Visa Troubles

As most Americans who have travelled outside of the country are aware, we rarely need visas. I travelled to France, England, Ireland, Wales, and Honduras before I went to Ghana in 2012 and this lovely West African country was the first for which I needed a visa to enter. My then lacking knowledge of the process was a hindrance as a result of a privilege we tend to ignore. I don't intend for this to be particularly political or critical, but I do intend to cause you to ponder this for a second. I am now becoming very familiar with the immigration process within our own country as I met the man I intend to share my life with and he happens to not be from America. We would like to get married and it is an unfortunate truth that we can't simply hop in a car, head to Vegas, and live happily ever after. It is a lengthy and costly process that has changed my perspective on the minor inconveniences I've experienced while applying for visas to his country. Okay, from here on out this blog post is essentially a shout-out and a confession of mistakes.

The visa application for Ghana is an extremely simple, one-page form asking for the basic info (name, birthdate, passport number, dates of travel, etc.) You submit two copies of that form along with two passport photos, your passport, and a money order in the amount which corresponds to the particular visa you are applying for in an over-night envelope which includes another return-addressed, over-night envelope. Slip it in the mail at least four weeks before your intended departure and that's it. Easy. So easy that you very well may forget an essential part of the package...say...the money. Yep. The first time I was applying for my visa to Ghana, I realized a good three weeks after I sent my application, while I was nervous about getting my passport back in time for my flight which was only two weeks away, that I had forgotten to include my money order. Needless to say, I went into a manage-the-situation tizzy which included no less than twenty phone calls (and multiple e-mails) to the Embassy phone (which I have since been informed is only ever used to place outgoing calls) at various points in the day over three days and never getting a response. Finally I contacted someone in the Office of Education Abroad at Ohio University (which was in charge of the program I was going to Ghana with) who had the good sense to reach out to a saint at the Ghanaian Consulate in Texas. Diane spent the better part of the next week explaining the far more complicated steps to fix my mistake and sweet-talking her contact in D.C. I think she even gave me her home number so she could reassure me after hours in her maternal southern drawl. As a result of her efforts, along with the cooperation of the staff at the embassy, I received my passport and visa in the mail one day before my flight and I made my flight to Ghana in August of 2012 and my life has been changed because of it.

The second and third times around, I was much more thorough in my checklisting and I received my visas without any years stressed off the end of my life. Unfortunately, it didn't go quite as well for my brother who accompanied me to Ghana this time. His application was perfect, but his minor error was in sending a priority mailer as the return package when the form specifically requests an over-night, trackable package. He received a call on the Thursday before our Tuesday flight from the embassy that he had been granted the visa but he needed to send a different package so they could mail back his passport. We went to the post office that afternoon and he did as he was told. The package arrived at the embassy by noon the next day and then we never saw any action in the tracking for the return package. After utilizing many avenues, Ben got word from an embassy staff member that the package would be shipped by the end of the day Monday. As it had been guaranteed by noon on Tuesday, we panicked a little less since that would allow at least an hour an a half before our first flight to Baltimore. Tuesday came and no package with it. Our dad contacted VP2Go, an expediting service in D.C. which worked wonders. They sent a courier to the embassy early in the morning who eventually collected the passport five minutes before the embassy closed for the day. By that point, Ben and I were waiting on our second flight of the day to take us from Baltimore to Boston. Our flight had been delayed 35 minutes which meant that there were 95 minutes for the VP2Go angels to get the passport from D.C. to the airport during rush hour. We later learned that it was the owner of the service himself got in his car and drove so that Ben received his passport literally three minutes before we were meant to board our flight. It all worked out so perfectly it was humorous, once we were over the desperation. A staff member at VP2Go named Samantha answered multiple stressed out calls during that day and kept me informed as much as possible throughout. My dad contacted them after never receiving a bill (which we expected to be quite heavy) and was informed they weren't planning to bill. After he pushed them, they sent an invoice that barely exceeded the standard cost of an expedited visa from the embassy. All of this is to say that if any of you is ever in a tight spot with anything regarding visas or passports, I highly suggest you find your way to VP2Go. They work miracles. If not for their efforts, in cooperation with the embassy staff members (of course), I would not have had the chance to introduce my favorite brother to my favorite future-husband and the city I'm finding a second home in.