Problems at the border!

The third of January 2018 it was time to leave Togo and travel back to Ghana! That morning was an emotional goodbye with streaming tears. We went to the border with 2 aunts, a niece and a friend of Rachidatou’s niece (who liked Rachidatou). When we arrived at the border the first problem appeared: our Togolese visa was expired! We were illegal in the country for 5 days unknowingly. When we bought the visa the customs officer did not inform us that we only got a ‘small’ visa and needed to visit another authority after a few days to extend our visa! We were charged with a very high fine. However, we tried to explain to the custom officers that we were not aware of the fact that we should have extended our visa and that this was not informed to us. Rachidatou’s aunt knew a custom officer at the border who she asked what we could do about the situation. He told us that we had to pay and stay one day longer in Togo in order to receive the right visa...or we could travel to another visa authority and ask for information. When we arrived there, the men we had to talk to was an acquaintance of Rachidatou’s aunt! We explained our situation very detailed and sincerely apologised for the problem. He was kind enough to understand our situation and we didn’t have to pay the fine and were able to receive a new visa.

We were very happy and joyful that we could proceed our journey to Ghana. However the second problem arrived. We were not able to re-enter Ghana due to the oneway visa we bought in the Netherlands! This visa implies that you are not allowed to leave the country. When buying the Ghanaian visa we were not aware of this. We had to pay a very high amount of money in order to get a new visa and re-enter Ghana. The amount of money we had to pay was written down on a paper in the customs office. However, the custom officer (the same who did not rightly inform us about our Togo visa) gave us a different (higher!) amount of money we had to pay. It was not clear why we had to pay a higher amount and we refused to pay. Therefore we were denied our visa from 9:00 am till 4:25 pm. Finally, another customer officer told us that the amount of money that was told to us was not correct! The amount on the paper was correct. We agreed on that amount and he started to prepare our visa which took another two hours because he wanted to check our address in Ghana.