Congo Visa Ordeal and Precious Victory

I had given up hope that this day would actually come, when I would see my passport again…

Although I had been warned that Congo work visa takes weeks to be issued – and I was clearly up for a looong wait – lately I had started to believe in some sort of a bad karma regarding my passport and this whole visa issue. Now, 76 days after I last entered Congo, I finally have this document in my hands again, and I can finally start BREATHING properly.

There are a million and then some reasons why this takes so very long. On paper, the Direction Migration Generale (DGM) in Kinshasa is supposed to issue the $475 work visa in 15 days. In practice, it normally takes at least twice as long, since it has to go to many offices and depends on many bureacrats’ caprices. It didn’t help, of course, that our logs people delayed depositing my passport for more than 10 days after my arrival on July 2 (when they should have done it within 2 days, to avoid an initial fine). As impatient as I was about this back then, I have in the meantime come to terms with the fact that there is always confusion among my colleagues, as to why I am “Kinshasa staff based in Goma”, and that it takes a long time for them to agree on what procedures and codes I should be assigned to.

Anyhow, days after they finally gave my passport to the Kinshasa DGM, I was issued a fancy document stating that I am to pay more than $3,000 fine. The reason? Well, it goes back to my last year’s job, when I had a work visa in Rwanda (since I was based there), and then two six-month-visitor Congo visas issued by the Goma DGM (each of them costing $475). Apparently, though, Kinshasa DGM does not recognize Goma DGM (?!), and their claim was that I therefore worked illegally in Congo all past year. Another frantic episode started, with my former employer issuing explanatory letters and my current employer hiring a lawyer. Nothing helped, of course, especially as the Kinshasa DGM was already smelling the money. In the end they negotiated the fine down to $1,500, and my new NGO did pay up (God bless them, they actually had nothing to do with that…). The only good thing that came out of this: a realization on everyone’s part that in future similar cases the person in question “had better lose their passports” ahead of returning to Congo with a Goma-issued visa, and “start fresh” in Kinshasa (everything is done manually, anyhow, so no computer records will show previous visas)…

However, back to my case -- and another four weeks had lapsed. In the meantime, I had started to get seriously worried: one about my very old grandmother (if something had happened to her I would have been unable to leave this country), but also about my own situation: as Goma offers zero medical care (apart from a MONUSCO emergency point that we are officially NOT authorized to use), in any case of serious illness I would have been stuck here. Not to mention, of course, all the evacuation alerts for security reasons, which would have made my leaving also very difficult, if not impossible. Add to that a daily frustration that had been eating slowly at me: I live just 5 minutes on foot from the Rwanda border, and I was counting on crossing loads, for a more normal life grasp and also to see all my dear friends (and cat) left behind, but every day I had to suck it up and let go of that illusion a little bit more…

As August was also drawing to an end, my impatience was really mounting. Numerous calls and emails remained answered, until last Friday when our rather inept otherwise visa-liaison person called me up with the good news: “The visa is stamped in your passport. But now la guerre commence avec Finance.”

What guerre? Well, it goes, apparently, along these lines: every NGO pays the $475 for each passport deposited, but apparently the DGM finance guy(s) run a bit of a separate business with that cash, counting on the fact that it’ll take weeks before those visas will actually be issued. It was the same now – visa was finally in the passport, but the money to pay for it was nowhere (although it had been deposited on July 15 already). This way, I would have to wait until another file came before the DGM, so that another poor bastard’s passport will be stuck for weeks while THAT money was transferred to my case.

Of course, when you feel like you’re so close the incertitude is even more upsetting. The whole week I fussed around, also because I was supposed to book my obligatory R&R flights for this month (and had heard horror stories of people whose visas had not been issued in time for the R&R, so the passport had to be taken out from the DGM and then resubmitted, for another 3-month ordeal to begin). In this frenzy I even took the risk and bought my flights online yesterday, counting on some miracle (or, rather, on some universal benediction to be bestowed upon me).

And then, this morning, I opened my emails and there it was: the passport had been released last night and already sent on the UN flight to Goma this morning, with some MONUSCO general named Bruno. I rushed down the stairs to ask our liaison guy here to please go find Bruno at the airport when the plane lands and finally retrieve my most longed-for possession ever. I could hardly concentrate all morning, spinning around and smelling the freedom ever closer.

At 14.30 this afternoon I was victoriously holding my barely-legible-by-now-Romanian passport, and ever since then I’ve been feeling on top of the world! It is only now that all those repressed fears actually became real in retrospect (considering that Congo, of ALL places, in not a country you’d like to be stuck for ANY reason, let alone medical or security)…

Almost in disbelief, I am now flipping through the many pages stamped and noticing the following: 1. They issued me a wrong visa which is now ‘annulled’; 2. The current visa is valid until Sept. 2014, so now I really should decide to stay for 3 years in Congo; 3. The visa will actually only be valid if I exit the country within the first three months, otherwise it becomes void (?); 4. The visa needs to be renewed 7 months (?!); 5. There is no picture of mine attached (although I was asked to give 4 to the DGM).

In short – all things that make sense….Tonight, though, I have just one thing on my mind: celebrating!!!! (would love to pop some champagne rose open…). OK, and maybe buying everyone (including all incompetents, it does not matter anymore) lots of drinks. And, maybe, finding Bruno and thanking him for the amazing delivery.

And then, tomorrow, as I will wake up with a heavy head, I will crawl to the border to hop back and forth a few times. Freedom is priceless!