Dear Viven,
If you are traveling across Africa as we
are, you will absolutely require a folder of fiches de passage. Like the carnet de passage there is no good way
to translate it into English, but the fiche
is essentially a list of all your pertinent details (and those of anyone
you are traveling with) on a single piece of paper. Police, soldiers and gendarmes will ask you for a fiche
at checkpoints and borders, and keep it for their records (which are either a
real extensive matrix of travel knowledge, or just physical proof that they’re
actually doing their jobs).
The authorities of some countries, such as
Senegal and the Gambia, required no fiches
from us at all, while in others, such as Mauritania, the gendarmes at every checkpoint asked for it.
The sample fiche below has worked for us so far. It may be a good idea to add your profession,
as this is the single-most asked question at all checkpoints and borders
(possibly to root out unwanted journalists and activists). In the
Western Sahara the Moroccan gendarmes
and police always checked our passports for our stamped-in visa entry number,
which they wrote on the fiche, so you
may want to add this to save time, though it was never an actual problem with
those officials we encountered.
Other pieces of information you may want to
add: vehicle make and model, purpose of visit (if you can, always say work
instead of tourism), place of birth as well as the date, passport place of
delivery and issuing authority, and if you want to really get all you might be
asked for, the full names of your father and mother. One gendarme
in Mauritania stated that our fiche
was incomplete without passport photos attached, but this was an extreme case,
and after saying this he started to fish for a bribe, which we refused and were
let go (which so far has always been the case).
Though it depends on where you’ll be going,
on our route it is a good idea to write the fiche
in French, or French and English.
Here’s what you should have on your fiche:
Date (with a space left blank to be filled
out)
Lieu (Place, with a space left blank)
Nom (last name)
Prénom (first name)
Nationalité (nationality)
Sexe (gender)
Date de naissance (date of birth)
Numéro du passeport (passport number)
Passeport date de deliverance (passport
date of delivery)
Passeport date d’expiration (passport date
of expiry)
Propriétaire du véhicule (vehicle owner)
Numéro d'immatriculation (licence plate number)
Write the personal details of all travelers
on the same sheet.
Prepare to need quite a few of these. At the time of writing we have given out 20
(16 in Mauritania, 3 in the Western Sahara, and one in Guinea-Bissau), and
expect to give as many, if not more, in the months to come.
Hope this helps,
QM
