Grrrr Wa-Wa

Grrrrr
So today someone told me a common saying amongst ex-pats here in Togo “wa wa” “West Africa Wins Again”! What a frustrating day!
I was to go and get my Ghanaian visa today, so I went with Emile to the embassy. We took my passport, (which I’d not seen since I arrived) and went in… now, let me back up… One set of pictures was lost already for my visa, one set arrived late, then the person responsible for getting BOTH my Togolese Visa and my Ghanaian Visa has fallen ill… This all should have happened well before we got to Lome… whatever though…
SO currently my paperwork is under way to get a 2-year visa for Togo. No, I’m not planning on being here for two years, it’s free for a two year visa, OR I need to come down in person once every three weeks –not a month, 3 weeks- and pay approx $40 US each time I renew it. Until the time I get that visa, my passport is suppose to stay here in Lome and I’ve been carrying my “official” photocopy of my passport, stamped and signed by the administrator. LOL, dude, you can’t photocopy a passport and have the picture turn out… I’m this huge Black smudge! ANYWAY !! So I go with my passport to get my GHANA visa, and the lady at the office is laughing at my forms… I filled them out the night I arrived in Togo, and was a little jet-lagged, I forgot some pretty vital info, was a little dyslexic in places and generally made a mess of the forms… So after I’ve re-written the forms, I’m send with Emile to sit in the waiting room, we wait an hour, then the lady calls me back and says “I’m sorry I can’t process your visa, your Togolese Visa has expired”. How could something I don’t have expire????
SO we need to go and get at least one month’s visa so that I can be covered to go out of Togo, then come back into Togo… more pictures taken, then we get to the embassy. We walk to the gate and about to enter… and they wouldn’t let Emile in!!!! So we try to explain to the guards that I need Emile as my interpreter (cause my French is still BAD!!!) and the guard pushes me through the gate and points to one of the buildings. So I go on, I walk in and there’s this room filled with people sitting benches, or standing beside a table filling out visa forms. There’s a hallway out one back corner, and a glass door in the other. I stand in the middle of the room (WHICH has NO signs!) until someone takes pity on me and points around the corner down the hallway. I walk around the corner and there are three closed doors! So I stand in the hallway until another person takes pity on me and points me to an unmarked door. I walk in and the room is filled with people in line; there are five officials behind their desks… I pick a line and wait. And of course, NO ONE in the room speaks English, and I’m just this dumb Canadian with a French name! An official takes my passport and looks at it, he laughs, shows his friend beside him… he laughs, they speak a mixture of French and something else to another guy, he laughs, then the guy leaves with my passport! So I sit and wait some more. Eventually he comes back with some papers, he shows them to other people and they laugh, and then he hands them to me… Where is my passport? Then He’s talking to me about leaving the building, but I really have no idea what’s being said to me, so the first white person I see I grab and ask them if they speak English… thankfully they do (a little) and I’m told I need to go to the first building and to the “white wall”… uh huh? Ok, the white wall…
So I ask the official to show me where I need to go, and he takes me down some random unmarked passageway to a white wall with a mail slot in it… BUT there is a real person sitting behind the mail slot, and he’s demanding payment… THEN I look at the paper I’ve been handed…. I’m being charged for living illegally in Togo without a visa!!! Grrrrr! Then I see that it’s for more money than what I’ve brought with me and that’s not counting the price of the visa! Then another official comes and starts speaking sharply to me… I have no clue what’s going on… and I have a melt down… so now, I’m a silly white girl, with a French name, who can’t speak French, crying in the middle of a busy hallway because a wall is yelling at me! “My official” finally says “ok, bring friend” so he brings me back out to the gate and Emile is allowed to come in, but first HE yells at the official because they are charging me for no reason!! Then when we get inside there’s some big argument over why I have to pay, and * rolling my eyes* we pay up because there’s no way out.
SO now my passport is at the Togo embassy again, and prayerfully I’ll have it and my visa back tomorrow morning… Then we’ll have to wait till Monday for the Ghanaian visa…. So we’ll be heading across the border some day!
I think we are going to the beach tomorrow to watch the whales, some people we know saw them today while they were at the beach. Part of a migration route?
Praise God for a productive day… For a beautiful, cooler evening… Our safe passage down to Lome (We passed the President’s guards-they were heading North to the pres. House.. he flies, they drive… heavily armed trucks, men with machine guns and rifles all standing around in front of the “fan milk” store… it’s the yogurt store.) And Praise for the safe return of Marv to his family, his plane arrived last night.
Pray that everything else works out! That our border crossing is uneventful, and that The Freisen family would get an opportunity to be rested while they head to the conference together.
Peace
Les