But now I began to see many familiar faces; ones which I saw about 2 weeks before the day. These were the 'Goro boys' or 'Connection men' 👬 I mentioned in part one. They had devised many ways of making money at the place from unsuspecting passport applicants🙆.
Quite seriously funny the modus operandi of one of them as I really observed👮. He gets there very early (Well, I don't know if he sleeps there😴). He is first in the queue and after after being followed by about five people, he excuses himself making the second person aware. He now goes to hide somewhere and watches as more people join. When about 3 or 5 more join, he comes quietly to stand behind and the last person, who never knew that he was already in the queue.
In some few minutes, when about two more people join behind him, he whispers something into the ear of the one in front of him, and moves away to his hiding place. He process continues. Now he gets about four or five different positions in the queue. I can feel surprise already welling up in you and the obvious question is why will he do that. Is the answer not obvious? Cash💵.
Now, this is the point of time when selling is done. Now, when the queue is very long, he goes to the ones who are really at the bottom of it and sells his positions. Of course, the price will vary by position; the first position is certainly not the same as the middle one. Unfortunately, I didn't need one. I didn't want one. So I don't know the price.
Tell you the truth, it's only real observers who could see what was going on.
There were those who were parading the place under the guise of assisting applicants with their application. For those applicants who did not have their forms endorsed had among the connection men those who could endorse their forms for them. But then I thought, 'How could someone buy the form and leave such important part blank only for someone he or she did not know to endorse?'.
All these and more were ongoing but I needed to be calm and focus on my mission. Nothing must cross my way in the application. At all cost my application must be successful, I thought.
At 6:30 🕡 the gate was opened after a quick look at our documents by some passport officials. We entered and made our way to the place dedicated for the forms vetting and submission. Gradually, it was my turn and everything went on smoothly. The form with the other documents was collected and straight I left the place with my transaction number and a promise of getting my new passport exactly a month later, that is March 18. Any Wahala? No Wahala!🍀
Certainly, the passport wasn't the only document needed. I started working on the Letter of Introduction, the work leave letter and spousal consent letter among others.
Early Wednesday morning, (March 18) was the day🌻. As usual, early arrival was a must. I had my Transaction Number for the collection with me. No Ghanaman time. The usual long queue was on but this time round for the collection.
I cannot be too sure here, but I think just about a quarter of those who were ahead of me had their passports ready😭. Obviously, that was my cause for alarm. Some of them flared up 😵😫 in the process and began counting the numerous times they had been at the office for collection of their passports but to no avail.
Then it was my turn. She took my transaction number and pressed a few keys on her keyboard💻. She looked at me and the answer was obvious; NEGATIVE! Chai!😂... Her quick advice was for me to check on it in a month's time. Really? I didn't have a month to wait for the passport.
I had a sponsor who was working with time 🕚 and any delay meant a cancellation of the entire plan❌. Of course, cancellation. And you read that right.
Now, leaving the passport office, my thoughts were just to do something to get that new passport. And it MUST be fast🏃💨!
How I went about it and the frustrations too that came along with it, Part 3 will say it all...
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