Over the last couple of days, we’ve visited embassies – Togo, Benin, Ghana, Gabon, Conga Brazzaville, Cameroon, and Angola. In duplicate and sometimes quadruplicate, we filled in application forms and supplied photos and copies of our passports. The fees for visas are more expensive than in London, Brussels or Paris, but the turn around time is astonishingly quicker.

Angola was the only embassy that denied us visas; the consul suggested we get them in Lagos. I got the feeling he did not want to take the responsibility of issuing our visas – just in case things do not turn out well in his home country.