I left my purse in a taxi in Accra. Then it was stolen by the taxi driver/another
passenger, but for those of you who know me well… it’s not a great shock… super
surprised I haven’t lost it more than once and the only other thing I’ve lost so
far this year was my glasses…. prescription of course… must be a record for the
least things lost in a year *pat on back*.
Thing is, I had a lot of stuff in
that lovely purse (which I’ll never find again, I know because I've searched on line already : ( )…
some I can’t replace; like business cards I’ve collected from colleagues here,
some things I can but they’re a pain to replace; like the VSO ID card and
Ghanaian drivers licence… Still, I
swallowed that sour pill and trudged off (on my now illegal moto) to the DVLA
to replace my driver’s licence. If you
read about the hassle it was to get it in the first place will you understand
the anguish of simply thinking about having to go through it again… Of course,
the process is slightly different as the circumstances are, a perfect
opportunity to bump up the bureaucracy!
The slimy DVLA boss told me that I needed a police report before they
would produce the paperwork for it to be reissued. The thought of the police bureaucracy was too
much for me to deal with on the same day so I headed over the next day only to
be faced with a very helpful man (tall, dark, handsome and in a uniform… ahem…
[be still beating heart]), who past me over to the most surly, uncooperative,
miserable Ghanaian (police)woman I have ever met to date standing behind a tall
countertop in the police station. My
sickly sweet charming replies just seemed to piss her off even more which was
the ammunition I needed for full out sickly sweet word war! I wasn’t in the
mood to be pissed off myself much better for me that she was. Whilst waiting for the report, when I wasn’t annoying
the police woman I was having a nose around the room and it was clear that not only was there a great
big jail house door … you know like the ones you’d see the sheriff sitting in
front of in an old western film…. But it was full of half naked men, [rewind]… barely clothed men. Two reasons for this lack of clothing became
apparent. One; it was damn hot where I
was standing under a fan, let alone stuck in a small, dark, fan-less room with
a jail door and barely any standing space. And two; they were in effect
prisoners and not allowed to wear anything that could conceal a weapon… That
became apparent when two newly arrested prisoners (arrested for impersonating a
priest and extorting money) were dragged in by two dashingly handsome plain
clothed detectives (to be fair one was a bit porky but let’s keep this fantasy
running). They ordered these two men to
strip down to their underwear in front of me. As one wasn’t wearing any
underwear (that fact was translated through sign language even I could
understand) he [no peeking between those fingers…]kept his trousers on! The thing is the naughty boys in ‘jail’ just
wanted the white woman’s attention and it was difficult not to respond given
the surly responses from Mrs Happy Policewoman.
After getting the naughty boys told off and threatened with some
lashings from the cane (how bad did I feel?) I became surrounded on either side
by two large uniformed officers who were wielding Kalashnikov rifles (scared?
Me? Errr… let’s just say not entirely comfortable). After a brusque exchange in local language with
Mrs Happy Policewoman she literally threw an unknown number of cartridges on
the counter top in front of me that promptly rolled along the counter and over
the edge on to the floor, into my helmet and onto my bag. Some ended up in my hands as is the automatic
reaction to catch things that are falling, albeit this was a slightly delayed
reaction given that catching a rolling Kalashnikov cartridge in a police
station needed some thought as to the ‘right move’… No one battered an eyelid of course and I
spent the remaining few minutes helping the policemen fill their magazines
before the remaining cartridges were scooped into a pile and left on the
counter top and the men reported to duty with weapons fully loaded. Not long after the report had been written
stamped and signed. The following day at
8am, after a 45 minute unusually efficient visit to DVLA I had my temporary
licence once more. It would seem once
more that it is best not to second guess anything in Ghana, especially whether
or not the rifles are loaded…
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