No Passport... No Going Home

In Ghana, when your passport is stuck at the immigration office, you can bet that your travel plans will be disrupted. And in fact, that is just what happened to us this week. Eli and I have been anticipating our trip home tomorrow for weeks now and I had already even begun to pack up because I was so excited to visit family and get a reprieve from Ghana for a bit. Our passports have been with the immigration office for 2 months and for 2 months Alan has followed up with the coordinator of travel at his work about the passports.  On Thursday we still didn't have our passports and our worry really increased but we were told we would have them in time. Then on Friday at 3pm, we still didn't have them. Then at 4pm, we still didn't have them. And at 5 we realized that Eli and I will be delayed getting home, could potentially miss Thanksgiving with my family, and might just miss seeing my brother, sister-in-law and nephew. But, all of this is so insignificant in a country where things don't work consistently, people die every day due to other people's incompetencies or ineptitude or even because they didn't bribe someone fast enough, and peoples lives are disrupted 10 fold to this because someone didn't do their job or follow instructions.

We were promised that we would be getting our passports on Monday and so we will cross our fingers that this happens and we can catch a flight to Atlanta via JFK on Monday night arriving on Tuesday, just in time for Thanksgiving.