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Background key points
Where? Why? Travel issue
Ethiopia One week project meeting. Tourism visa vs Business visa.

The beginning of her stay was not so relaxing, but the meeting went fine and the next Saturday, as planned, she took her way back to Italy.


She arrived in Addis at 17.00 and her next flight was at 21.00.

Once landed, she found out that her passport was not there, but was at the central visa office downtown, which was already closed and would have opened again on Monday.

Regardless her desperate efforts, driven by panic to convince the officers to let her leave, she was not admitted aboard.

She had therefore to arrange in a short time her stay in Addis.

Fortunately, a colleague who was travelling back to Europe with her knew the Dean of the Italian school in Addis, who immediately went to the airport and agreed to host Sarah for the next two days.

The Dean also called her contacts at the Italian embassy and could quickly arrange a meeting the next Monday.

Sarah went at the meeting and, after explaining her situation, the Embassy officer accompanied her at the visa office to act as intermediary and explain the case, not to incur in major consequences.


Once in the registration office, however, he had not been admitted for the interview.

He had therefore to go alone through a teasing interview in front of two policemen trying to demonstrate she was not bypassing the Ethiopian law.

In fact the local authority, checking her passport, noted - looking at the stamps - that during same year she had been already in Ethiopia, plus in Tanzania and Kenya, with tourism VISAs. So, they thought she was systematically using the tourism VISA for business purposes.

She decided to tell them she didn’t know about the need for the business VISA, that she was convinced that the tourism VISA was the correct one for her case, and that certainly she wouldn't repeat the same mistake in the future.