African JAG

Let’s Go To Africa Getting Ready

I’ve written various things about Africa in my past chapters. And for those who got interested in visiting Africa, I would like to write about the basic knowledge to travel to Africa, how to enjoy Africa, and things you should be careful of in Africa in this plus the next few chapters.
Just keep in mind that there are total of 53 countries in the continent of Africa, there are hundred of times more number of tribes, and each district/area differs in language & culture, plus these are basically out of my own experience which may only relate to Japanese residents, so what I write will be “for your reference.”

VISA

A lot of the African countries require visa upon entry. You could achieve one in neighboring countries as well, but a lot of them require various documents to be submitted such as letters from the Japanese Embassy & from your friend in the country you are visiting, if you are visiting a country that the embassy exists in Japan, it is best to achieve visa before you leave Japan. The visa fee is different according to each country, but it’s basically expensive. And there are visas that takes about a week to get issued, so make your application as early as possible.
The documents necessary for visa applications differ according to each country, but there are also countries that require your bio, hotel confirmation documents, and the air tickets. Basically, all application forms are to be written in English. In application forms of the countries that uses French and Spanish as mother language, English words that normally don’t appear in application forms, so it is best to bring a dictionary with you. Also, the visa stamps/stickers of a lot of the African countries are huge to the point each one of them use a whole page, so if you plan to visit several countries at once, make sure you check the number of pages left in your passport!!
Some of the visas can be achieved also at the airports and country borders, but the officers there are at times troublesome, giving you every possible reason to get a bribe, so be extra careful.
All African embassies in Japan have at least one Japanese staff working for them, so if you have any question, ask them. They usually give you a lot of useful information.
FYI, based on my past visits, Morocco, Senegal & South Africa don’t need any visa. Visas for Malawi & Uganda can be achieved at the airport. Visas for Kenya, Mali, Cote D’Ivoire, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Mozambique should be achieved in Japan.

YELLOW FEVER VACCINE

Vaccine for Yellow Fever is valid for 10 years, so it is best to take it before you visit African countries.
Not all countries but a lot of them do require the Yellow Card (certificate that you have taken the Yellow Fever vaccination) upon entry. In order to take the vaccination, ?you need to make a reservation, and the vaccine becomes valid 10 days after the shot. There are periods that reservation gets full, so you should make yours as early as you could. See http://www.forth.go.jp/tourist/vaccine.html for more details.http://www.forth.go.jp/tourist/vaccine.html

FLIGHTS

The easiest way to fly from Japan to West Africa is through Europe. You will need to spend a night in a European city, but Africa is about 5-6 hours from Europe, so it’s physically the best way to fly. One of the important things when traveling to Africa is to take a good care of your physical condition, really!!
What I usually do is to purchase the ticket to Europe in Japan, and purchase the Europe-Africa return tickets at cheap travel agents in Europe. When going to a West African country that used to be French territory ?although depends on the destined country, of course, Air France is usually the cheapest choice. To those that used to be English territory, KLM or BA would be the best choice. Off season is especially cheap. There are oversea branches of Japanese agents such as H.I.S. with Japanese-speaking staffs as well, so extremely useful. You could also make reservations from Japan, and if you have enough time til your departure date & ay extra shipping cost, they send your tickets to your address in Japan too.
When flying to Malawi, the best flight-connection set is Singapore Airline & South African Airline. Spaces between seats are wide, good service. Short connecting time (don’t have to wait for ages for your connecting flights). Cathay isn’t bad too, but there tend to be a lot of Chinese tourists who are extremely loud & a bit disturbing.
Recently, Emirates started the flights to Africa via Dubai as well. Although if you are flying from Japan and you reside in Tokyo, you need to travel all the way to Kansai Airport in Osaka, plus the waiting time for connecting flight in Dubai is mad long. There are airport hotels to use while you wait for your connecting flight but they’re mad expensive as well, so I don’t use it very often. Service isn’t bad at all though….Aeroflot is another cheap choice to fly to Africa, but connection is bad as well.
One more point with flights. Every airline has mileage system & alliances, so be sure to register & collect your mileage points. When you travel to Africa, you get huge amount of mileage in one trip. I actually upgraded my seats from economy to business class & get free tickets using mileage points many times.

BAGGAGES

Anything valuable should be carried on board in your hand baggage. “Don’t let go of anything that may become fatal!!” is the bottom line. What’s normally considered to be valuable things obviously should be hand-carried, but if you have a chronic disease/illness, hand-carry your medicines as well. Unlike the so-called “advanced countries,” Africa isn’t a place where you could easily get what you need, and even national hospitals ran out of medicines at times.
Especially when you have tons of time until your connecting flight, it’s not rare that your check-in luggage gets destroyed & the contents get stolen, even the whole luggage gets stolen at times, so if you take medicines daily, don’t ever let them go out of your hands.
In my earlier days of visits to Africa, I used to take a travel luggage with built-in dial-lock. That luggage got forced open from the lock with a screw driver or something, and got all valuable stuff stolen (Aeroflot). It doesn’t look it’s broken from outside, so I didn’t notice til I got to my hotel. I set the lock dial to open my luggage but it wouldn’t open. I had no choice but to force open it with a screw driver.Everything that could be sold in good price were gone. FYI, medicines can be sold in real good price.
In South Africa, there is a service where they wrap cover your check-in luggage (extra charge needed).
Following are how I take my stuff with me when flying to Africa (upon African JAG visits), for your reference.
●WRAP-AROUND WAIST BAG
Air tickets, cash, traveler’s check, passport, credit cards, mobile phone, a slip of paper with urgent contacts & personal info written on, electric dictionary, medicines, flu masks, lip cream, tranquilizer, sleeping tablets, ear plugs, eye-mask, pens, handkerchief, tissues.
●HAND-CARRIED BAAGAGE (CARRIED ON BOARD)
Traveler’s check, credit cards (different from the ones in waist bag above), antibiotics, antidiarrheal medicine, medicine for Malaria, cold medicine, antipyretics, medicine for stomach ache, indigestion remedy, medicine for constipation, liquid gargle, disinfectant, band-aid, insect repellent sheet, travel insurance certificate, a slip of paper with urgent contacts, letter from my doctor stating my chronic illness & the medicines I take, T-shirt & underwear (for 1 day).
●CARRIE-ON LUGGAGE (CARRIED ON BOARD)
Cash, passport copy, video camera, digital camera (1 x professional; 1 x compact model), laptop pc, HDD, memory cards, electric power converter, extension chord,Electric chargers, lenses, etc…
●CHECK-IN BAGGAGE
Clothes, sandals, insect repellent sprays, insect repellent coils, extra batteries, 3-year bancha tea, instant foods, towels x 2, water-purifying plastic straws, poison remover (purchasable at Tokyu-Hands in Tokyo), extra medicines, passport copy, etc.

AIRPORTS IN AFRICA

The first place to be cautious when you land to your destination is the airport.
First, they check all your belongings upon entry, and tell you all the reason to get a bribe from you (airports of the countries such as Nigeria, Malawi, Cote D’Ivoire). At times, they even take your passport away and ask to give them some money (Nigeria).
Same thing also happens upon departure. Every officer that checks you til you reach your plane asks for money, but one thing you have to be careful upon departure is the amount of currency you have with you. A lot of African countries restrict the amount of money you bring out of that country. The local currency of course, but some countries also restrict the amount of US Dollar as well. No one gives you such info upon achieving your visa at the embassy, they only notify you inside the airport, some countries only post such information on small paper on the wall of the had-baggage check AFTER you go through the immigration…. I was told of such restriction upon my recent visit to Mozambique as they check my hand-luggage as well, and almost got my cash taken away. I visited there to make a pre-research for the JAG Project, thus I had the local currency in amount equivalent of US$1,000 with me. They say that they have to take that away from me. “No way!!” I said “if that’s the case, then I’ll go and exchange money & come back.” Now they tell me that’s not possible.Obviously I got into huge argument with them. At the end, police officer came & they finally allowed me to exchange my money, but they way they do it is totally wrong, totally coward. The white guy behind me paid some bribe to the baggage-check officer to get through, for your info.
It is true that by paying bribes, you could get through all airport checks without a problem, but airport officers doing such thing would only give mal-effect to the impression of their own country, no one would want to visit such country again. The same can be said to the airports of Japan as well, but the first place that tourists/visitors encounter in a country is its airport. If a traveler has a bad experience there, the whole impression of that country turns bad. A lot of the Africa countries should be more strict to their airport officers. At the same time, African embassies in Japan should notify all travelers who achieve the visas from them of all the restrictions and rules the foreigners should be ware of. There’s no use in just handing out leaflets stating only the good points about their country to attract tourists.
Needless to say, I never want to go to Mozambique again.

CHOOSING HOTELS

Hotels in Africa ranges too wide in classes & charges. The room charge rages from US$1 per night up to like US$500. You basically should think of the room charge as more of a security fee.
Nevertheless, upon one of my early visits to Nigeria when I stayed in Sheraton Hotel (costs around US$300 per night), I ate at the house restaurant, and when I tried to pay for the meal with my American Express card, the waiter asked me to submit an ID to check if I am really the owner of the card, so I gave him my passport. There wasn’t any problem there, but when I tried to use the same credit card in London few weeks later, it was unable to use. I called American express right away to check what was wrong, and they told me that there had been huge mail-order purchase from Nigeria using this credit card, so they thought something was wrong and stopped the card. I didn’t use that card anywhere else but the Sheraton in Nigeria, so there’s no other suspect.
I was a bit surprised…. Nigeria’s capitol, Lagos, is famous for its high crime rate. Back then, Sheraton was the one & only safe and trustful hotel to stay in Lagos, thus all the VIPs also used that hotel. And look what had happened.
Since that incident, I never used Sheraton in Nigeria. It wasn’t just the illegal use of credit card, I also hated the way the hotel handled my incident. I can still understand if it was a cheap hotel, but Sheraton Lagos was one of the most expensive hotels in Africa that I know of, and considering the security & trustfulness they guarantee to their guests, it is their duty to handle any claim from their guests properly with sincerity (I think), but they did nothing. What a hotel….
For these past few years, I books hotels that costs from US$40-US$150 per night in　cities, US$20-US$80 per night rooms in country sides, but haven’t encountered? a bad hotel much. I mean, these prices are middle-upper class hotels in Africa. I always take a look of the room before I decide to stay, but haven’t run into any trouble.
If you are to stay in cheap hotels, don’t forget to take a look into the room they are to put you in, and the points to check would be: 1) is the room cleaned?; 2) does the toilet flush water properly?; 3) is the shower working?; 4) do they have toilet papers & bath towels set?; 5) is the air condition or fans working properly?; 6) is the bed spring broken?; etc, etc…. You should also watch out for mites, fleas & bedbugs in cheap hotel rooms too. It’s good to take a plastic bed sheet with you if you are to use cheap hotels (purchasable at 99-cent shops in US).
FYI, unless it’s an upper class hotel, bath towels aren’t soft, and no amenities like shampoo available in each room. They have soap, but I’ve never seen any toothbrush or toothpaste even in expensive hotels.
There aren’t much useful African travel guide books available in Japan in terms of finding good hotels, but those published by Lonely Planet give lots of hotel details & seems to be the best. The ones I have are in English, but there seems to be Japanese translations of them being published recently, so check them at the book stores! (Note: I know that Lonely Planet’s travel guides have been published in Japanese, but not sure if the Africa ones have been published yet.)Right now, we have internet to find all sorts of information, so you should check whatever info you could get in advance. You could also stay in a real good hotel for the first night, and look for a reasonable one the following day. I usually get to find a good one like that without much problem. Or you could ask the cab driver, telling them your hotel budget.
When traveling Africa, hotel is very important!! You could collect a lot of information, and if you want to make your travel a good one, take a good care of your physical condition. It’s really difficult in a lot of ways when you become ill in Africa, losing your luggages would be a huge problem as well, and it’s too late to regret after you got involved in a crime too!!
So that’s it for this month’s “Let’s Go To Africa / Getting Ready” version. Next month will be how to enjoy the local areas & more things to be careful of. Look forward to it.
PS: Oops, forgot to complain one thing. Honestly, the information on Africa travel guides available in Japan is too old & too dangerous. It’s unbelievable to sell a guide book of such unstable countries stating information that are 10 years old. No use!!
Also what I have written above is merely an example/reference from what I have experienced, so make sure you check all information & details yourselves as well. You should achieve the latest informations as much as you can! The rest would be under your own decisions & responsibilities….

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