Transit

A new round of work travel begins today, with a trip to Mozambique followed by two weeks in Europe for meetings with various WWF offices.

I decided to use the route between Dar es Salaam and Maputo flown by the Mozambican national airline Linhas Aéreas de Moçambique (LAM) as in theory it involves much less visa faffing than trying to travel via South Africa or Ethiopia.

Overall I think the route was the best option, but I was left pondering my decision during the transit stop in Pemba in northern Mozambique where we had to complete immigration. The visa line was so long that the plane started to leave without all passengers, including me. In the end the guy from immigration realised I was still there, stuffed my unprocessed documents in an envelope with a note scribbled for the next migration lot, which was subsequently stuffed in a compartment of the aircraft, care of the flight attendants lest I try and enter the country illegally. I didn’t budge from the top of the plane stairway until I was sure my bag had been brought to the aircraft. In transit it all gets unloaded and I’d been told to leave it on the conveyor belt inside the terminal two minutes before, so their insistence that it was already in the hold wasn’t very convincing. After some frantic radio action, I saw it coming over on a forklift truck.

After landing in the capital I eventually emerged from the terminal with a visa and luggage, which counts as success based on previous Mozambique visa struggles, well documented on blip.