The Shipping News

Our import woes continue, as Customs have decided Steve can’t bring his own damn property into the country because his current visa expires in February.

By then he will have already applied for residency but officially, right now, he only has until February in SA.

What I don’t understand, is what business it is of theirs how long he wants his stuff here, if he wants to ship it all this way to have it for a few months and then have to pay to ship it back when he gets deported that is surely his own problem! They’re supposed to care about whether we should pay import duty or whether we’re trying to bring in plants that will zombify all local flora; not how long we get to play the brand new Xbox we still haven’t even taken out of the box (yes I want to play with my new toy and am bitter, thanks for asking) before having to leave the country!

Steve contacted his work about this, which contacted the immigration service they use to get work visas, who say they have *never* heard of a clearance application being declined on those grounds.

Now I have to go to a police station and get an affidavid endorsed that I have been out of the country and then fill in all the forms and then go to Customs myself and hope they’ll let me apply even though it’s all in Steve’s name - even though, in the 4 months I’ve been at this job, I have taken 2 weeks unpaid leave to go to Singapore, was sick for 2.5 weeks (with only 3 days sick leave available), AND I had booked leave around the upcoming long (bank holiday) weekend long before getting sick and basically really need to stop having reasons to be absent from work!

The two days are Friday (tomorrow) and Tuesday; Monday is a public holiday so we’re having a super long weekend which we’re going to spend with my parents in Velddrif. I’m really looking forward to it and as far as I’m concerned this other stressy crap can wait until I get back.

So near, yet so far...

So, our box of stuff is in Durban Harbour, awaiting customs clearance.

In July, we got a letter from the South African company used by the UK company that did our shipping – a month later than they were supposed to send it. It told us we have to fill in a bunch of forms and go to South African Customs and Excise ourselves to have the shipment cleared for customs before they could proceed. Then I got measles and we isolated ourselves. Then sort of one thing and another happened and we didn’t get round to it.

Yesterday Steve made the utterly unprecedented move of taking time away from work and went to Customs and Excise (since his is the name on all the forms). Once again not one of the shipping companies managed to be remotely compitent, i.e. inform us of all the facts – when he got to the front and presented our forms, he was met with much head shaking and uhming and ahing, since his visa is only until early next year.

Since he’s married to a South African, he will be able to apply for residency on our 5th anniversary – December this year. As a result his work only applied for a visa for as long as they needed to, which is understandable. However now the customs people don’t really know about someone wanting to bring their entire life over here when they technically can only stay for another few months (by the information available right now). We never thought of this, and not one of the companies that supposedly deal with this stuff every day thought to bring it up.

The customs officials took the forms and have apparently sent them off to head office with a promise to call Steve. Needless to say, we haven’t heard back yet.

The most frustrating thing about it all is that apparently the Customs & Excise staff asked Steve why he was doing it himself, why wasn’t his shipping company sorting it out for him?

Sigh.