How to (Potentially) Cancel Your Tri-Country Excursion in Two Simple Steps

First, don’t realize that you need a visa to travel to one of your destinations until a week before you are going to leave.

Second, once you realize your oversight, send your passport away to Washington D.C. with only a hope and a prayer that it makes it there, is processed, approved and shipped back by the day you leave. 

Not that I would know any of this from experience....

Before getting into this too much, I would like to let everyone know just how much the Humanity Exchange (the organization I am traveling to Benin with) and Sundance Travel (the travel agency that set up my multi-country flights) are NOT AT ALL RESPONSIBLE FOR MY STUPIDITY! The lovely folks at Humanity Exchange sent me a pre-departure manual way back in November of last year when I applied originally and very high on their list of things to accomplish before leaving was the visa application. When the very sweet Charlotte of Sundance Travel sent me my itinerary, there was definitely a note about the visa as well. Clearly, the fault is mine...despite looking over all of these materials, until four hours ago, I was unaware of the visa requirement. As far as the manual goes, I began working on getting everything in order near the end of my first semester of college last year, and was actually ahead of schedule; Christmas break was used to make appointments with travel health clinics, create packing lists, and book flights. Then school and work began again in January, and my priorities once again returned to grades and keeping children from running away (I work in a high school special needs class). And then with the emailed itinerary from Sundance, my time-saving/terrible tendency to skim emails apparently came back to bite me.

Smarting from that bite, I spent the afternoon on the phone with the Benin Embassy in Washington D.C., Sundance, FedEx, and a courier. Requirements for a visa application to Benin include:

1. The application (it was primarily in French)
2. A passport picture (I didn’t have one)= trip to Costco
3. A money order for $140 (fresh out of those as well)= trip to the bank
4. A photo copy of your round trip plane ticket (...nope.)= a call to Charlotte, who couldn’t have sounded more alarmed that this hadn’t been taken care of already
5. My actual passport (I had this, but it was difficult to think about the idea of sending it far, far away eight days before my first ever international flight)=stress
6. Proof of my yellow fever vaccination (FINALLY! I had this!)=gold star

Oh, the embassy takes three business days to process the application, so a trip to FedEx in order to super-duper-fast-fast-overnight (that’s the official FedEx name) the whole package was necessary too. And don’t forget the prepaid return envelope as well.

    =120 dollars worth of shipping = a coronary

So, 1 hour, 10 phone calls (literally), 3 stops, and $265.35 later, my application was in the mail, with a promise that it would be on a desk in the Benin Embassy by 8:30 tomorrow morning. During one of my calls with the embassy-I made three separate ones in that hour- a nice gentleman told me that he would have it done and shipped hopefully by Wednesday. 

Which means I could literally be waiting for the FedEx man to come on Friday afternoon (I paid for the super-duper-fast-fast-overnight though so hopefully Thursday) with a couple pieces of vital luggage before I can meet up with the rest of my group headed to Hungary and Romania from Sundance at 4:15.

That should be fun....

Perhaps not. BUT! This blog is now fun and interactive for you! It now has an exciting game called “Track Julia’s Visa.” To play, just use the tracking numbers below on FedEx.com and watch my ability to go on this trip fly back and forth across the country!

Number for the package to DC: 8001 0836 6236

Number for the return package back to Mesa: 8001 0836 6247

I really couldn’t feel stupider at this point, but what can we do now besides hope and pray that the Father and FedEx come through to help me out with my major mistake? 

Throw up?

I think we already established in an earlier blog that that is really never the best option. It’s really just a mess. And we’ve already got one of those on our hands.

For the honor and glory.