Diplomatic affairs

9th February:

By default, any African border, even on a good day, is an exercise in random checks, useless paperwork and uncontrolled chaos - and Petit Cadeaux.

First, we passed Customs, where they took down the details of our car. All nice and well. Then, the Police - at this point in time, it's just before noon. Where everything was going OK until they saw the rally stickers.

"Not allowed to pass, have to go back to Bissau." Says the cop.

Uhhh.... Why?

"Call from big boss in immigration, all cars must go to Bissau."

But we don't want to go to Bissau, we need to get to Dakar within 36 hours and there is 600km on a bad road ahead of us. And 2 more borders if we take the trans-Gambian route.

"No, go to Bissau, immigration call, no cars can go."

Right. Okay. This is odd.

So we phone up the organizer, who has no idea what we're on about. But he says he'll check. The Capo comes out of the station, and tells us we need to leave. A loud discussion ensues where I explain to him that I am an EU citizen with all the proper documentation wanting to leave the country, and that we will camp out in front of the station until we are let across. "No, no camp, go back to Bissau!"

Yeah, of course. That's not happening.

This, or variations of this goes on for 2 hours. I call our organizer, he calls the government, they say there's no problem, cop at border says that Immigration called and we're not allowed to go, won't speak to the - I kid you not - the Secretary of State of Guinea Bissau who was at the opening of Carnival with the rest of the cars - and won't give me the name and number of the person that called them.

It wasn 't a border crossing, it was a Dali painting from his batshit-crazy years (true, that's most of them...)

And then, just as I thought that the 100 EUR bribe offer was maybe too low (what if Daddy needed a new wife!?), the other Slovenian teams call, and say they weren't allowed to cross either at the same border crossing we entered through yesterday, because immigration called that no one is allowed to leave.

Oh, now we're fucked. Andrew (our organizer), help! Bigger problem. Fix it. Please. We just want to leave. Everyone in Bissau is still saying there's no issue, border cop-man is still casting evil eyes at us as we sit on camp chairs outside car and I drink a beer.

Time to start calling the embassies.
The Portuguese embassy which is supposed to be responsible for EU citizens in G-B does not pick up the phone (it being Saturday, there's no way there could be a diplomatic problem in a 3rd world banana republic, right?).
The French embassy only speaks French (who would've thought that our highschool French would come so handy during this trip?), and gives us the number of the Honorary Consul of G-B in Slovenia. Which we already called, but because it's Saturday, he's not picking up. And neither are the Spanish.

Well, okay, now what?

The Dutch embassy in Senegal does pick up, and the nicest lady ever calls up their guy in G-B, and tries to check of there's a problem.

Then, I call our foreign ministry.

"Are you trying to tell me that they won't let an EU citizen leave - leave! - the country?" was the repeating question from both the Dutch and ours. With only a slight nudge - aka., call a friend of a friend who is the head of the diplomatic service - it sometimes pays to live in a small country - the Slovenians started trying to see what was going on.

"Move car, go to Bissau!" guy comes around again.

Nope. Not on your life. 200km over medium- bad roads (but gorgeous country and scenery!) to someplace where I won't be able to leave for a few days? Gee, thanks. We have MREs, pate, wine, cookies, processed cheese, energy bars and the emergency stash of scotch. We're ok for a week or so.

Meanwhile, the other Slovenians make it to Bissau, and we agree to meet at the border in the morning.

It is now almost 7pm. We're still at the border, I'm out of beer, we have no idea what is going on, the phone bill will be the size of the GDP of the country we're stuck in, we need to get to Dakar to get the car on the boat for Europe, the road to Dakar is a giant pothole with some asphalt around it, there's two more borders and a country for which we need to blag a visa and, joy of joys, the border is closing.

What else can go wrong?