To Zambia With Love: Carrying on the Family Tradition

A longstanding family joke is the bad luck we have when traveling. My parents are particularly prone to this bad luck curse. One notable instance was the time they were supposed to travel to Scotland and arrived at the airport only to discover that my father’s passport had expired. As this was not long after 9/11, renewing passports was a more lengthy process which meant the whole trip had to be cancelled. The kicker was that my mother had previously reminded him to check the expiry date on his passport; something which still gets brought up from time to time. Then there was the time when my parents traveled to Tofino. They remembered to bring their dogs, the dog beds, the dog food, the leashes, all the accoutrements needed to travel with dogs. What they failed to bring was their own luggage. This was not the only time they forgot their luggage. They also drove to the airport for another trip and forgot their luggage at home. Fortunately, my father believes on arriving at the airport with more than enough time to check in and sister was able to make a speedy trip with the forgotten bags. Speaking of my sister, she has also not escaped this curse. In her case, it was nothing to do with forgotten bags or expired paperwork, her entire backpack was stolen when she was backpacking around Australia at the age of eighteen. She was traveling alone, just graduated from highschool when this happened. I can only imagine how scary that must have been for her. Nothing that occurred was her fault. She had been directed by the bus station staff to leave her backpack in a pile of other luggage. When she got off the bus in Blue Mountain, her bag was nowhere to be found. Not her fault and certainly bad luck. Actually this may have been the start of this whole bad luck curse.
Now, I’ve counted myself pretty lucky. Aside from an unscrupulous hotel in Cancun, my traveling has been fairly smooth sailing. It was really only a matter of time though. Markus, Isaac, and I are supposed to be in Connecticut this week visiting our dear friends, Gill, Atila, and Olivia. We had a two night stay planned for New York. Gill, without prompting I might add, suggested she look after Isaac while we stayed in New York. Two baby free nights in NYC! We also planned to stay the weekend in a beach house in a town called Mystic. I had dreams of sand dunes and scraggly grass, picnics on the beach, and children building sandcastles. Well, we arrived at the airport on Saturday bright and early, 6am to be exact, ready for our adventure. Getting to the airport at 6am meant getting up at 4am. 4am people! We made it through the check-in line up and presented our tickets and passports to the clerk, only to find out that in addition to Isaac’s permanent residency card, we would also need a Visa for him to enter the US. Now, I thought that I had done my homework on this. I had checked the Canadian Immigration and Citizenship website and looked under the section, Traveling with a Permanent Residency Card. The website helpfully indicates that to return to Canada all you need is your PR card. What would have also been helpful would have been if that section had also had a simple one line warning: Make sure to check the requirements of the country you are traveling to as a PR card may not be sufficient to enter that country. As a Canadian, I have the benefit of being from a country that is welcomed to most other places in the world without additional visas being required. Unfortunately, Zambians do not share this luxury and thus Isaac with his Zambian passport and Canadian PR card required a Visa to enter the US. This is not the first time I have felt incredibly stupid after trying to navigate the CIC website. Despite having a Masters of Science, I find the CIC website to be very confusing and challenging to find the information that you need. It’s almost like they purposely make it this way, like they don’t want people immigrating to Canada.... hmmm... that couldn’t be the case, right?

So the long and short of it was that we made a disappointing trek back home, called our friends and tearfully explained that we wouldn’t be able to see them, and then later in the day booked accommodation in Uculelet. Markus and I both wanted to make the most of our time off and realized that staying at home would only be depressing. So, here we are making the most of our vacation and embracing the rain that has now come (finally) to the West Coast.
Really, it was only a matter of time before I carried on the family tradition. Let’s hope that’s the end of the bad luck for at least this trip.