Somebody's Heart Is Burning (20 page)

Katie and I were busy preparing for an extended trip. We planned to take off for one to two months, traveling through Burkina Faso to Mali and back again. Our first order of business was to obtain reentry visas for Ghana. Although it was possible to leave the country and simply apply for a new visa at the Ghanaian Embassy in one of the countries we planned to visit, it was less expensive to do it here. And since we both had airline tickets out of Accra—hers back to London, mine onward to Nairobi—we figured we’d be more relaxed during our travels if we didn’t have to worry about getting back into Ghana.

We composed a brief letter to the immigration office, explaining that we’d recently finished working as volunteers and wanted to explore other parts of West Africa. We figured that mentioning our volunteer status would expedite the process, which was rumored to be quite protracted. We hoped to get on the road again within a week.

Armed with our paperwork, we boarded a
tro-tro
to the immigration compound, a squat series of buildings located in a dusty, fenced-in yard in a remote section of Accra. Once inside, we made our way down a dim hallway to a fluorescent-lit classroom where a cluster of connected chair and desk units faced a wooden partition with a line of small windows cut into it. They were marked “Officer in Charge,” “Commonwealth Section,” “Middle/Far East Section,” “African Section,” “American Section,” and “Western European Section.” A handful of people stood before the various windows, waiting. All were shuttered except the Middle/Far East Section, where a beleaguered civil servant was assisting a Japanese man with some forms. Katie and I positioned ourselves before the American and European Sections, respectively, and waited. An African man sitting in the room said
“Eh!”
to get our attention, and gestured that we should knock on the windows. We did so, tentatively, with no result.

About five minutes later, the same man who’d been assisting the Asian applicant appeared at my window, sliding back the wooden cover. He was fortyish and puffy-faced, the whites of his eyes yellow and watery. He gazed at me with a haggard expression.

“Can I help you?” he said.

“I’d like to apply for a reentry visa.”

He disappeared without a word, sliding the window cover back into place. I waited a few minutes, confused. Had I said something wrong? Then his face appeared at Katie’s window.

“Can I help you?” he mumbled.

Katie requested an application for a reentry visa as well, and again he disappeared. Five minutes passed. Ten. Katie and I looked at each other. I raised my hand to knock again, and the window slid back. The man thrust some papers into my hand.

“You will return these papers to that window,” he said, indicating the cubby marked Officer in Charge.

“D’you think this guy’s the Wizard or just the gatekeeper?” I mumbled to Katie, when the same face appeared at the Officer in Charge window. We handed him our forms and he told us, in a flat tone, to sit down and wait. Half an hour later he materialized behind the Commonwealth window and summoned us to the counter.

“The two of you must bring a letter from your association,” he said.

“What kind of letter?” I asked.

“A letter in support of your request to leave the country,” he said, a touch of annoyance momentarily animating his face.

“When should we return?” asked Katie timidly.

For a moment he stared at her as though this were the single stupidest question he’d ever heard. “When you have the letter,” he said at last.

“Do we get our passports back?” I asked.

“When you return.” He closed the window with a thud.

“Okeydokey,” I said to the piece of wood. “You have a nice day.”

We returned to the hostel, grumbling. Francis Awitor, the president of the association, had an office right next to the room where we all slept. I knocked on the door.

“Yes?” he called out.

“Ko ko,”
I said, sticking my head in. “It’s Korkor and Mansah.”

“Come in, sistahs,” said Mr. Awitor, giving us a polite smile. He was a formal, cautious man who lacked the exuberance of most Ghanaians. Although his office was right next to the place where we all slept and spent long lazy days between projects, we saw surprisingly little of him. On the few occasions when I’d had cause to knock on his office door, he’d always worn the same expression on his face, an expression that said he expected the worst. Katie and I filed soberly into his office and sat down in two metal folding chairs directly facing his paper-cluttered desk.

“How can I help you?” said Mr. Awitor, adjusting his glasses. “I trust you are enjoying your experience here?”

“Oh, yes, absolutely!” I said. “I’ve gained so much from volunteering here, I can’t even tell you . . .” I paused awkwardly. “Anyway,” I continued, “we were thinking of exploring some other parts of West Africa—you know, Mali, Burkina Faso—for a couple of months.”

“Well, your contributions have been most appreciated by the association,” said Mr. Awitor. “Please come back and see us when you return.” He gave us a small smile, and made as if to return to the papers in front of him.

“Well, thanks,” I said, “but, um, the reason we wanted to see you, actually . . .” I swallowed, feeling inexplicably nervous. Katie, who sat beside me picking at her cuticles, was no help.

“Yes?” He looked at me coolly over the tops of his wire-rimmed glasses. I explained about the man at the immigration office, the request for a letter from the association.

Mr. Awitor smiled then, and I relaxed. I shot Katie a glance:
What were we worried about?

“Unfortunately, sistahs, I cannot help you with this,” he said after a moment’s pause. “You see, in the past I have written letters for volunteers, requesting the reentry visa for them. Then the immigration office has phoned me, here,” he tapped the telephone on his desk, “and requested that I come and speak to them. They have asked me, ‘Is it necessary to their work that your volunteers must leave the country?’ and I have told them, ‘No, it is not necessary that they leave the country for their work.’ Then they have said to me, ‘So why is it that you request a visa for them?’ I said, ‘I request the visa only to help them out.’ He then told me I must not request the visas any longer. So you see,” he spread his hands out on the desk, “It is not possible for me to assist you.” He smiled benevolently, and returned to his papers.

“But they specifically told us we needed a letter from you,” I said.

He looked at me as though he was surprised I was still there. He shrugged, smiling again. “Perhaps you have not spoken to the right person.”

The immigration office was hopping when we arrived the next day. A tall, blond Viking stood pounding on the wooden square covering the Western European Section.

“You’ve given me the wrong form!” he shouted. A small claque of equally Nordic-looking women stood behind him, softly kvetching in a lilting Scandinavian tongue. Behind them a couple of long-haired young German men in heavy metal T-shirts ranted loudly, waving passports and forms in the air for emphasis.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I think the man has gone to lunch without informing us,” said one of the Germans, “He went to collect some forms over an hour ago and has not returned.”

“Oh, that is simply not on,” said a middle-aged British woman who had entered behind us. “Dreadfully incompetent,” she muttered, sitting down in one of the desk chairs and wiping her brow with a handkerchief. “Dreadful heat.”

Katie and I exchanged rueful grins. We took seats, amused by the spectacle of the other visa-seekers’ despair. About forty-five minutes later, the familiar haggard face appeared at the Western European window. The Vikings had given up and departed. The British woman had fallen asleep, her head on the plastic desktop. The German youths, who had been leaning against the wall, charged the window like bulls.

“What took you so long?” one of them demanded.

“Here are your forms,” the man said, not dignifying the question with a response. “Return them to this window when you have completed them.” He was just about to close the window when Katie stuck her hopeful face in his line of vision.

“Hello,” she said, full of false cheer. “I don’t know if you remember my friend Tanya and me. We were in to see you yesterday.”

“Yes,” he said, with no flicker of recognition.

“Well, you see,” she went on, “yesterday you told us we must bring you a letter from our voluntary association.”

“Have you got it?”

“Well, here’s the rub.” Katie smiled an ingratiating smile I’d never seen her use before. “When we spoke to Mr. Awitor, the president, he told us that your office had expressly forbidden him to write letters on behalf of volunteers! Because, you see, we aren’t traveling with the association. We’ve actually finished our work, and we’re traveling on our own, as tourists, you see. Our work is done, so our comings and goings no longer concern the association.” She flashed the kaka-eating grin again.

“Your names?” he said.

We told him.

“Please wait.” He closed the window. We sighed and returned to our desks. He reappeared a couple of minutes later, holding our passports and letters. “It says here,” he said, holding up our letter, “that you were volunteers. Therefore, we must have a letter from the voluntary organization.”

“But Katie just explained to you—” I began.

“Perhaps they are still in need of your services. Perhaps they do not permit you to go.”

“It’s a
voluntary
association,” I said, biting off my consonants. “We were there
voluntarily.
We can leave any time we want!”

“You must bring a letter—”

“But you see—” Katie began.

“You must bring a letter!” His voice remained level, but his eyes blazed with intent.

I’ve been known, on occasion, to have a bit of a short fuse. I once got into a screaming fight with an elderly woman who worked in a pay toilet in France, when she berated me for not bringing the toilet paper roll back out of the stall. On top of that, I have never done well with bureaucracy. If I could be said to have a pet peeve, it would be people who blindly enforce regulations without ever stopping to question their efficacy or common sense. Friends had warned me, when I left for West Africa, to prepare myself for administrative hassles, but up to now I’d dealt with surprisingly few. Two, to be exact. Once at the post office I’d been put through an hour-long rigmarole of forms and questions in order to collect a package. Just as I completed them, the young woman decided to leave for lunch, and refused to get the package for me until she returned. The second occasion was similar, except it took place in a bank. In both these instances I’d remained calm and ironic, congratulating myself inwardly on my increased maturity. I therefore surprised no one more than myself when I marched out of the visa application room in a burst of fury, slamming the door behind me.

“Robots! Fucking robot people, rules, rules, rules, they don’t listen!” I shouted in the echoing hallway. A couple of doors cracked and curious faces peeped out, but I was too incensed to care. I strode out of the building and through the courtyard to the side of the road where I sat down in a patch of grass and began to cry. “Robots!” I shouted again.

I’d been crying for a few minutes when I heard sounds of hilarity coming from across the street. Three men were gathered around a stand which sold chunks of fried yam. They were looking at me and pointing, half-chanting, half-singing, “One . . . Two . . . Three . . . Cry!” They burst into laughter and applause, then began the chant over again. I stared at them for a moment, incredulous. Then I began to laugh. Laughing even harder, they gave me a thumbs-up, cheering.

Ghanaians,
I thought, shaking my head.
Gotta love ’em.

Katie joined me a few minutes later.

“Did you make any headway?” I asked.

She shook her head dejectedly. “Though I can’t say it helped, your flouncing out like that.”

“I know, I know,” I said dejectedly. “I thought I had it under control. I just get so . . .” I paused, at a loss. “Well, it won’t happen again. What do we do now?” I asked.