African Time : The Art of Waiting

Waiting waiting waiting...

Travelling through Africa means that you have to get used to waiting. The Western visitor speaks of 'African time' with a slightly patronising smile, a small tsk-tsk and a shake of the the head, while thinking: Come on! Get on with it! But, when you travel through this continent and have to do battle with bureaucracy – and French bureaucracy at that (after all, no matter what the British civil servants tell you, it was the French who are the champions in the art of shuffling paper and tying red tape), you can be patronising, you can be impatient, you can be downright rude, but you will get absolutely nowhere with your western ways; you will not rush the system; you will not get things to move at your stressful pace; you will not change their way of doing things.

A good case in point is the process of obtaining visas to continue on your journey. Instead of “Slow Food”, think

“Slow – um – slow – come-back-tomorrow – slow”. Add to that the odd uprising here and demonstration there and military action yesterday and general election tomorrow, and add as well the heat and more heat and then some, which seems to license anyone working here to take a couple of hours off work at random and unannounced times during the day, and you pretty much get the picture.

We are now well into the third week of waiting; endless days of sitting on the pavement in front of embassies waiting to have the gate opened to get into the premises; hours of sitting on benches against the grubby wall waiting to have your turn come up to go present your papers and applications for visas at the desk where the taciturn consular official is peering over her glasses and so obviously getting a sadistic thrill in telling you that one of the vital papers or letters needed for a visa to her country is missing and to come back tomorrow.

With all that waiting, there is of course plenty of time for good things to happen too. Like meeting a young man who will write you a letter of invitation to his country which has to accompany your

application. Forget about approaching the top guns of huge companies to provide such a letter – they cannot help – and understandably so; after a conversation with a young local he decides he likes you, is willing to vouch for you, calls his sister on his mobile, get passed onto his brother in law who works in the embassy, the letter is quickly written on a scrap of paper, and the entire group has a personal invitation to be his family's guests in the country where you hope to be heading.

Other official letters are also provided – at a small fee – and the price of an official stamp – by young men who sit on the pavements outside the government buildings and embassies. Over there, behind the motorbikes parked under the trees, against the wall, these young 'scribes' sit and await your business. Need a letter of reference to apply for the permanent residency of country A that you need in order to apply for the visa. Wait several hours to be let into the building, another few hours in the line to hand in your forms and passports and letters of

reference and photographs, go back to the camp and wait a day – two days – three days – return to the offices, go through the waiting process there again, be told to come back tomorrow, repeat the process and if all goes well, in just over a week you have the piece of paper that grants you permenent residency of this lovely hot country. Next you go off to the police commissariat on the other side of town, have a lovely chat to the the four (female) police officials clustered around a small table in a tiny hot room, exchange a few pleasantries about your travels, your family, compare ages of number of

grandchildren, wait for them to each in turn go through the process of washing – feet - three times, hands - three times, face - once, ears – once, and then kneeling down and praying on the grass mat rolled out at your feet, and then start the laborious process of filling out their forms – one per person in the group – with all the information they need to confirm and authorise your permanent residency in their country. Name, date of birth, residential address (The Sleeping Camel, Route 25, Gate 80, Badebalou, Bamako), nationality, passport number, date of issue, date of expiry, names of parents (and parents, please forgive us, but all of us who have had a turn at one of these 'officialdom' form fillings, have had to quickly think up names for each of you – not necessarily the names you are normally known by! You would think we would just have the list handy with parents' names already written out. The list exists. But invariably, when the question comes up, that list happens to be with another member of the group who is busy on the other side of town waiting on the pavement outside another government building to be let in to sit on a bench against another wall to reach the front of another queue to get to hand in another set of papers for another form we need in this process of obtaining visas to get to the countries we hope to be heading to.)

Waiting. Waiting. Waiting...

We are now permanent residents of one country, have visas for the next country – despite their borders being 'closed', visas for the country after that – despite them not issuing visas to anyone at the moment, and our passports and applications are still with the final one that has proved to be the biggest hurdle. And that is a good sign. If the passports are still there and not returned to us on one of our daily visits to the embassy, that means there is still a chance we will get those visas – so keep your fingers crossed for us as wait to get these last visas soon so we can move on and continue our magical journey following the fragrance of the shooting stars!