Much of our day yesterday was spent trying to get a Nigerian entry visa for our supervisor at work, who has a business meeting there in a couple weeks. A few other people at CEOSS had been jumping through hoops and red tape for two weeks prior to our involvement. We seemed to be the last ditch effort, the rearguard.
This was the story: To obtain an entry visa, one must fill out the online application, pay through on online server, and then physically walk a printed copy of the application over to the embassy. Problem: the website didn't work. One woman claimed to have filled it out the online application 30 TIMES, only to have it stall or malfunction. An emissary sent over to the embassy was told (rather snottily) that the Nigerian government does not accept hardwritten applications, and that the website DID work. Or, if it didn't, "Try again tomorrow!"
Now we enter. The application asked for all the normal things: height, "visible identification marks," contagious disesases, drug busts on record, how much money you were bringing into the country... Y'know, normal stuff. But our favorite was this innocent question: Colour Of Hair? The options: black, white or grey.
The first two attempts to fill it out failed. On the third, we made it to the payment page (!) only to discover an insurmountable issue. In the drop-down list of countries in which the applicant's credit card was registered, Egypt was not a member. It had Vatican City and Trinidad and Tobago, but not Egypt. They did not accept credit cards from Egypt. We tried fooling them and listing different countries, but they called our bluff. And then the website got stuck on Yemen for a while and wouldn't let us change it.
Finally, after many demonstrations in front of other staff members and assurances that we'd be paid back, we used our credit card. The Nigerians sure as heck allow those. And it worked.
"What about Egyptians who need to go to Nigeria but don't know any foreigners?" one of our colleagues asked.
What about them indeed.
01 December 2007
The joys of travel
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4 comments:
what a great story. it reminds me so much of my own visa experience in my adopted country!
sweet. Do pray what hair colo(u)r did you put down? They have the traditional "choose your race" box here that are back in the states but I don't fit nearly as well here(an oddity for white man in a country of white folks). The options consist of 1)White British 2)White Scottish 3) White Irish 4) Irish Traveler 5)White other... So I normally check white other and wonder about the differences of white between the British and the Scottish... more red in the hair?
I'm not even sure "white other" is included every time, Josh. I've seen it with all the white options like British, Irish, etc. and then that's it for the "white" boxes. Quite amusing. So then I think I ticked the "other" box. Other! Fantastic-I've never been other!
It's refreshing, I suppose, to understand what other people have to go through in filling out a simple form in the USA that might not know where to place them... Makes me aware of how futile it is to try to classify everyone in this day and age!
actually, now that I think of it... we had a ton of problems with our credit card getting accepted while buying flights in India. They'd only accept Indian credit cards, but you could only buy tickets online (by credit card) with some of the budget airlines! Extremely frustrating!
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