I arrive at Nampula airport at 13:25. As soon as the small aircraft's door is swung open and I step out, I am greeted by a drenching humidity in the air that makes my lungs feel like I've pulled a bong with too much water in it. Beads of sweat instantly start rolling down the sides of my face. It's 36'c, welcome to Nampula, Mozambique.
The plane parked directly in front of the airport and it's a short walk to the terminal. Inside, there is a small desk with two airport personnel behind it. A petite Mozambican woman is weaving through the line with a hand-written piece of paper asking the passengers if we have had our Yellow Fever shots. None of them have had one, I blame the travel agents.
We're each given a small piece of paper for us to do our air-transfer documentation. No pens are provided. A few of us have pens with us and we soon become the leaders of this pack - the seeing among the blind, the saviors of Nampula Terminal. We fill out our forms and make our way to the desk. Everybody gets their stamps, it's going swimmingly. I present my passport to the two gentlemen and hear "ah Argentina! Lionel Messi! Football, no?" I say "Yes, football." They tell me to stand one side for some reason. The midget woman is still asking me if I've had my Yellow Fever shot. I'm getting real tired of this bitch's shit.
After everyone has collected their luggage and gone, I'm still standing in front of the desk. "You come." said one of the men and I grabbed my luggage and proceeded to follow. We walk through the apparently defunct metal detector and into the main terminal. It's small, hot and reeks of fish and desperation. He motions for me to walk up a small flight of stairs and into a dinky little room with three bewildered looking men sitting inside. He points to a couch and says "seeet", I seeet.
It's been 30mins now and nobody has acknowledged my existence. These three guys continue to do their work, oblivious to my desperation to get the fuck out of there. I watch them and learn their ways. It's a complex security system they have developed to handle the influx of new arrivals. One of the men takes the flight manifesto and writes all the people's passport origins on a piece of blank A4 paper and hands it to the guy on the couch next to me, that guy then takes the sheet and transfers all the information to a cellphone where he sends it in a text to God knows where. The third person is then counting documents. Hundreds of documents. These documents too, were a mystery I could not solve.
Looking around that office gave me some insight as to what sort of planning and management the country is enduring. There is a brand new Samsung air-conditioner above the windows with the power plug dangling in the air. I see that 20cm from the end of the plug is the plug point - an extension cable could do the trick, but there didn't seem to be one at hand. There is a small unoccupied desk in the corner of the room in immaculate upkeep, yet they decided to work here, on this couch, with documents on their laps. I presume it to be someone else's desk. I don't really care at this point, I just want to get my VISA.
Pushing towards the end of an hour and a short man dressed in military attire enters the room. He looks at me, looks at the other three people, looks back at me and then begins speaking Portuguese. I do the common "Don't understand" gesture with my hand, as if swiveling a plate in my open palm. He seemed to understand this and proceeds to talk to the other three fellows, they answer him, not looking up from their current task. It's at this point that Military Man loses his shit and begins raising his voice and waving his arms about. I don't really understand what he was saying, but I presume he was referring to them making me wait, because his body language wasn't exactly coming across as saying "You guys are doing a great job! I just thought I'd pop in here and let you know that!".
They shuffle whatever they were busy with to one side and reluctantly wave me over to a small chair in front of a whiteboard in the corner. There's a camera in front of me - it's a 2mp webcam from 1999 that looks like it came bundled with an AOL package. He lifts up a blanket and begins tinkering with a computer. "Front face" he says, so I front face. He takes a photo and motions for me to stand up and come over to him. There's a small fingerprint scanner on the desk and he holds up his right index finger and says "Finger first", I index finger firsted as instructed. He raises his left index finger and says "Now finger two", so I put my left index down on the scanner and finger two. "Muy bon" he says as he turns on an Epson printer that is so old, that the white finish has now turned yellow.
Then nothing happens.
We wait and wait for a print that is clearly not coming any time soon. I look at the guy and shrug my shoulders, as if to say "what now?" and he calls one of the other men over to help him. This was my most frustrating moment thus far from the whole experience and where the language barrier was the most prevalent. Watching these two working on this poor PC was like watching someone drive your car - sure, they can drive it, but you'll always have some criticism as to how they do it. I don't know how many times I saw them try print the document and watched as the print queue grew larger and larger with each push of the print icon. How do you even say "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" in Portuguese?
It's 20 mins after my Visa is supposedly done and I'm still waiting for this print. There's 4 people involved now, trying to get this print working. Everything from checking the ink, paper, plug points - everything. It's so fucking sad that me entering this country is solely dependent on a R400 canon printer from the early 2000's. Eventually, one of the geniuses does something right and it's spitting copies of my Visa one after another. How do you say "Just cancel the other jobs" in Portugese? I don't know, because if I did I would not have waited for this man to collect 30 identical copies of the same document, as if expecting the last one to be different.
I just got into the country and I wanted to go back already.
