Pre-departure
My work takes me to different places in the world. All of them with their unique challenge and beauty and every time with a different reason for going. Close, far, considered safe or hostile, it doesn’t really matter, we go where we are needed.
Our visit to Djibouti started out in Brussels and proved to provide us with a challenge without even leaving our own country. If you think, whatever may be your nationality, that it is hard getting into the US, try visiting Djibouti with my background.
As we wanted to do things properly, we contacted the local Djibouti Embassy in Brussels. They kindly explained us on the phone to present ourselves at the Embassy with our valid passports, two ID pictures and a letter from our host in Djibouti as we had stated to be business visitors. My colleague and I showed up at the Embassy at 09h00 local time just as agreed.
At this point, there are 2 things you should know, first, myself and my colleague are bald, weigh in at around 100KG, and the harder we try to hide we work in security the more obvious the tell-tale signs become. Second, by the time we realized it, it was 09h45 when a very Djibouti looking lady appeared on the sidewalk and started sweeping it. We took the liberty to ask if she knew what time the Embassy would open as we had an appointment, TODAY at 09h00. She kindly asked us what our business with the Embassy was, upon which we replied: “We are here to get our visa registered in our passports”. She dropped her broom, changed head ornaments and with an ever so mild smile asked us for our passport, as she was the Cosul General’s assistant.
While flipping through our passports, she looked up a couple of times, measuring the both of us and came to the stunning conclusion: “Hmmm, you work in security, maybe the pirates interest you?”. We immediately new there was no sense in denying this, so we vaguely answered something that could have even been Djiboutian to try to avoid any further questions.
Not that we had anything to hide, but our contact as described in the letter of invitation wasn’t exactly what fitted the security profile.
Without saying much, the lady motioned us to the waiting room and had us fill in three pages of A4 paper with all kinds of information, starting with my mother’s maiden name to end with my relationship with the person accompanying me. When we figured out who was accompanying who, we gave back the papers to the lady and were asked to kindly wait. The Cosul General would have a look…
Until this stage, we hadn’t seen anybody else in the entire Embassy. But all of a sudden, the lady came back, and asked us to come back in the morning of the next day. There were no problems, but the Ministry of the Interior of Djibouti wanted to check out our passports… To be continued!