El Registro Civil is the building where one goes to get ID’s, driver’s licenses, marriage licenses, etc. It opens every morning at 8:30 and closes every afternoon at 2 p.m., yes 2 p.m., welcome to Chilean government agencies–business hours not very useful for anyone. After some discussion with my homestay family, we decided that the most effective way for me to get a Chilean ID card was to get up early and be there when this place opened at 8:30.
I got there at 8:10, thinking I was more than early enough, only to find myself in a line of about thirty-something people on the sidewalk outside the building. Okay, I thought, I can do lines, nothing hard about that. Things got a little more complicated, however, when they opened the doors–imagine Best Buy at 4 a.m. on Black Friday or Wal-Mart on Christmas Eve.
The crowd quickly swept me inside as the people nearly ran through the open doors and to the different sections of this one large room. I stopped to ask the official-looking man standing by the door where I needed to go for an ID card. It was somewhat like stopping to stand up in a fast moving river, and I proceeded to get run over by at least four Chileans who pushed past me to talk to him before I could get a word out of my mouth.
I solved this dilemma by literally jumping in front of him with my arms out defensively so that I could say the words "cedula de identidad?" and get pointed to the right set of chairs. People streamed across the large room, going to numerous different stations on the ground floor or taking the stairs to the upper level. I walked over to the first station on my right and sat down, until I noticed people taking numbers from a small red dispenser on the wall.
Another thing I had yet to learn, though I should have figured this one out from my visits to the supermercado, is the idea of taking a number. At the supermarkets in Chile, you have to get a number and wait in line at the meat counter, the cheese counter, and the deli counter. Now getting a number at a government agency is not all that strange. However, I didn’t expect that I would get run over, again, by another five people, who pushed around me to get a lower number.
Anyone from the States who has ever had to deal with the DMV or other similar entities knows that you could find more life at a funeral. Here, however, it was a whole different story as people pushed and shoved to get in line. Though once everyone had shoved the confused gringa out of the way to get a number, it calmed down and people sat patiently, waiting their turn. The whirlwind of initial activity slowed and turned into a quiet buzz as the officials processed the numerous different documents.
As I waited anxiously, hoping that I actually had all the right documents to complete this transaction, I tried to figure out how the numbers actually worked. Mine said D 04, but the electric number sign on the wall just said Numero 88 Modulo 4. Both of these numbers changed every time they called for a new person. Someone had tacked up a picture of the Virgin, probably ripped from a magazine, under this sign. I guess she was there to encourage all of the poor souls as they waited. About three minutes later I finally figured out Modulo, which means module, meant the number of the cubicle where the individual officials sit. I also noticed another sign hanging from the ceiling that had the letter C on it, and I looked down, disappointed, at the D on my ticket.
After about fifteen minutes, twenty-something people, and a change of the hanging letter (D now) my number came up and I hurried to my cubicle, determined not get run over yet again by an overly anxious Chilean. I sat down in front of a very bored looking woman and got maybe half the word cedula out of my mouth before she had taken my papers and started rapidly firing away at her computer. Ok, that works; the less I have to say, the better.
“¿El nombre de tu padre?"
“Um...Christopher...Se, hache, ere, e, ese, te, o, pay, hache, a, ere...”
A thing much easier to type than to say; but after some confusion, we got it typed out correctly along with my mother’s name, Cynthia, even more fun. She asked me to check to make sure everything was correct, press my thumb on the automatic fingerprint machine, and told to sit up straight for my photo. I had already noticed the cameras and had taken my hair down before being called and fluffed it up a bit. I actually got a somewhat decent ID picture, well as decent as these things can be. After this I got to pay, of course, around 6 dollars, so not too bad.
Next up, more fingerprints! The traditional kind which involves getting each finger painted by a paddle-looking thing covered in ink and then having them rolled onto a sheet of paper. The lady grabbed one hand then the other–all ten fingers painted and rolled in about thirty seconds; this lady was good.
After more rapid-fire information from this woman, she handed me some paper towels and some amazing lotion stuff that removed nearly all of the ink from my fingertips.
“Something, something, something, estás lista, something, something, something,” the lady fired off before getting up and walking away from her desk, disappearing into another part of the building.
Ok, I thought, estás lista, you’re ready, but was that you’re ready you can leave or you’re not ready wait here a minute while I mysteriously disappear to go do something supremely important? So I sat there trying to take as much time as possible to clean my fingers and check to make sure I had all my documents. I waited for a few minutes, but she didn’t come back, so I just got up and walked out the door to catch my bus. I even managed to make it to class nearly on time, 9:20 or so.
January 27, 2009
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