“Beware the Jabberwock, my son
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
“Look, they are saying you were working and they will not believe you were not. It looks like they want your passport and for you to go to their office.” We were arguing and trying to protest my innocence to an Immigration officer when the front door of the real estate office opened and a tall, athletic, and very determined man burst in and shouted, “Stop what you are doing! He did nothing wrong!”
And thus began the verbal battle that lasted for over two hours and ended up becoming a multi-day situation involving a high-priced lawyer, police, a politician, a National Security Services officer, real estate brokers, the Immigration officers, and their Commissioner. And me between the two sides as they fought over the situation.
Before embarking on my journey to Ghana I tried to make sure that I had all my bases covered, my details checked, and expected potential obstacles accounted for. I had a real estate company that wanted me to work with them. I was going to be involved with a real estate Multiple Listing Service (MLS), (the database that serves as a housing market history so homes and properties can be accurately priced), and working with a professional real estate association that wanted me to teach business practices.
On getting my work permit, I was told, “We will take care of that. We have people who handle those things. Just show up.”
When I arrived, I discovered all was not as had been described. In fact, little was. The real estate company that was going to mentor me on the way things were being done turned out to have one person on staff – me.
If you queried the MLS for homes for sale, it showed you rental properties and land. If you tried looking up rental properties, it showed you homes for sale. . . and land. And if you looked for sold homes for comparison purposes, it showed you nothing. There was no “Sold” category.
The head of the professional association was a volunteer who had been running things for years. I told him I was there to work with him. I was also there to develop a one hour talk for a major conference that was due to be in about six weeks.
Have you ever thought of what it takes to talk for an hour without having people disconnect? It turned out to be more challenging than I had thought.
The association director had an ego that demanded he be recognized as in charge. He would schedule meetings and then delay them when people had gathered so we waited for him. He asked me to design and layout an ad for a publication when I had no supplies or computer program for it and said it was very important and he needed it by the afternoon. (He said the same thing a week later since he had not gotten one the week before). He called me one afternoon and said I should stop what I was doing and run a letter across town to a corporate vice-president who needed it in 10 minutes. (The location was about 45 minutes away).
The final straw was when he said I should stop in one afternoon because he needed help evaluating a piece of land. He ended up taking me to a 9-bedroom home and asking me to tour it.
At this point I had been in Accra for about three weeks. After touring the home, he asked me for a price opinion to list the home. I explained that I had no idea because I was unfamiliar with the market and would have to try and find a way to do a comparison of other sold properties. I said I would guess about 3,000,000 cedis ($500,000). He said it was listed already at $550,000 and the seller was not interested in lowering the price, they just wanted a quick sale.
That is when I stopped going into the real estate company office which was upstairs from the association office. I figured when the owner arrived, we could work things out.
I decided to try and educate myself about the market. It turns out that there are dozens and dozens of real estate companies and no record of exactly how many. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people who call themselves agents – again with no record of who or where. Traveling through the city revealed real estate offices seemingly everywhere you looked. Some were a single desk in a small cubicle that promised everything from land acquisition to home plan design and build services.
Right after I arrived, the director of the conference – who also owns the real estate company – decided she wanted to produce a 28-page magazine for the conference, complete with articles, biographies of the speakers, advertisers, and organized by three volunteers with no publishing experience. She expected it completed and ready for the conference in less than two months. She was expecting me to join in this effort of the impossible. I declined.
By the end of September when the owner/director arrived the flier for the conference had grown from 8 to 14 and then to 24 authorities to speak over the course of four days in both virtual and live sessions at a very expensive hotel in the city.
I had asked several times since my arrival about documents needed for my work permit and had received no reply. She arrived and there were still no responses to my queries until she sent a note saying she was busy and would talk to me after the conference. It was evident she was not happy with me.
A new flier came out soon after her arrival promoting the now 12 speakers at the conference. I was one of the previous speakers no longer listed.
The Scottish poet Robert Burns in 1785 wrote in his poem “Ode to a Mouse”
But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
The company I was to work with, the speech I was to give, the association I was to help as a teacher. . .all had gone like morning mist. Yes, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.
I took the documents I had and went to talk with another broker, Daniel, whom I had met before to ask for help with my permit. He readily agreed. I dropped off my paperwork on a Thursday afternoon. He was busy on Friday and asked me to come in on the following Monday at Noon. When I arrived we went over the paperwork and he said he would make the changes we needed.
He suggested I go with two other brokers who were going to go scouting a neighborhood to see more of what kinds of homes were on the market. I happily agreed and got in the car not realizing that I was being followed by Immigration acting on a false tip from a “reliable source.”
We stopped in front of a gated estate. I walked into the property with the other agents and five minutes later was informed by a plain clothes Immigration Officer standing at the front door that I was going to be detained for working without a permit.
After explaining multiple times that I was not working and the officer not believing me or the agents, the officer used his radio and a few minutes later was joined by two other plain clothes officers. I opted to sit in the back of the car I came in while the agents and the officers discussed possibilities.
The officers wanted to see my passport and agreed to travel back to the real estate office to see it and the documents that showed I was applying for my work permit. We left in our car and they left in theirs.
The National Security Force is a branch that answers only to the president. The very loud and passionate man who had burst in from nowhere was a member of that group and made it known to the immigration officers that he had no concern for what they considered his interference. When the officers asked for my passport he objected strongly as did one of the agents who kept loudly protesting that the immigration department had no right to keep my passport.
The shouting continued as the opposing groups merged into the parking lot outside the real estate office. My passport kept going back and forth. The original officer kept talking on his radio. The others were talking on their phones. The National Security officer was on his phone repeatedly checking in with his superiors and raising further protest.
The Immigration officers said I need to go with them to their office. National Security said no, I was not to get into an unmarked car with three plainclothes officers. He demanded and called for a police escort for me and soon we had two policemen trying to sort out who was what. All the while, people kept telling me that things would be okay and I should just sit still. And yelling at each other, many times with me between them.
We ended up traveling to the local police station and then with the National Security officer driving the police sergeant and myself, the agents in their car, and the immigration officers following, we made our way to the investigation branch offices.
The National Security officer did not go in and instead left with the police sergeant after I was safely deposited. The Immigration Commissioner and two of his lieutenants sat in an office and kept telling me that I was guilty and I should confess. I kept saying I was not working. No one would believe me.
On the way to their offices, the National Security man had me speak with a lawyer on the phone who instructed me to write a statement making certain I listed information about officer behavior. When I was told to make a statement in writing, I did. Somehow that document disappeared between the desk where I wrote it and gave it to one of the officers and the interrogation room I was taken to. When the lieutenant asked for the statement the officer said I must have lost it. I objected and was asked to fill out a second and was taken back to the desk area. I filled out a second and was told that my statement incriminated my friends and that I should change it. I refused. One of the officers began redacting parts of the statement.
Tempers were running high and egos had been severely bruised. No one was budging from their positions. After going in circles for what seemed like eons – and the immigration folks demanding to have the National Security man brought before them to no avail – it was decided that we should return the following day for their decision.
The next day found me back in the same cramped office. The lieutenant was thumbing through the same eight pages of information that had been assembled the night before and then called one of his officers to bring him the regulations for the department. He read them and looked up at me and Daniel, the owner of the real estate company. “We find you (me) guilty of working without a permit and subject to a fine of 5000 cedis.” He read a regulation aloud and looked at Daniel, “And you are going to be charged with obstruction of an immigration officer in the course of his duty and punishable by a fine of one million credits and up to five years in jail.”
Daniel objected and was able to show he had not obstructed anyone. “Yes, but you know who this man from National Security is and if you do not produce him for us then we will charge you.” Again, arguments went on with me in the middle being told everything was okay and I should just sit still.
I was told to stay home the following day and when I went back for my next appointment tempers had cooled. It had come out that I had been turned in on a tip that was apparently ill founded. And the department was now willing to help me get my work permit fast tracked so I could stay in the country.
I have not worked in about seven weeks and have been going a bit stir crazy with such recent limited activity – to the point that I bought a shovel and pickax to fill in the potholes in the dirt road outside the house for something to do — so I am looking forward to the permit situation becoming fully resolved.
The people who turned me in did me a big favor. They happened to cause me to be introduced to several people who came to my defense, people I would not have otherwise ever met; people with considerable political influence who have said they want to talk with me when this all settles down.
The paperwork has now all been submitted. I have paid all the fees but the final one for the permits when they are ready and I have been assured that I will be able to go to work soon,
I know what you are thinking. Where did the man from the National Security Services come from? That is a different story.
