Welcome
back, readers. Let’s recap. I had flown from Southern Africa to West Africa, from
Zambia to Côte d’Ivoire. My ultimate destination was to Liberia to visit my
world traveling partner in crime, Milea, in Liberia while she worked as a PCV
there. Liberia requires a visa ahead of time, and as you may recall, I had
failed to find the Liberian embassy in South Africa. There was also an embassy
in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, so I planned to stop there to get the visa. On top
of that, flying into Abidjan and then bussing across the country to neighboring
Liberia would be about one fourth the cost of flying into Liberia. So here we
stand.
After
three flights, from Lusaka, Zambia to Johannesburg, SA to Accra, Ghana to Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire,
I finally arrived. In the airport, I went to the room labeled “Snedai” to get my e-visa that I had applied
for online. Trying to remember how to speak French and not get it mixed up with
Sesotho, I talked with a guy working there who asked for my passport and the
approval for my visa that had been emailed to me. I gave him my passport and
what I thought was the approval sheet. He said that that was not the approval
for my visa, but only the proof of payment. Apparently, I should have also been
emailed another document approving me for my visa a few days after I submitted
the application, but I did not remember getting another email. I dug through
the emails on my phone. Not a one. I was shown to another guy at a desk who
told me (from what I understood from his West African accented French) that he
couldn’t give me a visa with only the receipt of payment, that I needed the
other paper, printed out. I did not have the visa approval paper in my
possession, and there was no way for me to find it electronically or otherwise,
so I asked what I could do. He said that I did have one option. For $20, he
would give it to me right now, and he would just ignore the fact that I didn’t have
the correct document. “But I already paid 70 euros online!” I retorted. “$20
and you get it now and can leave, otherwise there’s nothing I can do…ça depend de
vous…it depends on you…” OH, I realized. I
finally knew what was going on here, wink wink nudge nudge. I dug through my
bag for some of my treasured USD. I probably could have bargained him down, but
I was really tired and just wanted to get to my hotel, so I slipped him a $20 and
he very unofficially tossed it nonchalantly in his desk drawer. Then we got
started with the electronic fingerprint scanner and he gave my passport to the
first guy to print out my visa and stick it in.
So I had my visa,
costing me 70 Euros + 20 USD, for just a few days in this country so that I
could get a visa to Liberia. But that cost plus the cost of the hotel (no “s”
there this time. Hostels and backpacking tourism hasn’t quite hit West Africa
yet) was less expensive than trying to fly into Liberia and then trying to
figure out how to sweet talk my way into getting a visa on arrival and/or risk
being turned away. Although I’m sure from this experience that I could have
paid my way through that one and been just fine if I really needed to. The
weird thing was that in several airports on my way to Abidjan, I was checked to
make sure I had the paperwork for the Côte d’Ivoire visa. No one caught that I
just had the payment receipt and not the visa approval. They did look pretty
similar, I found out. Good thing they didn’t catch it, though, or I’d still be
stuck in Lusaka.
So with visa finally
in hand, I exited through customs and got my bag. I found my name on a sign for
the free shuttle to my hotel, Residence Touristhotel. Great name, right? I got some cash from an
ATM, then we were on our way. The doors to the airport slid open and I was
overwhelmed with this massive cloud of humidity. Wow, what a change from
Southern Africa. Even along the coast it wasn’t this crazy humid. The hotel
turned out to be pretty far out of town- way off from where Google Maps told me
it would be when I booked it. But it was cheap (~$24/night) and that’s mostly
all that matters. On the ride to the hotel, I asked the driver if everyone here spoke French. He said yes, that it mostly acts as a lingua franca, and that
there are over 70 native African languages in the country as well. And
unlike in other places where French is the official language only in name, and
only used for government and business, people do actually speak it, at least in
urban centers like Abidjan. I haven’t heard anyone speak anything but French, actually,
even kids.
The next day was Liberian visa day. I was advised to get up early and get on a taxi to the Liberian
embassy at 7am since I didn’t have an appointment. This turned out to be totally
unnecessary. Maybe they were thinking of a different embassy that made
appointments. So at 7, one of the hotel staff walked with me to the main road
and helped me get an orange taxi. There are yellow taxis that seem to be shared
4+1-esque taxis that go on certain routes, and reddish orange taxis that
take people to a specific place. I got in with a driver who had no idea where the
Liberian embassy was, and was clueless when I showed him a map on my phone of
exactly where I had found its location online. It was as if he had literally
never seen a map in his life. When I described what I was seeing on the map to
him, roughly where it looked like the embassy was, he told me that he couldn’t go
to that place. I thought that maybe certain taxis had certain territories where
he could and couldn’t drive, but it just turns out that he was just a skeezey dude
and didn’t want to drive into the main business district where there was a traffic jam
at rush hour. He stopped and asked some guy on the street where the embassy
was, and it was at this point he said he couldn’t take me there. He was about
to just drop me right there on the street, but the guy he asked for help was like, no,
you have to help her. Yeah, dude, help me find a different, competent, taxi
that will actually take me to the place I’m paying you to take me. It being essentially
my first day in this city and in this country, I was clueless and could use all
the help I could get. He grudgingly drove off again and flagged down another
taxi.
Taxis that are...orangey red? Reddish orange? No one can say.
This second taxi driver was
much nicer and so helpful, calling the first guy a “mauvais type.” He drove me
through said bottleneck to the “Plateau” area of town, past the giant pink and
shining glass tower that was the French embassy, to the spot on my map where
the Liberian embassy was supposed to be. Let me take a second to describe the
chaos and stress of driving in Abidjan at rush hour. Lanes, and to a lesser
extent traffic lights, are merely suggestions, there’s lots of swerving around
stopped or slower cars and pedestrians, and a chorus of horns fills the air. We
arrived at the spot and he asked a lady on the sidewalk where the embassy was.
She yelled over to another guy, who, for some unknown reason, magically
happened to have the phone number of the embassy in his phone. The taxi driver paid the first
woman to use her phone to call the number. It’s at this point the driver
learned that the embassy was in an entirely different part of town. Gahh. It
used to be where I thought it was, but it had moved. Why does this seem to be
such a common theme among Liberian embassies? So our journey continued.
The lush green plants and thick smoggy air of Abidjan
We left the Plateau
and headed to the Cocody neighborhood, asking people all along the way where
this darn place was. We finally got close and spotted the Liberian flag flying
over a building. Success! It only took an hour and a half and F6500 (around
$10), but we had arrived. I thanked the driver profusely for all his help and
only tried to bargain a tiny bit because I felt like he deserved the money.
Outside the embassy,
I found two guys sitting outside the embassy. One was the security guard and
the other was a pastor from Cameroon also trying to get a Liberian visa. The
security guard told me that the embassy opened at 9am, which was in about half
an hour, so I said I’d just wait outside with them. But then a few minutes late
the big door opened, and the pastor and I walked in and signed in with a guy
in the front yard. He directed us around to the side of the building, and the
fresh blast of air conditioning hit my skin as we walked inside. Aahh. I got a
visa form and filled it out. When I had emailed the embassy a few weeks earlier
asking about the visa requirements, they said that I needed a photo, a letter
of invitation or hotel reservation, and a copy of my passport. Turns out I only
needed the photo, as they copied my passport themselves, and they didn’t ask
for any letter. I paid the F25,000 fee ($40), and it was a good thing I had gone
to the ATM, because they didn’t take USD, only West African Francs. I asked how long it would take, and
the guy behind the counter pulled out this paper and pointed to the section
saying that it takes 2 to 5 business days. I was thinking that I sure as hell
did not want to go through that whole ordeal of getting back to the embassy
after the stressful task of getting there that morning. I asked if there was
any way they could get it done today. He said he might be able to work
something out for F10,000 more. Yow! Too much. I played the “I’m a poor
backpacker” card and got him down to half that. So I slipped him the bill,
completing my second bribe in two days. Honestly, it probably saved me money in
the end since I wouldn’t have to spend taxi money trying to get back there. It
was so empowering being able to get exactly what I wanted with just a little extra
cash. Don’t get me wrong; corruption is, in theory, very wrong, I know. But it’s
just oh so convenient.
The guy told me that
I’d have to come back in about two hours, so I wandered around the
neighborhood, which was filled with many other embassies and some kind of army
barracks thing. Then I followed the sound of some drumming and music to a church where I saw
everyone dressed up in awesome African-print fabrics for what a guy told me was
some kind of mass. Then I wandered down other streets with little shops and
people selling stuff, and soon enough I headed back to the embassy to pick up
my passport.
Cocody village tells you "welcome"
Little stands on the road
I got up my
passport with the newly-completed visa sticker in it and my official receipt,
sans bribe of course. Woo hoo! Finally I had that darn visa. I decided that I’d
had enough of taxis for the day and walk back to my hotel. I mapped it: 2
hours. Fine by me. I had nothing else to do and it wasn’t even 11am. So I
walked in the humidity and awful pollution, stopping to get some popsicles at a
supermarket for some sweet relief from the heat. Wasn’t it technically winter?
I guess at the equator, it doesn’t really matter. Surprisingly, on the walk, I
wasn’t harassed at all, and just twice some kids said “femme blanche!” or “une
française!” as I passed.
The next few days, I
didn’t really have much to do. I had booked several nights at this hotel in
case it would actually take the stated 2-5 business days for my visa, but I had
everything taken care of, so it was just a few days of relaxing. I did a lot of
wandering around in town. The street food was delicious. Among my selected snacks were a grilled plantain and a street meat/mayo sandwich. I also got lots more milky popsicles, and generally lazed around in the
hotel. I got really sick of watching the senate confirmation hearings and
commentary on CNN, the only English station out of the 5 channels on TV. But I
did enjoy watching Biden get his bff necklace Presidential Medal of
Freedom from his bromance buddy Obama, and barely being able to hold it
together. I also entertained myself watching a show, dubbed in French, on the National
Geographic channel, about the El Dorado airport in Colombia and about the cops there who deal with people who were
trying to smuggle drugs in various body orifices or travel on fake passports. Good thing you don't get deported around here if you don't have your correct paperwork...
I guess Monsieur Chat took a break from Europe to make some street art here in Abidjan
Up next: I escape
Abidjan and cross the Ivory Coast in the hopes of reaching Liberia.
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