The residency application

We've finally managed to submit our residency application and I've collapsed, exhausted with a cold. This is what it took:

1) Special power of attorney to allow my partner's brother to take our application to the embassy
For this we needed a scan of his passport but he didn't have a scanner, so we said 'how about a photo?'. But his hard drive was full and he had heaps of photos on his memory card so he couldn't download them to his camera, so he had to go and buy a new one, then he took the picture, downloaded it and emailed it to us. We stuck it on a memory stick and went to the Institute to print it. Then we took it to the lawyer and he wrote up the power of attorney (which I requested in French with the assistance of Babelfish). $40 each and about a two weeks.

2) Application letter
This has to be in Spanish so the lawyer wrote it for us. We had to say why we want to live in Costa Rica and what we are going to do here in French. He didn't charge us for this and we had to wait a day or so.

3) Special power of attorney to representative in Costa Rica
The lawyer drew this up for us too, granting the power to himself. $40 each and was done with the rest.

4) Birth certificate
Applied before leaving the UK and then found that they consider them expired after 6 months and that we wouldn't be able to get all the rest of the paperwork in time so had to get new copies. This can be obtained from the government records office for £10 but I have a feeling we went through a private provider that charged us £25 and I think it took about a week. This also had to be apostillised for another £28.

5) Police certificate
This turned out to be the trickiest bit. Where should we get our police clearance? We'd been in Laos but they don't issue police clearances and it would be difficult to show why we had a Lao clearance when we live in Australia. A Queensland police check is easy to get but difficult to justify when our birth certificates are from UK. To get a UK police clearance you need a UK address, which we fortunately both have since we have accounts there. But if you're not actually there you're meant to do it by post and only do it electronically if you are there (go figure!). Disaster! Mail is way too slow and unreliable with Costa Rica so we just had to try and see if we could do it electronically. After a few nail-biting weeks we finally succeeded though my partner's came back without a signature and had to be sent back taking another week or two. £23 each and then and another £28 for apostillisation.

5) Copy of passport
This had to be a certified which the lawyer did for us. $20 each

6) Form and photos
We went into Santa Elena to the chemists for the photos and had to come back when the owner was there. Taken on a polaroid. $8 each

7) Proof of payment
That will be supplied by the embassy。

8) Embassy registration
Got online, downloaded and taken to a cybercafe for printing. $2 a couple of hours.

9) Proof of income
This had to be supplied by our financial institutions。Mine wrote the letter along the lines of the form letter I had but my partner’s broker baulked， which is funny coz he has much more money than me。But I showed him the letter from my broker and a letter miraculously materialised！This then had to be notarised by a solicitor which meant that my partner's letter had to be sent to Scotland so they could be done together. The solicitor walked to my mum's house in deep snow to do this and only charged us $10 for the first document and $5 for subsequent ones. This then had to go to the Foreign Office to be apostillised. £28 each and about a week.

10）Fingerprint receipt
We had to go to San Jose for this。It was quite straightforward but meant an overnight in a hotel and 10 hours on buses。No charge but $45 each in other costs and two days although this was our second trip to do this as we got the wrong information the first time and were then told to wait till we had everything else.

11) Translation
This had to be done by an official translator here in Costa Rica. We found one who was very efficient via the government web site. The documents to be translated had been scanned and emailed from the UK and the translator found half a page missing so it had to be rescanned and resent from London. The documents had to be mailed to us so it took a week partly because we don't have a reliable postal address so we used the lawyer's PO box and it took him a couple of days to check for it. $130 plus $3 in postage and about 2 weeks.

12) Submission at the embassy
This part hasn't happened yet but we've made the appointment for 18th. They'll charge us $40/document which may only be for the three main documents and £50 for the power of attorney plus a $30 application fee and a £50 postage fee. So about £170-290 depending on how many documents they charge for.

So the total is:
2 PoAs $80
Birth cert £25 = $39
Police clearance £23 = $36
Certifying passport $20
photos $8
Notarising $15
Apostillisation $84
Translation $130
Couriering £50, $45, $3=$126
Embassy fees £200=$312

Total $850

The Laos chapter

Well, I worked for the Wildlife Conservation Society and was meant to go to live at the tiger reserve in a village called Viengthong but when we had a visit 'seeking feedback' from the new director of the VIDA program I was part of, I suggested they could put the people being placed in a country at the same time in touch so they could send their stuff together to keep costs down. I also let them know that I had a quote for off-grid power for $12,000. The director had a hissy fit and said he was going to do a 'risk assessment' of my placement. I asked if I could be part of it and he said I could.

Next I knew my placement was cancelled, with no consultation. So I was replaced by another volunteer who was good at keeping her mouth shut but then went on to suffer from the problems I had identified and left her placement early.

The reason power was needed is because fruit and vegetables are not available locally and have to be sent up 8 hours by road. So you need a fridge to be able to keep them and there are no gas or kerosene fridges available. There is also no water 3 months of the year so you need to power a pump or carry water all day.

So a word of warning to potential VIDAs: you have to sign a consent form saying you have no rights and no say in anything and they can cancel your placement with no reason at any time. They are not kidding - they will do this. Volunteers give 2 or 3 years of their life for this and give up the salaries they would get in Australia and are not valued at all by the program. What I would say to someone considering going is that if you're the sort of person who is happy no matter how you are treated and to have no say in your life and can just smile and say everything's fine no matter what and don't mind if after spending a year and a half to get somewhere they just cancel it, then you'll probably be fine with it. Most 30+ people who have a lot of experience with better organisations would probably think it's a better deal to pay for it all themselves and retain some say in their lives.

Anyway, I got to do some pretty cool stuff before I left. One of the things was that WCS had a huge collection of amazing camera trap photos from surveys of the protected areas that they had carried out over the years and they asked me to do an exhibition. So I went through over 8000 negatives and we picked the best 50, scanned printed and framed them and put on an exhibition at a local art gallery. It also had another room of other exhibits such as guns, snares, maps, bones, horns, skulls, camera traps that went off as you went through and explanatory materials. There was also a slide show running showing some of the most interesting sequences of animals and forest fires coming through, and a sound track of recorded forest sounds and gibbon song. It was aimed at raising awareness about wildlife trade. After the exhibition came down it was packed up to go on tour to Luang Prabang, Paksane and Viengthong.

Someone from Lux Development turned up at the opening and said that something permanent should come out of it and they'd fund it if we could do it in 2 weeks - a schools kit and a web site. Actually, several people left comments that it should be a permanent exhibition in Vientiane, and that could happen. So I did the schools kit as a kamishibai which went to 400 schools in Bolikhamxai and the web site. There were also two versions of the exhibition on vinyl banners, one for use in Vientiane and the other for town meetings up in Vienthong. We did a couple of exhibits before I left including one in the national exhibition centre.

Before we left we had a trip round Laos to see a bit of the country, partly for my partner's research into the secret war. We bought a tuktuk and did it up as a dormobile and blogged the trip.