Ah, the ups and downs of moving back to Jamaica.

Before the ups and downs begin what I think will be a fairly lengthy battle for dominance, I thought that I'd get ahead of the game and start this blog to record what will probably be a pretty interesting set of events, in moving back to Jamaica, from Hollywood Florida.

My wife and I had a brief introduction to the kind of bureaucracy we'll face when she lost her passport on the way to the wedding in Jamaica. All's well that ended well, but the process of dealing with three countries' immigration processes was a bit much, especially when we came up against a requirement from the US that we produce proof of having landed in Jamaica, in the form of a document that the Jamaican government no longer produced. Sigh...

What I did learn throughout the process is the power of one's personal network, which sadly, I've forgotten from years of living in the U.S. At one police station, the constable who took my wife's statement went to school with me. A relative of mine knows someone who works at the US embassy. A friend of my mother's has strong connections within the government that helped furnish proof of landing in the U.S.

These networks are there to be tapped, but not idly.

I think that one key requirement is authenticity -- the request must be real and not contrived for some other purpose, and also emotionally urgent, as there is nothing like true emotion to help make a request truly heartfelt.

As I'm moving back, I'm trying to keep this principle in mind. Wherever possible, I'm trying to find the right mover, shipper, etc. through my network of contacts as opposed to from the yellow pages. I'm trusting that I can gain the right entree and the right assistance by just asking enough people in my network, and putting my requests to them in plain language. That will mean taking some risks, and being vulnerable.

We'll see how that works!