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AFRICA&##39;Z KID&##39;Z Adoptions |
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The Leader in Mission, Church, Relief and Development Travel Since 1971 |
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It is assumed that you are working through a very reputable adoption agency and thus I will not need to comment on that process. Our office has worked with adoptions for a number of years and that coupled with the fact that some of our staff have been to and lived in Africa, provides us with good insight into these traveling challenges.
First of all, it is important to understand that not everything will go as planned; something will go sideways and thus it is most important that you purchase a ticket that will give you the maximum of flexibility. You may need to depart from home sooner or later; you may need to depart Africa at a time other than what you had planned. Taking care of mountains of red tape will take time and nothing will proceed at the same speed that it does here.
When one asks for a guesstimate for an airfare, it is
difficult to do unless we have exact dates of travel. Every flight has a number of different airfare classes, and we simply look for the
lowest combinations on the dates that you will give us. Without these firm dates, we could be very far off of the "mark" airfare wise.
In contrast to the airfares that are out in the market place, our airfares have a lot fewer restrictions. When you book your flights with us, no deposit is required and the tickets only need to be issued one month prior to departure. If you make a reservation under a month prior to departure, ticket normally need to be issued within a shorter period of time - usually within three days. Whereas most seat sale tickets are totally non-refundable and non-changeable, our tickets are fully refundable if cancelled at least one day prior to departure, with the exception of a refund fee of $107.00/pp. Our tickets are valid for one year and provide unlimited changes to the return flight as long as there is space in the SAME class of service. If you need to change to a higher class of service, then you would pay whatever the new higher rate would be. If you plan to travel to Africa / Liberia for this adoption most countries will require a visa ( which is stamped inside your passport ) to enter their country. To secure this visa, you can do one of the following: 1) You can go through a Visa Service - a company that, for a fee, will secure your visa for you. Go to our website www.mennotvl.com , place your cursor on the left hand side TRAVEL DOCUMENTS, then VISA SERVICES and then VISA SERVICES CANADA or USA. Here you can download the visa If you plan to travel to Africa 2) If you would like to get the visa yourself, simply let me know and I will email / fax the application forms to you. You will also need to take care of your vaccinations. We highly recommend that you visit a Travel Health clinic who will advise you as to what vaccinations are needed. The Gov&##39;t does require that you have a Yellow Fever vaccination. Anti malaria pills are highly recommended. My suggestion is that you get as many "shots" as you can as you do not want to land in an African hospital. I would also recommend that you visit our website and look under TRAVEL PREPARATION as there are some very informative links especially AFRICAN HOSPITALITY. When making your reservations, we would require all names exactly as shown in your passports ( this is very important as the airlines will not do any name changes ), mailing address, telephone number and email address. If children are traveling, we will require the birth dates if under 12 years of age. F.Y.I. over half of the names that are given to us for the adopted children are incorrect and this then becomes a very stressful situation. As your new adopted child will have an African passport, most countries in Europe will require a transit visa. This also takes time to get and can only be secured in Africa and an embassy of the country that you will transit when coming back. The only exception to this is to return via London England. If an African child is holding a valid visa for Canada or the USA, they will be permitted to transit London without a visa providing they do not leave the airport transit lounge. It is important that you familiarize yourself as much as possible about the country in Africa that you are traveling to. I would again recommend that you go to our website and go to the right hand side of the home page. CLICK on "WORLD TRAVEL GUIDE".... a map of the world will appear, CLICK on Africa and then the country that you plan to visit. When the country page comes up, there will be a number of subcategories that will come up. ie If you want to see a bar graph of the weather -CLICK on climate, and so on. You will also see AFRICA on our home page. CLICK on that and you will be able to get a lot of good info there as well. Making a trip to Africa for the purposes of adopting a child is a major step for you and we would like to offer you our services. Please feel free to contact us for any additional information that you may need.
Regards,
Manager |
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