A day in the Purser's Office

An excerpt from our September 2009 newsletter:

My day starts by quickly gathering all the passports of new arriving crew of the past few days and departing crew for the up coming days. I then put together the shore passes for them. A shore pass is a piece of paper that is signed and stamped by immigration for each crewmember to carry with them while they are in the country. Once passports are compiled, and the shore passes are put together I put them in a shoulder bag, put on my sunglasses, grab our wonderful translator named James from reception, scan off the ship, and head down the gangway on to the dock. We get into a Mercy Ship land rover, and drive about a mile from the ship to a building that is shared by our shipping agent and the port immigration office. The shipping agent is a local business that is our liaison with the government.


As we arrive at the big yellow building, which looks like an old used tire store built in the 1960s that still has tires and mattresses lying around, we get out of the vehicle and walk inside. I knock on Simon’s door (our agent) and walk inside. I reach over a desk of cluttered papers and miscellaneous junk and give him a handshake. He then sends me to another office to meet one of his colleagues who leads us around the building to the port immigration office. As we walk into the immigration building, I walk though dozens of confiscated motorcycles called zimi-jeans and begin smelling the odor of urine and feces coming from an old-fashioned jail cell around the corner. We then walk into the actual immigration office. The office is a small room that is filled with a fridge, four chairs, one desk, three televisions, a lot of junk, and four employees sitting down watching the only television that works. I hand-over the shore passes to be signed and stamped. This takes a while because the African culture is all about relationships, so they want to spend time with you. I am asked questions about what we can give them, women, family, & America.

After building relationships downstairs, it is time for me to go upstairs to another office. Now this office is special. This is where our passports are stamped. Until recently, I was not allowed in the office. I had to hand our passports to Simon to get them stamped. After much persistence and relationship building, I am finally able to walk in the office and hand the gentlemen our passports!

This whole process usually takes all morning and half of my workday twice a week. ☺