Visa Drama

We imagine everyone around the world dislikes paperwork and bureaucracy; our latest bout was particularly distasteful. As foreign residents in Mozambique, we need special permission and documentation to reside in the country, known as Documento de Identificação de Residentes Estrangeiros or simply, DIRE. All foreign residents must renew their status every year; our turn for this tedious task was coming up the first week of November. Normally the Peace Corps office in Maputo takes care of all the cumbersome paperwork involved in this ordeal, but this year’s process presented additional extenuating obstacles. Previously, the old DIRE was a simple sticker you paid for and they stamped into your passport, so a third party, like our Peace Corps support staff, could take care of the task; the new DIRE is a biometric card, meaning everyone now needs to get photographed and fingerprinted in person. This can only be done in provincial capitals, presenting a logistical nightmare for an organization like ours with volunteers in remote areas with tenuous transportation. Also, the price for this bureaucratic service skyrocketed from 2,000 meticais (approximately $60) to 24,000 meticais (≈ $720) or about the amount of money we see in 4 months from our living stipend. Considering Peace Corps has about 140 volunteers in country, plus some American staff, this price hike has a significant impact on our organization’s budget. A small crisis ensued, and given our irregular means of communication and access to information, this all resulted in a lot of confusion and anxiety. Compounding our personal situation, we needed to get out of the country to travel home for Christmas break. We had already bought our expensive non-refundable tickets, so for us, resolving our legal status felt extra expedient. So while Peace Corps tried to negotiate some sort of exemption or reduced fee for our documents and we watched our departure date approaching without any exit papers in hand, our stress increased. We started to devise alternate methods for leaving the country surreptitiously, like crossing the Malawi border at nighttime, or trying to get our friends in the immigration office to put some sort of fake stamp in our passport. Even once Peace Corps had transferred the funds to our local Immigration Services office in Tete City we still had to wait three weeks for the funds to arrive in a banking system that is nowhere near as efficient as we’re used to in the USA. Those three weeks were very stressful, but we finally got the green light from Peace Corps in a uplifting phone call acknowledging that funds had arrived in Tete. Despite the relief, we still had to navigate the murky waters of paper work in Africa. Apparently the 24,000 meticais processing fee did not cover the 50 meticais fee for stamping the photocopied form we needed to officially request the DIRE. Additionally, Peace Corps had given Immigration 40 pages of agreements with the Ministry of Education, but the officials wanted each of us to have our own 40-page copy; apparently the 24,000 meticais didn’t cover the 100 mets of photocopies. We had to wonder town looking for a place that could make legible copies. After waiting all morning with some Brazilians for our turn to be photographed and fingerprinted, the power went out, so none of the fancy new biometric machines could work, and we were told to return the next day to finish the process, which we did. After succeeding in getting the photos done the next day, we found out the DIRE can still only be made in the capital, Maputo, so we would have to wait over a month to receive this documentation critical to us leaving the country, so we had to request another document to leave the country in the mean time for our trip home to the USA. We were told we would have to come back the next day to receive this piece of paper, which made no sense to us. We had already spent two days in the city away from our school and students, having to find people to lodge us, and finding ways to eat, which was a major inconvenience to us, so we didn’t see why we should stay another, but as the lady working the front desk told us, this was their process, and we needed patience to get things done in Mozambique. We did have patience and outlasted a less serene South African mining executive who gave up after about an hour of waiting. He was trying to get permission to leave Mozambique to buy an ignition piece in Malawi to repair a large machine at one of the big Tete coal mines. The entire operation was sitting idle waiting for this man to get his paperwork, so we could understand his frustration. Eventually, after some coaxing and cajoling, we did get our documentation that afternoon, even though we had to wait several more hours for someone to come back from an extended lunch to stamp the paper, so we could make the two hour trip back to our home. Back in America we’ve had our share of frustration trying to get things done at the DMV or with waiting on hold while trying to complete credit card business via telephone, but Mozambican bureaucracy is the next level. We’re just glad everything worked out for us to come home for the holidays!