From our immigration lawyer

The consulate indicated that they can not issue a new visa sticker. The reason is that the stickers are created by a scan of the passport ID page and a new sticker will therefore be identical to the current one. They advised that it happens frequently that a name is misspelled by a single letter due to the scanning procedure and that this is no problem whatsoever in entering and residing in Angola.

We insisted that we still wanted to have a new visa sticker, but they refused to do this and confirmed that the visa can be used the way it is.

Segastiaan

Today, after 10 long and hard months we finally received our visa's.

But! Maarten’s middle name is spelled wrong!

Will they be able to get this fixed by tomorrow morning?

Frustrating!

We were promised to have our passports with Angolan visa back on Wednesday at latest. That was yesterday! I got suspicious and unfortunately I was right. Today we heard from our visa agent that we could not collect the passports yet.
Even though our visa application is successfully approved our passports can’t be stamped yet due some technical problem!!
The consular officer indicated that this should be solved next Wednesday and according to him, in time for the intended travel.
Well, that still might be a problem as the movers are not allowed to start packing until the physical visa sticker is inserted into our passports.
And for now, they did plan to start packing on the 12th and they need at least four days. As we were required to submit our travel itinerary to make sure that the visa validity date corresponds with our intended date of arrival in Angola our tickets have been already booked for April 19th!
That’s why any delay in the packing process will require flights to be re-booked again.
To be continued…

Work visa and teeth accident

Today we received a long awaited note from the Angolan consulate that Rob’s work visa application is ready.
Also translations of all necessary documents are legalised therefore Maarten's and my applications for ordinary visa can be submitted as well.

Unfortunately, I can't enjoy this news as at the same time I received a call from the school principal that Maarten just knocked out three of his front teeth!

I feel quite dizzy.

Luckily, our dentist is so friendly that even though her schedule is too busy she is going to squeeze him in this afternoon for a quick check up to make sure that no underlying teeth were damaged.

Congratulation on obtaining MINPET approval!

Congratulations on securing MINPET approval! This is a great milestone on your journey to secure your Angolan working visa. You are now a few weeks to relocate to Angola.

Nice start of the day with this long awaited message from HRM.

After 7 months of bureaucratic snag if was difficult to believe and it even brought me to tears.
Hard to believe indeed!
I could feel that something isn’t quite right and unfortunately my guts were correct again.
The evening same day we received a message from our visa agent who just visited the Angolan consulate informing us about the processing time for the work permit.
From now on it’s going to take 1 - 3 months, another period of time-wasting bureaucracy!
Of course, we were still hoping it’s only an unfortunate typo. Weeks instead of months this is what the message should have said!
Sorry, no typo.

And what about the process flow chart we were sent months ago? Accordingly, it should take 10 - 15 business days to stamp the work permit visa in passport.

Surprise, surprise!
This flow chart is not applicable for expats outside the States.

Still in Belgium

Not a really post but rather a shout out of despair:
We are still in Belgium!
3 months after our planned (and desired) departure date!
Unfortunately some documents provided by the Angolan Ministério dos Petróleos were returned as Rob's name was misspelled. Now we have to wait until they reissue it again before he can finally apply for his working visa in the Netherlands.

Some interesting pictures

Just received some interesting pictures from Rob's Angolan colleagues.
It seems they really want us to be ready for the adventure.

A large snake was hiding under the car hood. It must have taken some effort to get him out.

Pre-assignment visit to Luanda (28-31/8)

If paying a pretty penny for the flight, one would expect a good quality instead of a broken seat. This wasn’t the best start of our Angola trip.

We landed in Luanda at 6:20 p.m. and, compared to Europe, it was already dark! Someone mentioned it was better that way since the airport surroundings are not that appealing.

Glad we finally made it to the hotel not sure what was going to happen next. It was Sunday night and after the dinner we were looking forward to a good and long night sleep. After all, our first appointment was not until Monday afternoon.
Well, early the next morning Rob’s cell phone was ringing.
“Where are you?! You should have already been here!”
The driver was stuck in the morning traffic and after some spectacular drive through the city he safely got us on the pre-assignment rollercoaster.
I would not list all the activities, meetings, dinners, presentations… I’m still busy sorting my head out. An endurance test?

We met many nice and welcoming people. I was shocked to see the abundance of choices at the local supermarkets. The high prices didn’t surprise me as I was already warned.
The Medical Clinic provides quality standard procedures, however we hope to need their services as little as possible.


Maarten’s future school was above expectations. Naturaly I love its international character. Every child in the classroom is from a different country! And his teacher is so friendly. She also has worked in Czech Republic for some time!

During one night I experienced some bizarre dreams.
In a drenched hotel room I was fighting huge immortal mosquitoes and chopping heads off of aggressive zombies.

Should I blame Malarone or my head had some difficulties to come to terms with the Luanda’s daily scenes, images as seen through the window glass of a chauffeur driven air-conditioned car; commuting between luxury hotels and restaurants, Western-like shopping centre’s and offices, passing never-ending townships, staring at the endless traffic jams, street sellers and people hazardously crossing streets, trying to forget the lifeless body in a puddle of blood in the middle of the street causing even more chaos...

Like two parallel existing worlds.