Day Five

I’m about to die right now. There’s 2 hours and 45 minutes left of the Fast, and I’m about to die. This morning, Dr. Sabet’s driver collected me from the house and took me to get a “mobile” a.k.a. cell phone. Evidently I could have brought my own from the U.S. but no one told me that. So I had to spend TSh 85,000 (~$85) to buy a new one and a SIM card for it. Doing this was a process in and of itself. He collected me around 8:30 so I assumed that all the shops would be open. Wrong. Wrong. Most things don’t seem to open until 9:30 and even then it’s a gamble. So the driver gave me a tour of a new area of town while we drove back and forth between two shops waiting for them to open. Finally one of them opened, and we went inside. The driver spoke to the shopkeeper and indicated which phone I wanted. There was a bit of an argument between them and finally he motioned to me that we should leave. Outside he explained that the man was trying to charge way too much for the phone because I was a muzungo (white foreigner). You see, there are three prices for things here: one for ordinary people; one for educated, well-dressed people with cars; and one for muzungos. I guess they’re trying to get the West back for hundreds of years of oppression. Or they’re greedy. One of the two.

We went back to the other shop and despite being half an hour past the time it was supposed to open, it was still closed. Insanity! Finally the driver decided to go into town to buy the mobile, even though the traffic is really bad. This time I gave him the money and sent him in to buy it for me so we wouldn’t have to go through this whole muzungo nonsense. Long story short, I have a mobile here now. However, don’t even think about calling me because the costs for phone calls are outrageous – $2.00 per call – so people use texting instead.

After we bought the mobile, he drove me back to the daladala stop I’m supposed to take. He instructed me as to the correct bus to get on, which I did, and then followed me to the stop near the Centre. To get to the Centre, you have to go through this maze of alleys, so he picked me up at the stop and drove me through the alleys. I stayed at the Center for about four hours and cleaned up the filing system. If I have the proper materials when I arrive at the office tomorrow I should be able to finish then. At any rate, there’s no electricity at the Centre, which means no fans. Up until today I was at home under industrial-sized fans set on high, but today I had only the wind, and it wasn’t even blowing. I’m so dehydrated right now it’s not even funny!

I took home some of the Kiswahili documents so I can use my Kiswahili-English dictionary to translate them and figure out how to file them. On the way back home on the daladala (and I managed to get to it, on it, and to the appropriate stop with no problems!) I had to stand because there were so many people. I had a shopping bag and an enormous binder in my hands, which was frustrating my ability to hold onto the bar and keep from bumping my head. So this man next to me reaches up, takes the binder, and places it in his lap, freeing up at least one hand. I was extremely grateful for that bit of unsolicited assistance, and I thanked him profusely, which of course he just waved off as if it were an every day occurrence, which it probably is here.

I had to relate my getting lost on the daladala story again when I arrived at the Centre this morning. Everyone was just thankful that I was okay, and the Secretary of the NSA was able to laugh about it. Above all they were worried about having to call my parents and tell them I’d gotten lost. “They’d have killed us!” the Office Manager exclaimed.

I just noticed that online ads must have some marketing geniuses running them or something. Everywhere I go, there’s at least one advertisement for obtaining an American green card!