After what seems like an eternity waiting, I finally got my DIRE (Mozambican residency permit) today.
Most DIREs I've seen are in the form of a little booklet with an id photo and pages for visa stamps, much like a mini-passport. This is what I was hoping for, but for whatever reason my DIRE is just a stamped visa-type page in my actual passport.
I was looking it over this afternoon and had a hard time making out the hand-written word on the top of the official seal.
"Residência .......?" To me it looked like "I6carIa", ou seja, total gibberish. Damn flourishy handwriting that is so common here in Mozambique.
I tried to decipher the word for a few more minutes, then got frustrated and finally had to ask Ludmila, the girl down the hall who runs the Clearing business, for a little help.
"Ludmila, can you tell me what this word says? Residência what?"
Ludmila gave my DIRE page a good look, then burst out laughing.
"Residência Precária!!" she crowed. "What a funny title. They must not like you at the immigration office!"
So it's official: I am now a Precarious Resident of Mozambique, with a passport full of stamps and signatures to confirm my unstable status, valid for the next 12 months.
WTF?? Precarious???
I can't wait to try and get in and out of the country with this thing...
5 comments:
I'm so sorry, but I am laughing my ass off at the title of "Precarious Residency". It's like something out of Waugh's "Scoop".
~Monkey - I know, unreal, huh? Who on earth thought up this classification for residency?? Priceless...
Congrats my dear. I just hope you did not have to bribe too many people.
Smile ...
as i understand it, there is a need to change the DIRE booklet format, and thus immigration is not issuing any more of these booklets. In the future(hopefully sooner than later) there will be a small ID card (with more security features)that will be similar for all residents, whether foreign or not...probably trying to decrease the ease of falsifying DIREs, meeting SADC standards... Your new permit is just fine...just wonder how easy it is to renew it, but the first group of people renewing will be next year, and that will give us a clue.
~Lacithecat - Ignorance is bliss, my friend. I have no idea what strings were pulled to get me this thing.
~Lucky to have a dire - Great information, thank you!! I'll be sure to share how the renewal process goes.
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