GBB: Embassy Questions

[Ian Carroll]

Hey everyone:

I want to address some concerns regarding visas and the Ghana Embassy in DC. If you've received any substantial information from them, please let us know. The most important thing right now is to be patient!

I've looked around on some websites with reviews on the embassy, and although they are good about returning all of your documents in time, it seems they have a history of not responding to emails or voicemails and answering only a few calls. If you followed their instructions exactly, you should be fine. Please try to understand that issuing visas account for only a fraction of an embassy's workload and that the embassy may even be understaffed, so responding to inquiries about individual visas may be something they try to avoid.

That being said, we all have a right to know what's going on with our passport and visa this close to departure. The consular section has been most helpful to me whenever they actually answer the phone. If no one answers, don't leave a voicemail, but try them again in 5 minutes or so; you can reach them by dialing 8, then 1. The information and public affairs section (8, then 2) will answer the phone most often, but try to keep them on the line or else they will try to connect you to the consular section. Again, if you did everything perfectly on the application, you shouldn't have any problems.

Remember that the visa application asks for our date of departure for Ghana, so the embassy knows when we need our passports by. Also keep in mind that FedEx, UPS, etc. are inundated with mail right now because of the holiday season, so mail might be a little slower getting to you this time of year.

I sent my application in on November 30th and they called me on December 13th to tell me my visa application had been accepted (so roughly two weeks), but they only called because I had sent my return envelope separately and they wanted to know if I had sent one. There are offices within the embassy that don't communicate with each other very often, so the consular section may not know when exactly your envelope was shipped.

I will let Hellen Kassa know about our situation and keep all of y'all posted. We're not the first American brigade to go to Ghana, so she might have some more insight.

Good luck,

Ian

Ian Carroll

The University of Texas at Austin ’15

McCombs School of Business | International Business

(832) 330-8012