Living for Disco

I am having a beer with my friend Tariq when he casually mentions that the cost of a visa for Mozambique has been put up from 60 rand to 750 rand. This is approximately 65 shiny British pounds. I can barely afford my holiday as it is, and so this is a giant blow. I may have to sell a kidney.

I decide to phone the Mozambique High Commission to find out the truth, but however much I scour the phone book I can’t seem to find it. This is because, helpfully, there is no consulate for Mozambique in Namibia.

I steel myself for yet more financial pain, and call the office in Pretoria. As they confirm the awful news, I picture my Christmas beer money dribbling into airtight official coffers and begin silently to weep.

“Thank you,” I sigh. “And I can get it at the border, right?”

I don’t know what angel of light prompted me to ask this question, but…

“No, you must get it here.”

Oh. My. God. Now, I’m a pretty seasoned traveler if I do say so myself. I’ve traipsed without mishap over most of South East Asia and half the Middle East. I’ve skipped happily across India, and sunned myself silly in the Caribbean. You would think that it would occur to me to check out the visa situation before booking the bus tickets, yes? Ha haaaa! No! I am too clever for that! So clever, in fact, that I have made sure that the one day we have in Johannesburg is, in fact, a Sunday, when the consulate is shut.

During the remainder of the conversation I dribbled, and said ‘b…b…b…b…’ a lot, particularly when she told me to send my passport to Pretoria, where I could pick it up. I did point out that I would need it to get into South Africa, to which she said “Hmm” as if I was intentionally causing her unnecessary mental anguish.

Anyway, now the three of us must DHL our passports to Pretoria as soon as humanly possible, so that we get them back in time to travel. Because I was in a state of advanced brain-melt, the question of how to pay, what forms we must fill in and how long it will take did not occur to me at this time, resulting in a further three expensive phone calls to the consulate in Pretoria.

The situation is complicated by the fact that one of my traveling buddies is living in Opuwo. The post leaves Opuwo once a week, and frankly, I would trust Nampost as far ooh, say, the distance between me and my computer keyboard. Either they are a bunch of thieving bastards or there is a sucky vortex type portal to another dimension situated in the main sorting office. The only other option is to wait until someone is traveling down to Windhoek – there is no telling how long this might take. Sometimes, I miss the Royal Mail.

I call the high commission in Pretoria for the fourth time to ask them about the information they need to issue the visa.

“Oh,” she says vaguely. “just write down your name and address on a piece of paper”.

“Anything else? What about the dates we are traveling?”

“Oh, yes. Write those down too.”

“Is that it?”

“Yes. Oh, maybe you need to tell us how you are arriving.”

I’m feeling the fear.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 17th, 2006 at 9:41 am and is filed under Jefferson Airplane, Under African Skies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.