Trying to come home from Accra was quite the task and made for some pretty great stories.
After coming home from the Cultural Center, we had to say our farewells to the Dicksons (who we still can’t thank enough for everything they did for us last weekend) and caught our ride with Mark to Stephen Abu Junior’s house for the night.
Just a little insert here to express my love for the pizza that was waiting for us there, it was SO GOOD!!! For any of you that have not had Hawaiian pizza with FRESH pineapple I HIGHLY recommend it! :)
Anyway, we spent the night there, knowing that we had 2 very important things to do the next morning.
One of our tasks was to catch the bus back home at 1:00pm so we would be sure to get home before the guys had to teach their class. But the next morning we got a frantic call from Master Fufu (as we know him, who rode to Accra with us) and he told us that we needed to be at the bus station by 11:00am because the bus left at noon instead of one. WHAT!? It was already nine thirty that morning and we weren’t even CLOSE to accomplishing the 2nd, and ultimately more important task: figuring out where Spencer’s text books had ended up and getting them out!
So this summer, along with being here in Africa for the SEED internship, Spencer is taking 2 online classes so that he will be able to graduate with a double major in international business AND economics. His 2 economics classes started just before we made it to Africa, but he still hadn’t gotten his books. So we ordered the books our first day in Accra and had them sent to my mom. She received all 3 books within a week and promptly sent them on to us here in Africa. That was June 4.
The books were sent Express Mail and were said to arrive here in 3-5 business days. Well, USPS did their job. The books arrived in Accra at customs on June 7… but that was the last time they were seen or recorded to be anywhere. Basically, they just sat there. No one bothered to actually send the books across town to the PO Box that was being checked so diligently by Stephen for us. Nope, they were just lazy and figured that if we wanted the books bad enough we’d come to them and track the package down ourselves. And that’s exactly what we had to do.
So we head out on our journey (in the mean time, we’ve just missed our bus and couldn’t even get Emily and Joey on it like we initially planned and have no idea if we’re actually going to make it back to Abomosu that night), so we all fought through the crowds and traffic in Accra to get to the main post office.
Upon arrival we handed them the slip of paper with the package info on it and Spencer's photo ID, and it took them about a minute to find the package. (So why couldn’t they just send the package to where it was supposed to be?) They then proceed to hand Spencer a MASSIVE (and dull) KNIFE with which they expected him to open up the package.
Spencer and his ginormous knife opening the package.
Once opened there were 3 books, 4 sponges (to scrub the bathroom) and a skirt I’d asked my mom to send me if there was extra room in the box (which I bought from a thrift store in Estonia for approximately $6.) The books were still in their original packaging, but they had already removed the knife. The lady at the window then pulls out a calculator and after some punching of who knows what numbers she tells us that we have to pay her 64 Ghana Cedis (or about $45) to take the stuff home.
WHAT!?
Do they look happy? We finally understood the sudden disappearance of the knife.
The customs duties on books is only 2%, which we made sure to check before we even opened the package. Now 2% we could have handled… but apparently there is a tax of 44% on clothing, the sponges and on the value of the package. Well the package cost about $75 to send, and the price placed on the customs form for my skirt was $25, the sponges were $1 all together and THEN you add in the 2% tax on the worth of the books. Oh did we about have a fit. I even offered to give the lady at the counter my skirt if she’d just charge the 2% on everything. And Mark (dear Mark), he’s such a life saver. At one point the lady had said that she uses her discretion when figuring out the price of customs and Mark said, “Well how about you use some here and realize that this price is absolutely ridiculous!” We also had Joey sitting on the calculator on his phone telling the lady how much we should REALLY have to pay, and in the end, she only made us pay 8 Ghana Cedis.
What was really funny was when she re-typed everything out on the calculator and told us it was going to be 8 cedis she said it as if we were going to fight her on it more. But believe you me, after hearing 64 cedis, we were THRILLED to only have to pay 8.
The moral of this story? Don’t send stuff to Ghana because you never know when you'll get it. Really! And if you do, definitely don’t put a price on ANY of the items in the package – who knows what they’ll make you pay for it.
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