The visa saga continues. A week after our joint application submission to the Ghanese embassy, part online and part a whole stack of documents in support of our visas, Sofia gets a message that her application had been unlocked again. Would this be suggesting that she should edit one or more fields online, perhaps? And if so, which one(s)? The email didn’t specify. A telephone call the next day cleared that up: no need, and no worry, this is just an automatic message generated when the application process is being initiated at the embassy! Uhmmm, should I, myself, then worry that I haven’t received a message, yet? Has my application not yet been taken into account? Afterall, the embassy claims to turn around visas in five working days.

Four days later I call again, ‘what is happening with our visas?’ A friendly lady explains that, well, consular section is very busy, and that she will call me back. Right! But credit where credit is due, she did call back, a day later, and yes, my visa was OK, approved and all. But from Sofia’s application her work address was missing. It would have been helpful to point that out in the earlier mail, of course, or when we called first, but never mind; missing info could be added over the telephone, and next week we can pick up the passports. Let’s see.

In the meantime Nigeria reconfirms that they still don’t issue tourist visas. We have tried other embassies and consulate, in Brussels and in Frankfurt, but they aren’t going to do that for us, either; they refer us back to the embassy in The Hague. Anyhow, it is now three weeks to our date of departure, I wouldn’t dare submitting my passport to a Nigerian embassy anymore, for fear of not getting it back in time.

But that leaves us with a problem. If we cannot cross Nigeria overland, we still need to get from Cameroon to Benin. Perhaps there is an alternative. I’ll tell you tomorrow.

11 Feb.

Tagged with →  

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *