Showcase April - Getting paperwork done in a 3rd world country: A Tolkien worthy odyssey

6 years and you are almost done with your paperwork? Wow man, you were lucky it was so fast!

That's the response I get whenever I discuss my current situation´with someone from my country. And the´re not kidding, for the kind of legal process and the paperwork required, some people take decades and sometimes they don´t even finish the process.

A few months ago I was happy drinking a beer with @heiditravels, @nomadnessie, @gargon, @pgarcgo @juanmiguelsalas and many more, I think @lukestokes was also there. I was in Lisbon, having dinner by the beach with my new friends when I got a message from my motherland telling me I should come back because my legal paperwork was almost done and I had to come back to sign papers and do the final process.

This was in November 2017.

Today is May 18th and I still haven´t finished.

I had never been to Europe and I had to come back much more earlier than what I was planning. In Februrary I had in my mindto go to the US to visit some friends and I couldn´t do it because i had to be around my country in case I was needed. I wanted to go to Germany in February to visit a person I hold dear and I wasn´t able to. I missed the London cryptcurrency show a few weeks ago. I missed a content creators event in Las Vegas. I missed several meetups, including one happening right now in North-eastern Europe. I wanted to go to Cuba a few days ago because I got a very sweet deal and in the end I ended up doing none of those things I wanted.

I am sick of missing things because paperwork in 3rd world countries takes too much time, too much money and any drop of faith in the system you might have.

Whenever I get into conversations with my 1st world friends, mostly from Northern Europe, they complain about first world problems like weather or taxes. Then I tell them my whole situation and the reasons behind them - which I can´t discuss on the blockchain or my government might take me as traitor or whatever excuse they can think of - they immediately become grateful and they start valuing their own country.

I know one thing for sure, when I finish this paperwork I´m leaving this country and I am not sure I´ll ever come back to live here - I might come back to visit family once in a while, but I am sure as hell 95% of chances I won´t live here anymore.

_{This is the whole file I've gathered over the years to finish the process. Yeah, legal tramits in Mexico are dealt with in paper, not digitally.}

So, my 3rd world friends, I know a lot of you read my posts, why don´t you tell me here on the comments what´s the worse thing you´ve had to deal with in your 3rd world country?

My 1st world friends, read the comments here, after that I'm sure you'll stop taking things for granted.

This post was originally posted in May 2018 and it's part of my initiative called showcase April, where I'll post the best content I've done over the past three years