ("Okay, you've finished working, now get out of our country! Today! Even though there isn't any plane for New Zealand on Fridays!") Since then, I've decided that it's only very bureaucratic.
(1 July: The other assistants' residence permits hadn't been processed because the person who dealt with it was sick. Meanwhile their receipts expired. Most of them got another receipt, but one was leaving just ten days after expiry and hadn't thought about it. I went to the airport with her and discovered what happens when your visa/receipt/residence permit has expired: you end up traipsing from ticket counter to security to help desk to security trying to find a police officer who your local friend knows, in order for said local to explain the problem. Then the police officer says it's not a problem. Then you get held up on the way to the plane until said police officer can explain that it's not a problem to someone who clearly thinks it is. I decided that I wouldn't let this happen to me.)
17 July: Confirmed my plane tickets to leave for the 24th October; there wasn't a flight available on the 21st. (Well, there was, but I'd arrive in New Zealand in the wee hours of the morning. I prefer to return to my family when they're happy to see me, rather than when they're rubbing sleep out of their eyes and growling for coffee.)
end-July: Spoke with Mme Siles about how this would affect my visa, and she told me to go to the Haut Commissariat to extend my residence permit, and that this wouldn't be a problem at all.
2 August: Went in to get my residence permit extended for the four days between the 20th and 24th October. The woman at the desk took my card and looked at her colleague with a 'What do I do with this rubbish?' sort of expression. They asked me why I wanted the extension. "Because the day on the card is the day I finish work, and my plane only leaves on the 24th." Why did my plane only leave on the 24th? "Because there weren't any planes left for the 21st."
Remember, this is nearly three months in advance that I'm asking. The colleague muttered, "It's always a problem with the language assistants." I ground my teeth silently and kept a polite expression. They said I'd have to talk to Mme Siles. I said I'd already talked to her. "And what did she say?" "She said I should come and talk to you." (That was a profoundly satisfying moment.)
Eventually they decided that they had to talk to their superior, so they took my phone number and promised to call me.
16 August: Two weeks later I hadn't heard anything, so went in again. There was just one woman this time. I greased up to her with some "Bonjour, Madame? Are you well, Madame?" and she was most pleasant, but... She still had to talk to her superior and said that then they'd get in touch with Mme Siles. I left with a headache.
~20 August: Heard from the other assistants that Mme Siles was going to look into the whole residence permit and extension thing, as apparently the system has changed. Decided to drop it for a while for the sake of my mental health. :-)
4 September: Received a letter from Mme Siles saying that -- oh, I love this. Um, my rough translation: "The Delegate of the Government, by letter no. 4397/DIRAG/JPA/AD, on the 29 August 2000, agrees in principle to an extension for a fortnight of your residence permits [titres de sejour -- yes, French has two different names for this concept --Zeb] (for reason of the Pacific Arts Festival) and asks you to contact without delay Mr Jack Winchester the head of the "foreign" section (Tel: no1) so as to arrange a meeting date. [...] Present yourself with your passport."
8 September: Rang no1. Explained my situation and was told that... oh, they gave me some excuse, I think, or maybe they didn't... But they said that this wasn't the right place and that I should call no2 next week, from Wednesday onwards.
15 September: Rang no2. Explained and was told that I should come in to be told what to bring with me. (I've heard that they once told this to someone living in Bourail, a town half-way up the country and on the other side of the mountains. He told them no, which they didn't understand.) I explained again, saying I was told I could ring to get an appointment. They told me that the person who dealt with this was away, and that I should call back on Monday.
(For those who do not understand the laws of physics in the French universe, I feel I should explain: when someone is sick, their job doesn't get done, no matter how important. This is why the other assistants had problems; it never occurred to any of the non-sick bureaucrats that sorting out foreigners' residence permits was something that they could and perhaps even should do.)
18 September, 1:25pm: Rang no2 again. Got pretty music and remembered it was still lunch break.
18 September, 1:48pm: Rang no2 again. By this time in the process I'd invented a big spiel saying, "Hi, I'm called Deborah Fitchett and I'm a language assistant at Jules Garnier. I'm ringing about my residence permit because I've been told I can get an extension of a fortnight."
So this guy listened to my spiel, but he was apparently a know-nothing receptionist because he passed me onto a woman who listened to my spiel then said I wasn't anything to do with her. So she sent me onto another woman who listened to my spiel (now a little abbreviated) and passed me onto a man.
This last man listened to my severely shortened spiel. By now I'd given up on actually introducing myself and was down to keywords and "so all I need is an appointment". This translates in non-bureaucratese as "(wail) I've been trying to get a four-day extension for the last two months, and all I want right now is a single little appointment, please! Just an appointment: is that too much to ask?! (collapse into sobbing)" Apparently it is indeed too much to ask, because he muttered something about this being most importune, asked for my details and told me he'd contact me. I had a sense of deja vu at this point (see 2 August) but he relieved my worries by telling me to phone him back in a week if he hadn't contacted me by then. However, this gave me a new sense of deja vu (see 4 September) because what was his name? Jack Winchester, at no1.
I hung up at 1:59pm, mentally calculating the call's price in terms of my phone bill (132CFP; US$1; NZ$2.20) and value in terms of advancing me towards receiving my extension (0).
25 September, 1.50pm: Oh my. I might be getting towards the possibility of getting somewhere....
Not having heard from M Winchester for a week, I rang him again. Gave my spiel and remembered to drop Mme Siles' name this time. That seemed to work ("It's her who wrote to you?") because after asking me all my details again (name, phone number, when I want to leave, etc) he asked me when I could come in -- Wednesday's my free day -- and said I should come to the Haut Commissariat between 12 and 2pm, to the "foreign" desk where I got the residence permit last time. I need to take my passport, residence permit, and the letter from Mme Siles, and will be leaving the residence permit there for a week or two. Touch wood that everything will go well and that time period won't stretch past the little amount of time I have left here....
27 September, 12.30pm: Went in to the Commissariat, waited for five minutes while the desk guy discovered that someone's forms had been filled in incorrectly. When he finally got to me, I explained the deal. "Are you leaving definitively?" he asked. "Hell yes," I thought, but left out the first word when replying aloud. He asked me the question again at some other point in the conversation, just to make sure.... Before doing anything he had to go and talk to someone; being a bureaucrat, he talked to the wrong person, came back and talked to me a bit more before figuring out that he should be talking to Jack Winchester. Finally he came back again, asking if I had a letter from some person I've never heard of; I gave him the letter from Mme Siles instead, and he pushed paper for a while.
All the paper-pushing went well, however; after a couple of minutes he asked for my passport, and a bit later he gave my passport back and said I should come back next week for my renewed residence permit. (As far as I can guess all they need to do is write in it, but a week it takes.) In the meantime, there's a new receipt in my passport letting me stay until the 27th October, and -- wonder of wonders -- authorising me to work here. (The previous receipt said I wasn't authorised to work.)
(This is pretty cool, in a way; I'm filling up the pages in my passport. OTOH, I've just (re)discovered a piece of card in there that the USA wanted back before I left the country in January. Some departure record thing for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Oops.... I have this oddly appealing mental image of them suddenly realising I haven't left the country, and starting a national search for me. I suppose I'd better find out if there's a US consulate around here to take it off my hands.)
4 October, 12.30pm: Back at the Commissariat, and got to talk to someone straight away this time. Handed over my passport, and she located my residence permit, then went away to photocopy it. After a minute she came back, made me sign the register, and handed me my residence permit with a seven-day extension. When I reminded her, she gave me my passport back, too.
Woo hoo, all done! And it barely took two months all told.
Back to my New Caledonia page, or the travel page, or the main page.
Email me in triplicate, and be sure to send a copy of your passport, birth certificate, driver's license, video library ID card, and resume. Then I might be able to make an appointment to review your email, if I'm not too busy making appointments to review other people's email.