The Visa Chase: A Day of Detours in Guinea

Good day — November 3rd

The usual breakfast that’s included at the hotel is a sandwich with some egg and, yeah, a little bit of coffee. All good. So today was going to be an important day because I am going to try to get a visa for Sierra Leone. Until I have that, I cannot go there. So, of course, I didn’t know what it took to get there, but let’s find out.

Finding the Embassy

I drove to the Sierra Leone embassy, which of course, wasn’t at the address that I had. It was just across town, the short way. But that was no longer its location. In trying to find its current location, somebody came out and helped out and drove along with me to get to the right location. That probably took another 25 minutes to get there. Then I would have to either bring him back or find another solution, and that solution was I gave him some money for a taxi back. He turned out to be a policeman in training, so it was a trustworthy situation. And I surely made it to the Sierra Leone Embassy.

At the Embassy

The usual thing: go through the guard and go to the first floor to sit and wait. But I wasn’t the only one this time. With me were two Swiss cousins, Michael and Freddy, and they were in there for the same reason I was. It turned out we were turned down for the same reason. All of us had come in through the border with Senegal with a piece of paper that had a visa on it, as opposed to having a visa in a passport (the usual sticker). Even though this was the Sierra Leone embassy and we were already in Guinea, they could not — they would not — accept an application for the Sierra Leone visa until we had that visa in our passport.

Where to Get the Visa

The next question was: where the heck do you pick up a visa for a passport while you’re already in the country? It turned out that was going to be the airport, where they do visas on arrival — which never made any sense to all of us because we all entered through a land border.

Traveling Together

So, as it turned out, we could all do this together and drive all together in my car. It was for situations like this that I had opted, before starting in the Netherlands, to put in a second seat in the back that you can enter from the front. The front seat allows for two people and has two seat belts, but I consider it for one and a half person or an adult and a child because it’s very narrow. Michael and Freddy fit in there perfectly and they were very happy about the accommodation.

The Airport

That meant straight across town because that’s where the airport is. The streets are very busy, so it doesn’t go very fast. We finally made it to the airport and had some messing around. Those guys spoke a lot better French than my French ever would, so we made it to the visa-on-arrival counter pretty fast and we turned out to be the first in line. Freddy got his visa and then the equipment broke down and they couldn’t fix it anytime soon.

Waiting and Getting Visas

We ended up going for a bite to eat and they said they’d call us when it was working again. About two hours later, they did call. We went back in and the other two of us got our visas. They were printed out, complete with our picture on the visa itself stuck in the passport, and fingerprints of all ten fingers — whatever it takes, I guess.

Back to the Embassy and Payment Problems

We needed to go back to the embassy. We made it there five minutes before 4:00 PM when they promised they would close. They took in the paperwork and said, okay — now all you need to do is pay $80. That seems easy, right? No. You cannot pay it here. You have to go to a specific bank and deposit it in their account. Off we went again to find that bank. The closest was probably seven or eight kilometers away, and we made it there five minutes past the closure time.

Plans for the Next Day

So we were looking at the next day. By then Michael and Freddy had convinced themselves they needed to stay in the same place as I was, just so that it was all convenient for going places. They had been staying at the end of town, another 10 km away, which can take a long time in this town. So they moved closer and we had a great night and dinner together. It all worked out.

Dinner with Christoph Roller

By the way, the evening before I had dinner with Christoph Roller, the bicyclist — the e-bike man — and that was really, really good conversation. He thinks that making peace starts by letting people know they ought to talk to one another, and that will trickle down to peace. If everybody keeps doing that, then peace happens. He’s obviously onto something; it’s just that not everybody seems to hear it all the time.