We’ve been preparing for this day for months. Today, June 21st, 2013 is the day that the sixteen students in the 2013 Media in Ghana crew hop on their respective planes, eagerly awaiting the moment that they all meet in the Ghanaian airport tomorrow, June 22nd, to begin the six-weeks of sharing a home, an adventure and of working in a new place.

As one of the sixteen members of the 2013 Media in Ghana group I too was supposed to begin my journey to Ghana today. Regrettably, I find myself delayed.

In April we were given comprehensive instructions on how to apply for our visas for the trip. With the understanding that it would take approximately two weeks to process the application, I sent my passport and visa information to the Ghanaian Embassy in Washing D.C. on May 24, 2013. I tracked the package on the United States Postal Service website and saw that it arrived on May 29, 2013 at 12:07 pm.

I must admit, I’ve made two mistakes in this process. The first is that I sent the wrong type of envelope to the Embassy for them to return my passport and visa in. This is, I think, what has delayed its return. My second mistake was that I didn’t realize this sooner. I hadn’t realized how much time had lapsed between sending in my application and it wasn’t until last Friday (a week before my departure) that I began to panic that I hadn’t received my travel documents.

That Friday, June 14th, on our Media in Ghana facebook group page, one of our members posted a comment, inquiring if anyone else was still waiting to receive their visa and passport. It turns out that four of us had the same dilemma. Professor Leslie Steeves advised us to send an overnight package to the Embassy with an overnight, prepaid and addressed FedEx envelope (a different envelope than I had sent the first time) for them to return our documents in, a $100 money order to expedite the process, a copy of our ID and a letter explaining the situation and that we were leaving that next week. Everyone sent in this new package over the weekend, but I was unable to send mine until first thing Monday morning, June 17th. I tracked it, and it arrived at the Ghanaian Embassy the next morning, Tuesday the 18th, at 10:09 am. At this point, I sent an email to the contact listed at the bottom of the Ghanaian Embassy website, again explaining my situation and indicating that my package had been picked up that morning. Because my peers had sent their packages Friday and Saturday, they received their visas on Tuesday and Wednesday this week.

It is now Friday, June 21st, four days after my second package was received at the Embassy, and I not only don’t have my travel documents (and won’t for the next few days because the envelope has not been sent, as it is not in the FedEx tracking system) but I have not had one helpful response from the Ghanaian Embassy to the forty (Yes, 40. I just counted) phone calls I have made, the six voicemails I have left, or the five emails I have sent. Of the forty phone calls I made, only four were answered. The rest sent me to voicemails of unavailable representatives who didn’t call back when I did leave voicemails.

An operator answered two of the four answered calls. Both times I explained to them my desperation to receive my documents and before I could say, “Please don’t transfer me to anyone because all I will get is their voicemail!” they would say “Hold on a moment” and they would transfer me yet another unavailable representative’s black hole of an answering machine. I realize that the operator cannot help with my visa issues, but my hope was that they could do something other than transfer me. Perhaps send my name and information along to the department and ask them to return my calls? I don’t know. I’m desperate.

The other two answered calls were ones I made to random departments, Education and Defense, because of my determination to reach a live person. One man tried to help by taking my name and phone number and offering to walk it down to the Visa Department. He also gave me a new email address to send my story to. We hung up, I sent the email, and received no call back and no reply to my email.

The second person I reached was a man who said that he couldn’t help me unless I could give him the exact date that I sent the first package, because, apparently, the Visa Department would not help unless he had that information. I tried to explain that I currently had no way of collecting that information as I was not home and didn’t have access to the original tracking number, and that he was the only the second live person I had been able to reach in twenty phone calls. I urged him to please take down any of my information and to send it to the Visa Department to inform them that I was trying to reach them. I even jokingly offered to give him my social security number or any information he wanted at all because I simply did not know the date that he claimed he needed in order to even be acknowledged by the visa representatives. He didn’t find my joke quite as amusing and he hung up.

I have been accumulating these phone calls and emails since Tuesday when my package arrived at the Embassy. The last phone call I made was yesterday, Thursday June 20th, at 12:26pm Oregon time, which is four minutes before the Ghanaian Embassy in DC closes and their phone menu is no longer available. Two hours after that, when I was sure that my visa and passport would not arrive, I called my travel agent and paid $250 to cancel my flight that was leaving out of Portland at 6:45 this morning. The only information I’ve asked for in contacting the Embassy was for an update as the where my visa and passport are in the process, or if they are even being processed at all so that I could make the proper adjustments in my travel plans. In the meantime, I’ll continue to call and email. I hope the rest of the group gets there safely and I hope to join them within the week! Best of luck as they begin their adventure ☺