We are two electrical engineering students doing our Master's Thesis as a Minor Field Study on small-scale hydro systems in rural Mozambique. This blog is about the adventures we encounter during our ten weeks abroad, but also about the preparation, all good advice we've got and what might just have been time spent sleepless worring about completely unnecessary things.

Monday, 6 February 2012

Ladies and gentlemen; we have a departure date

Voilà!

This is the proof that our trip is for real! In five weeks we'll be sitting on a plane to Maputo, capital of Mozambique. Woho! We decided to postpone our departure one week to get some extra time for preparations so the D-day will be March 13.

Before buying the tickets we had an interesting conversation with the Mozambican embassy in Sweden. We'd heard from previous students going to Moz that it can be difficult to renew the visa after 60 days. You have to do this every 30 days and the second time is for some reason harder. Kajsa called and told the embassy man about our worries and he answered that it shouldn't be a problem to stay 70 days, no no. As long as we went to the embassy there to renew it every 30 days. However, when Kajsa mentioned this friend and his problems, the embassy man thought for a wihile and said "Yes, well it's not the first time I hear about this. No, not at all in fact." Oh, thanks for that information. You planned on saving that for someone else, did you? So, now we're thinking a multiple entry visa and a trip to South Africa every 30 day could solve this problem. I mean, if in Africa, we might as well see some more of it than just Mozambique, right?

Apart from the visa/flight business today has mostly been spent taking care of administrative stuff like chasing our examinor for signatures (he never seems to be in his office when we need him) and getting a room. Getting a room means we can realise Kajsa's post-it-wall tomorrow = Happiness!

Word of the day (Today in Swahili which is spoken in the north of Moz): Hippo - kiboko

1 comment:

  1. In five weeks we'll be sitting on a plane... That sentence gave me goosebumps!

    I have bought post-its and pens for tomorrow. The wall will never know what hit it!

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