Karie Wylie is my life partner and is now visiting Ghana. I asked her to contribute to my blog with some of her impressions and thoughts.
I arrived six days ago in Accra and really, am here to see Dom and support him on his endeavour, hoping to share a tiny bit of his experience over here. It's a great opportunity for him, and of course, a chance for me to be a tourist in a country that is not known for it's tourist trade. I can't say it's a place that was high on my list of places to visit-nevertheless I am excited to see all that it has to offer.
Getting here has been an adventure in itself. Before I left Canada I had hit speed bumps with the Ghanian High Commission in Ottawa. Despite applying almost a month before my departure date, my visa was not processed in time. They ask that you allow three to five day processing time-so I assumed 24 days was plenty of time. The High Commission was not answering their phones for the first fifteen days, so that shortened my window of opportunity down to nine days. They finally picked up on a Friday, 8 days before I was to fly and told me “we are moving today, call back on Monday”.
Of course, Monday they did not answer the phones again, despite me calling them with stalker like dedication. Tuesday they didn't answer either. I began to imagine the entire staff on the floor of the new office, victims of some sort of mysterious illness-but I was also concerned about my flights, so I went through the online staff listing and proceeded to leave messages on all the voice-mails I reached, leaving my name and number twice on each message-I went through the entire directory three times that day.
I didn't sleep that night. I now had four days left to get the visa not including the Saturday I was to leave-and still had not talked to the high commission directly.
Wednesday I started at 7 am Calgary time and called every half hour. I talked to Dom and gave him the lowdown. He remained optimistic on the phone with me but was calling often-so I knew he was worried. I didn't get a hold of them until 12:00 Calgary time and admittedly, when I heard an actual person on the end of the line, I was at a loss for words. I had, after all, gotten into the routine of leaving messages “This is Karie Wylie. I am calling about my Visa, I am scheduled to leave on Saturday. Please call me back at 403.... Again, this is Karie Wylie.....”
The human on the other end of the phone told me to hold while I heard her rustling through papers. I had hope, finally. She came back to the line to tell me “Oh yes, your Visa application is incomplete and we didn't know how to get a hold of you.” I tried really hard not to scream but I explained to her that I had been calling for over a week, and that the contact information was on the form, or at the very least on the return courier envelope I had supplied them with. She said it wasn't, that they had no way of contacting me-I just want my visa, so I took a deep breath and asked as politely as I could, what was missing from the application. “We don't know where you are staying while you are in Ghana”. I explained to her that I had sent four copies of the hotel reservation-she claimed not to have them.
She then went on to explain that I needed a resident of Ghana to “invite” me to their country and that person had to be a passport holder. Really? So tourism is non existent in Ghana? You can't just go and visit? I needed not only a letter in invitation, but a copy of the photo id of that person as well as a copy of that person's residency permit-and I had less than an hour to do all of this because they close at 3:00 sharp Ottawa time.
I called Dom immediately and cried into the phone, and through sobs I explained what I needed. Then a flurry on calls to and from Ghana resulted in one of the EWB members sending me photos taken with her cell phone, of the documents I needed, which I forwarded to the high commission with about 10 minutes to spare. “Okay,” she said on the other end of the phone, “Your Visa is ready. Now send a courier to pick it up after two tomorrow and you can have it on Friday.” I had already paid for one envelope-regardless- I called Fedex immediately, then called her back and talked her through the return address form, and hung up, but not before getting the tracking number.
Problem solved...I can sleep tonight. Of course, I didn't.
The next day, at 1:30, I called the high commission to make sure we were on track. “Yes, they have not picked up yet but it is not 2 so don't worry.” I called Fedex to confirm THEY were on target. Yup, Fedex was on board with the arrangement so I headed into a meeting.
I called again at 2:30 to confirm the pick up to which the person on the other end of the phone responded “Oh yes, he was here, but your Visa wasn't ready so we sent him away.”
Seriously? Really? What did you just say to me?
“It's no big deal” she said “ we will drop it off on the way home tonight and you will have it tomorrow.”
Uh huh-sure-of course you will.
18 hours later it was not in the Fedex system. It was supposed to be in my hands. My passport had been “misplaced” and they were back to not answering their phones. I was to leave in less than 24 hours, but had no Visa, and even more importantly, no passport. Was it in the backseat of someone's car buried under fast food containers or was it lost-really, really lost?m Of course, I assumed the worst, and while I was on the phone cancelling my flight reservation, it occurred to my I should probably cancel my passport also. So I did.
I then cried for a few minutes, while downloading the emergency passport application, and began to gather all the information to get a reissue of my passport first thing Monday morning.
My cancelled passport was delivered on Monday, two days after my scheduled departure date, Visa intact.
God bless the passport office for reissuing me a temporary passport by Wednesday and the Ghanian High Commission in TORONTO for issuing my visa in 48 hours.
I am finally in Ghana with Dom.
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