And the bureaucracy for the win...again...

Who read the last bit where I said the Peru bit has been efficient and easy? And who was laughing, knowing FULL WELL there is NO WAY the Peru bit will be either efficient or easy? Aye, well. So I had a call last week saying 'come and do the Acta'. I said, 'OK, I will come and do the Acta'. Still absolutely no clue what the Acta was, but trusting this lovely lady on the phone who said I should merrily go along on Wednesday at 9am and do this here thing. Now we have Maria Poppins and she's amazing so I could go to that place and do that thing because Maria Poppins could take E to Nido. We think she's going to be wondrerful and Emilio has hugged her when she arrived twice so not worried about leaving them to go to Nido solo...I'm not jealous at all. Not. At. All. (more later on that)

Obviously got stuck in stupid traffic so was late. Then realised I had no idea which bit of the Reniec I was going to so I just went to the bit I'd been to before. Sat waiting while a few ladies who worked there chatted to each other before finally being called. Conversation goes roughly along the lines of: 

Lady: Hm. This is not the right place if you already left your documents. What's your last name? 

Maz: Kelly

Lady: No, what's your last name?

Maz: Kelly

Lady: Spell it. 

Maz spells it. 

Lady: That's a first name. 

Maz: I know, but I promise, it's my last name. 

Lady: What's your other last name. 

Maz: *gets ready for it* I don't have one. This is my only last name. I'm not Peruvian. 

Lady: You must have a...

Blah blah blah. We discover that I have to go to some other bit of the office. Off I go. Second lady awaits - she is lovely. She is her what phoned me on the phone and told me to come in. What follows then baffles me, as her first statement was that it was her who called me and she knows I'm Marianne (always pronouncing the 'e' - Mariann-eh) who adopted a son. She begins typing into our stuff, having found our file - I'm not here to collect the Acta, I'm here to DO the Acta. I am still puzzled, however, discovered later that it is actually the birth actual certificate. She pauses to put on some hand lotion, takes a call from her daughter, chats to the lady beside her. I am minding my own business because why would I be bothered about what's happening, when she tells me that the system won't allow it. Unclear as to what 'it' is at this stage. Off she trots to go and ask someone else. I am the embodiment of patience and serenity at this stage...of course something is going wrong. Of course they have no idea how to process this case. Lovely lady appears back. She can't get the something to do the something else because I only have one last name. Why don't I have another one. Patience begins to whisper in my ear, 'Don't get mad, she doesn't know...'. So I explain again. Bottom line? Emilio needs two surnames on his birth certificate. They cannot overide the system. I do not have two surnames as I only have one. Can I make one up, i.e. use my mother's maiden name? No, because that name is not on any of my ID. Correct. It is not. Because it's not my surname. I explained we actually went through all this on the 14th Feb when I signed the papers...because it was a problem then. The lawyer at the Ministry was told he could be 'Kelly Kelly'. Ridiculous, but true. Lovely lady said nope, no way, no how. We appear to be at a bit of a standstill then, don't we, Lovely Lady? Emilio does not have a father. I am a Single. I am a Foreign. He is an Adopted. He is now my son. All of these things are true and legal, yet we cannot seem to overide a system to be able to process his ID stuff. Huh. 

Am I surprised? No. Am I more convinced that when they told me no other single, foreign woman has ever adopted whilst living in Peru, ever before, they were telling the truth? Yes, I am. We have run into so many hurdles as they literally don't have software to process me. It's comical and frustrating. However, we will get there and something will happen at some stage and it will all be ok. Apparently I've to go back on Monday...