Hunting for the visa

The Congo has a clever scheme to raise money: you have to have a visa to leave as well as arrive. If you’re resident, as we are, this must be renewed every seven months, at a price. This is in addition to the residence visa, which last for three years.

When my residence visa expired in February I sent in my passport for a renewal. It will take two months, they say, so they give you a fancy letter, with hologram stamp on the top and your photo, to prove to whoever might be interested that I have a passport which is currently being held by immigration for renewal of my residence visa.

Two months come and go. I’m assured that everything’s under control and it will be ready soon. But just when I really have to have it because I’m supposed to be leaving to go to a wedding, it becomes evident that nothing has actually been done. Crisis! They say they will only release the passport for an emergency, and the general view is that weddings don’t constitute such. We cook up a perjurious letter about my child being seriously ill in South Africa. The letter is read with deep sympathy, but not enough sympathy to get me an exit visa in less than three days, by which time I’ve had to change the flight at great expense.

Anyway, I make it to South Africa just in time for the wedding. As soon as I get back I send in the passport for the residence visa again. In six weeks I have to leave again, this time for an important work assignment, and as the departure approaches tension builds up. Our expediter makes regular visits and seems confident that things are happening, but with three days to go there’s still no passport. This time I insist on coming with him.

An official points us to a pile of forms – “you’ll find the form in there”, he says, and sure enough we do eventually find it. It shows that the money we paid has been received by a certain clerk, but has not yet been banked, as is required, three weeks later. Obviously the said clerk is taking advantage of the system to use my money before banking it. Deep gloom sets in, not to mention tension. We even think of paying the fee again, $400, just to make sure I get the visa in time.

The next day things look better: the money has now been banked so the passport can go “upstairs” which is where the big boss sits. Without his signature, the visa is useless. Two days later, at 4.45 p.m. on the eve of my departure early the next morning, I get the passport.

When I got my passport, as a matter of interest I looked at it carefully: the visa had been stamped in the passport fully three weeks earlier. The Congo sure works in mysterious ways.