The Ball 2010

We are off on yet another visa escapade. At the Burkina Faso embassy, we are met by stares from the receptionsists so icy they could power the air-conditioning.
“Fill out these forms”, they say.
Unexpected disinterest in The Ball and our story. Oh well, you can’t win everytime.

Resigned to our task, we get stuck into filling out three identical forms. To our dismay, there’s not a photocopier in sight. We take some time out from the paperwork to look at a map of Burkina Faso — to plot our route from Mali to Ouagadougou and then on to Ivory Coast by train.

As we turn in our paperwork the Chef de Protocol comes out and stamps The Ball. He’s not interested in signing it. But our biggest mistake? We haven’t brought any money with us to pay for the visas.

So we’ve got exactly 30 minutes to get some cash and get back to the embassy. In the car and quick. Kassim from DHL puts his foot down in his white Mercedes, Mali seems to be the place where all of Europe’s old cars end up. Every second car is a Mercedes. Anyway, first bank: no luck, cards not working in that machine. Second stop at the North South Hotel and success! Olé olé olé! Cash in the hand, it’s back to the Burkina Faso embassy.

We arrive at midday, right on closing time. As we approach the embassy, the Chef de Protocol races out to meet us – excitement on his face. “The Ambassador wants to meet you. Now.” A surprise change of tack here — a much friendlier atmosphere, so upstairs we go. Straight into His Excellency’s reception room. Ambassadour Extraordinaire du Burkina Faso au Mali Sanne Mohamed Topan welcomes us with great warmth.

Phil, Ambassador Topan and Andrew under a picture of BF’s President

We sit down, tell our story and philosophise about the world through one football — The Ball. The most welcoming ambassador from one of the world’s poorest countries opens his arms to the project and tells us that he has decided to give us our visas for free – we’ll just pay for the tax duty on the stamps. We’ve won again.

Stamps on our visas

And so we end up paying a tenth of what we could have done. What a wonderful gift to The Ball, which is doing this journey on the slimmest of budgets. Thank you, Your Excellency, we are excited to visit your country next week.

This post is filed under Mali, The Ball, The Journey. Tags: Ambassador, Bamako, Burkina Faso, Mali, Visa Training You can follow any responses to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.