I just got back to Port Gentil from the Jungle in Gabon, Collected 31 days per diem (775,000 CFA) from the ofice headed to town to get a pizza (the first thing edible for weeks) got back to the car and…
Laptop gone :eek:
Brit passport gone:eek:
NZ Passport gone:eek:
vaccination certs gone:eek:
International driving license gone:eek:
No Brit or NZ consul in Gabon
Can’t report it to the police until monday as the station commander doesn’t work weekends and if an ordinary policeman stops me (regular occurrence in Port Gentil)
I will be arrested for having no papers.
Who in their right mind leaves their passports, laptop, and other papers and valuables in an unattended car? Sorry, but that decision was just suicidal.
You’ve apparently got enough of the local scrip to hole up in a hotel somewhere until Monday when you can report the theft. Unless you want to spend the weekend in an African jail, I’d suggest you do so, rapidly.
Not advisable really, ordinary police here will look at it as an excuse to get a bribe because I now have no evidence of a visa. That or they may simply detain me over the weekend. I need go to the HQ with a company rep on Monday. Am not in the mood to pay bribes because my 775k ( about US$1.5k) went along with the rest of the stuff.
Oh and if things can’t get more complicated I just noticed that my credit card expired end of December so paying for a new passport is going to be problematic.
Huh? You said in your OP that you collected 31 days per diem (775,000 CFA) from the office. You had it in your bloody hands - did you put the money in the burgled car too?
Some thief had himself a very lucrative day, I think.
UFC Is Sux You are absolutely right. I never do this. (Well obviously apart from this time) I was tired and hungry, It was a 6 hour riverboat journey coming back from the oil filed. The laptop bag with all my stuff was under the passenger seat. The car was unattended and opposite a police station for a maximum ten minutes.
I’m pitting my luck but know I should be pitting my stupidity! I’ve been working abroad for 20+ years. This may be an oil rich nation but there is abject poverty here with people eating out of dumpsters! I really know better than to be this much of a dumbfuck!
Just fuming and not looking forward to the bureaucratic hoops I am going to have to jump through to get my paperwork back up to scratch!
British passports are no longer issued by overseas embassies. My last Brit passport was issued in Hong Kong, the website says I can apply for a new brit passport “when I return to the UK” - I haven’t been in the UK for over 11 years and have no plans to go back. I need to see how I can get a new one of those.
My NZ passport is only issued from Wellington. I can apply on the webz but need a current credit card! hope Citibank can move quickly!
Dammit!
Yap, Am back to my apartment with a few bottles of vodka and gonna stay put till monday!
manila: I’m really not attacking you (a rarity in the BBQ Pit, I know). I have done some very similar monumentally stupid things myself, including getting stuck in Osan South Korea with no paperwork/money because I left my wallet at a cafe. I had to panhandle enough from strangers to pay for a seat on a MAC flight back to my home command, which put me over leave by a couple of days, which caused me to miss a deployment which put me on my CO’s fecal roster, etc.
Feces occur. The question is, is there anywhere you can just lie low for the weekend until you can report the theft to the local Grand Poobah and start recovering some of your losses? Staying out of the local Black Hole of Calcutta would be Priority One on my list of to-dos.
Am actually just in the office at the moment. But I also have my personal laptop in the apartment. Only dial up speed there though.
I didn’t take it as much as an attack when compared to what my colleagues have rightly been reminding me! Its incredibly embarrassing reporting this as I should really have known so very much better.
Well, there’s no sense in worrying about it now. It’s done and can’t be undone. What you can do is to try and fix it effectively, so concentrate on that instead. People get tired (and travelling is vry tiring) and that’s when they start making mistakes.
Chances are the ID and papers will show up at some point. Any thief worth his salt knows you would probably write off the cash and the laptop rather than deal with the police, and he’s be scot free, but you can’t ignore your papers and as long as he has them the heat will be on Can you get a friend to check around local police stations, restaurants, hotels, etc.? Usually these places have a fat stack of IDs returned by thieves. You might find it.
