55. We have a minibus!

Mostly my blogs are not that long, but this adventure I want to share with you all!

In the last week of the Christmas holidays, Richard and I went to the south of Ghana, to Accra to be precise. We received money from the Louisa Foundation to buy a minibus! As you can imagine, we are very happy with that!

To buy the minibus was quite an adventure! Richard has done most of the work in this. He bought, of course in consultation, a minibus. He had it inspected by a friend who is a mechanic, so that was all good!

After that, however, it still had to be inspected by the D.V.L.A. (Driver Vehicle Licensing Authority) on road worthyness. In short, it goes like this: you show proof that you have bought a minibus. You do this together with the previous owner and all the papers. Then the bus will be inspected, after which you will receive proof of that. They ask for your fingerprints to record everything digitally as well. And everything is attached in a sticker of the A.P.K. and reflectors that have to be stuck along the entire length of the bus, and of course the number plates.

But.....

The handover and the inspection were quickly arranged. The D.V.L.A. wanted to give us yellow license plates. That means for commercial use. We don't use the bus for that, so we wanted white number plates. Yellow license plates also mean that you will be stopped by the police at every opportunity. That's for example from Sandema to Bolgatanga already 5 times! We had to pay for these number plates (85 euros).

Ok, so we were trying to get white plates: for that we had to put our name on the bus first. That had to be done anyway, so that wasn't a problem. Then a letter had to be written to the C.E.O. of D.V.L.A. With letterhead, which I didn't have with me. We managed to do that with a lot of time. We took that letter to the D.V.L.A. headquarters. Unfortunately, C.E.O. was not present. Come back tomorrow.... The third day, the day we wanted to go back to Sandema, someone else was allowed to sign the papers, because the C.E.O. was still not present.

We were missing a form, but Richard had been smart enough to take all the papers from the other D.V.L.A. office.

It was already 4 o'clock on Wednesday and we quickly went back to the other office. Joined the end of the queue. And when it was our turn, the office where the fingerprints were sent to was already closed! If only we could come back tomorrow! As you can imagine, I was very angry!

For us, that means hotel costs, meals, transport costs, etc. So everything just got more expensive. Anyway. Back on Friday. We got our white license plates for 56 euros (this time with receipt.) Then we still had to get the sticker. It took the good man 3 (!) hours!

You should receive a fire extinguisher and the reflectors from the D.V.L.A. for free, but unfortunately, that was not possible either.

It took us 8 (!) days after the purchase of the bus to get the bus registered. (And then another 2 days drive north.)

But now we are the happy owners of a beautiful van! Thanks again to the Louisa Foundation! The happy faces of the children say it all!!