Dakar, Senegal Embassy Medical and Interview Experience

[ZaakirahM 28]

Hi!

So thankfully my husband was approved for his visa!

This is going to be a long post with notes compiled from the whole experience in Senegal to hopefully help someone else in the future.

This review is also in my timeline if you would like to book it for future references.

First things first, my husband is Gambian, so he had to travel to Senegal and stay a couple of weeks to get thru this process.

Medical:

Hubby waited about 2 hours to be seen by Dr. Awa Kane on Weds Nov 11. A nurse simply examined him (full body exam).

The next day (November 12th) he went for his x-ray and blood test at two different locations. Got the x-ray results the same day.

Friday the 13th, he returns to get blood results.

November 16: He returned to Dr. Kane's office to turn in x-ray and blood results, and finally finished with the medical exam. He actually received the medical results in a sealed envelope the same day he delivered the blood and x-ray results. He said he had to go get the vaccine needed (he does not have a vaccine record) from another location. He paid 10,000 CFA for the vaccine. Altogether it took about 4 hours that day.

So I guess my suggestion for you, interviewing in Senegal, is to schedule the medical exam a minimum of 5 working days before the interview. It is literally a 4-day process. But also call to make an appointment first with Dr. Kane before calling any of the other two. I have read that the other two Dr.'s will not give you your results before your interview because they are so busy...unless you schedule it way in advanced.

if you choose to make an appointment with Dr. Kane, you would have to be patient on the phone as English is not their first language. The menu is in French, the first receptionist you speak to is speaking in French. I googled how to say English please in French, and just repeated myself until I heard "hello". It doesn't matter who makes the call. I asked hubby to make the call originally. He got impatient and simply told me they speak French. But when I called (thru Google Voice or Rebtel), I waited a couple of minutes and got thru to an English speaking person.

So, excluding paying for transportation to and from each location, he paid 70,000 CFA for the entire medical exam.

Interview:

Based off of my notes from hubby's phone call:

Because Dakar is so understaffed, he actually had to help to translate other Gambians who spoke Mandinka (local language) better than English.

So he does not remember many of the questions that he was asked specifically, however he did say they asked a lot of questions about me, and they were looking at the pictures and evidence I submitted thru USCIS. Here are some of the questions he did remember:

How did you meet your wife?

Where does your wife live?

What does your wife do for a living?

Was asked about the mutual friend of ours who also filled out an affidavit for us and is our joint sponsor.

He arrived about 7am for his appointment at 8am and had to write down name as a sign in process at the gate and waited in line until about 10am.

Once he entered, It was a man who called him to a window, who gave him back a big USCIS package of documents and only took his original documents, passport/passport photos and the sealed medical envelope. They gave him the medical results back in the end.

He said it was easy and difficult at the same time and he would rather forget about it. LOL

He got a little nervous because they were giving him all the papers I frontloaded, did not look at the copies of other documents he brought, and gave him a ticket number and just told him to sit down and he waited for about 2 hours and he was the last person to be interviewed.

His ticket number was 108 (Ironically our special number because it took me 8 months to get a job and save the money for filing fees and then it took us 8 months to make it thru the process plus our NOA1 date was March 18th and Interview date was November 18th not to mention his interview appointment time was 8am)

It was a woman who interviewed him in a small room. It is the same woman who he helped to translate for others.

She did not look at the pictures even though he mentioned more than once that he brought wedding pictures; they only looked at the pictures I previously sent thru USCIS and took his passport and gave him a green ticket/piece of paper that says come back Tuesday at 2pm to pick up your visa.

He did not get originals back, but he did have copies and received back the other copies of the documents I sent previously to NVC and/or USCIS. However, he does plan to take them with him when he picks up his visa.

So my advice is to definitely frontload and be patient!