Epic

When people hear our story, they pretty much always say something along the lines of "Wow, it's like a movie!" or "Your story should be a movie." Well let me tell you, this movie keeps getting more intense! What started as a romantic, long distance, bi-cultural love story is now taking some interesting twists. Throw in a lot of bureaucracy, lies and heavy corruption and that puts you a little closer to the truth of our story. A lot of Americans find it hard to believe that we are having all this trouble and that it's the U.S. (!) not the African country we are struggling with. They also assume that all of the corruption is on Ghana's side. While there is some of that, this fine country has it's fair share as well. So if you're up for it, let me debrief you a bit...

We are currently dealing with a government agency that told us to wait 8 weeks. We are on 18 weeks. Said government agency is actually run by a private company. That's right, it was contracted out for somewhere in the 200 million dollar range. Said agency has one e-mail address-it takes weeks to get an answer and the response is ALWAYS a form letter about case status. You can only talk to a depressed operator when you call and there is no one to talk to if you want real answers. Doesn't that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?

But it gets better. George and I have a friend in Ghana who was lucky enough to get visa lottery visa. For those of you who don't know, people can pay about $350 for a shot at getting a visa. If they win, then they pay all the other processing and can come to the states. By the way, $350 is 5 months salary for some of these people. Anyway, this friend's processing was a little behind ours and he's been waiting for an interview for about a month (I'm told). Recently he struck a deal with a US person (government agent I assume, but can't be sure) to get into the states faster. He paid the guy $1500 and promised to pay more once he was in the States and working. He had his interview on Monday and he picks up his visa on Friday. He will come to the states soon, with his wife (still don't know how that happened). He will essentially be a slave to the person who sped up his process. He will be paying this person at least another $1500, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if that changed. No one seems to know what will happen if he doesn't pay. This friend is not a US citizen, he has no real rights and will not tell anyone how he came here so quickly. Few people even care. It's all very sketchy. My question is, who is the guy who facilitated this? Where did the money go? How long will our friend be indebted to him? And more importantly, how many other "slaves" are being ushered into this country? I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but chances are this corruption is deeper than one man. Our friend told George some people are paying $6000 or more to get their families in the states with them. No wonder the Ghana embassy is overrun-they have quite the lucrative business going on. I wish this were hard to believe, but it isn't. It does seem like something from a movie...if only I knew the ending.

Now I just need to figure out what, if anything, I should do about this.