November 14

I am back in Tredgold building.  After numerous phone calls to Harare, it has been decided that for Ellie to get an external Zimbabwean birth certificate, I need to become a citizen.  I have tried on numerous occasions to become a citizen, but this has always been denied to me as I do not have a Zimbabwean passport.  Now, I am told that I have to get a new identity card which will classify me as a citizen rather than the very offensive 'alien'.

The process takes close on two hours.  I have to wait in a long queue, but it's one that moves relatively quickly.  Finally, I am herded into a small office where five people sit at desks, each handling a different part of the ID process.  I pay the first woman who handwrites a very long receipt, then finds she has written it in thw wrong book and has to start all over again in another one.  My Ecobank bank card doesn't work, I have no cash and they don't accept Ecocash.  Luckily, I have my dad's bank card with me and can use that to make the payment.  Otherwise, my waiting would have been in vain and I think I may have lost the plot completely.

At the next desk, a man changs my details in the system and at the next another man takes my papers.  The man next to him takes a photo of me and takes my fingerprints.  Finally, I go back to the previous man who gives me my new ID.

I am now told that I can apply for Ellie's new birth certificate but will need copies of my new ID and my passport so I dash across the road and get these done, rush back and find that everyone, EVERYONE, is on tea break and the office is closed.  It's another of those clenched teeth moments.

Finally, I get to do the application but there is more trouble ahead.  The woman I am dealing with notices that I have a different surname to John.  That, I explain, is because we are not married.  She looks disapprovingly at us.  'We all live together very happily,' John assures her and this turns out to be completely the wrong thing to say.

Under Zimbabwean law, she informs us, we are recognised as married, by virtue of living together.  Good news, on one hand. BUT, she says, that means that Sian and Ellie should have John's surname.  Long ago, when Sian was just born, we decided that she would have my surname.  People often comment on it, but it's a decision we made and I don't feel any need to justify it.  No one has ever told us that our children should have John's surname and it has never been a problem.  On every single identity document that the girls have, their surname is Rheam.  We are not prepared to change that now.

The woman advises us to leave John off the birth certificate all together and we agree.  It is not to me a real birth certificate anyway.  Ellie's real one is her Zambian one.  However, when we go back to the lady in charge to hand over all the paperwork, there is more shaking of heads.  'I don't understand,' she says, 'why you want your children to have your surname and not their father's.'

I feel like I have done something wrong.  I feel like telling her that the practice of taking your father's name is not done worldwide.  There are many cultures where children inherit their mother's name.  However, I am cross and tired and hungry and I just want to get out of this grotty building and have a cup of tea.  The post, she says in a tone that suggests certain doom, will be collected on Monday and the application will be sent to Lupane.  We can check to see if we are successful with the application on Friday.

After three hours, we finally leave the building, hot and deflated and yet something big has been achieved.  At the age of 45, through a strange twist of fate, I am finally a citizen of the country I was born and have lived in most of my life - and I didn't even ask.