Who, Us? Unwelcome?

As comfortable as we have become in Africa, it's useful for us to remember that the country printed on the front of our passports is our home. Everywhere else, we're just visitors.

And everywhere else, we're just guests who can be asked to leave.

Part of our vacation in Cape Town was spent plumbing the ranks of South Africa's Department of Home Affairs, trying to seek permission to stay in the country long enough to finish our 7 days of vacation. The problem started quietly in September with a boarder official who neglected to stamp our passport on our way out of South Africa.

And then, just as quietly, another forgot to stamp it on the way back in six weeks later.

This time, because of the missing stamps, it looked to the boarder guard that we had overstayed our welcome in South Africa on our previous visit. We would still be allowed in the country, but we had to speak with someone at Home Affairs. And just to be sure that we would, he scribbled instructions to that effect across our visa in our passports.

This note was written at Jeppe's Reef, between Swaziland and South Africa. We had the first several days booked in Kruger Park. After that stay, the ink on the notation dried a little further as we traveled to Cape Town, and further still as the government offices closed early on Friday and sat locked up over the weekend.

The day before we were set to become illegal in South Africa, we finally found our way into Home Affairs and were received by a lady with a long list of requirements to fulfill: we can fix this problem for you, but you'll have to have proof of exiting the country (difficult when we arrived in a private car), proof of sufficient funds to finance our stay (difficult since we have no bank account in Africa), and pay R425 each as an application fee and R2200 as a security deposit, refundable once we leave the country.

We scrambled to assemble these things, and returned the next morning to speak to a new person behind the counter. This new person, a man, was friendlier but after several hours had only bad news.

Unfortunately, our application was denied, and there was nothing he could do. He had even checked with his colleague, who agreed that the visa could not be extended. We had to leave the country that day. No matter that Maputo is 1,600 km away, and no matter that we had no way to travel that distance.

Luckily, the man was friendly despite his no-nonsense message. He pulled out a scrap piece of paper and started diagramming for us why we were unwelcome in his country. The missing stamps in our passports fabricated a story that we were living in South Africa, staying from temporary visa to temporary visa, leaving only long enough to have a new visa issued. He was sympathetic enough to my corrected version of our situation that he was willing to let us speak to his boss, though he initially thought even this to be futile: "It will be difficult to assemble the machinery of management to get this approved in a single day," he said on our way out.

We found his boss upstairs, a busy bureaucrat who found importance in being seen to run from task to task. "If you try to chase two rabbits," he counseled us, fretting among the stacks of paper burying his desk, "you're not likely to catch either one." He proceeded to shake his head and wonder why he couldn't heed his own advice. I tried to gain his sympathy by commenting that he appeared to be chasing at least a dozen.

He listened to our story, and made a note on a scrap of paper for us to bring downstairs to the man at the counter. His penmanship was the calibre of an important doctor, and it seemed that his prescription must have been for us to wait in line for several more hours.

Back downstairs, the friendly man at the counter stapled this note to our paperwork and passed the file to the next bureaucrat to process, who also sent it up to Mr Fudd, the wabbit hunter, to approve our "unique case." After an hour of silence, we ventured back upstairs. By evidence of banging his fist against the plasterboard office partitions, Mr Fudd's day wasn't improving, but he too was surprisingly friendly and helpful. Our paperwork was found within a foot-thick pile to be processed whenever time permitted, but he pulled it out, wrote another prescription, and sent us back downstairs.

Within 30 minutes we had new visas allowing us to stay in South Africa until April if we so desired, and without having to pay a penny for the permit. It turns out that we were, once again, welcome to stay.