Wow. What a long
day. We slept in until 8am, packed a
little, and headed upstairs for breakfast (I don’t know about Amara, but I was
really hungry). The black instant
Africafé was decent, the egg and toast good, and the fruit sweet. The rooftop really had a beautiful view of
the water on three sides and the skyline that showed no streets because they’re
so small.
We spent about ten minutes talking with Usna, the woman who
had served us breakfast and cleaned the hostel.
She was born in Arusha but has worked in Zanzibar for a year and a half
without going back to see her family, though both sides miss each other dearly,
because money is tight. She said she’s
not ready for a husband and kids yet, but someday, and she encouraged us in our
ability to speak Swahili, which was characteristic of the generosity we
experienced while in Stone Town.
After finishing packing and checking out, we went back to a
boutique Amara really liked that had well-made pieces that incorporated
tasteful amounts of kanga fabric such that it wouldn’t be totally weird to wear
them in the States. She was considering
buying a small bag but decided she could probably find a similar one in Mwanza
and not have to pay the “American price” of $15 that the shop was
charging. The dresses were really
beautiful though and I’d love to be able to add some kanga flair like that;
maybe I’ll have more ideas while in Kampala.
Then we headed over to the ferry terminal on our way to grab
one last cup of chai and check email at Zenji before we left Zanzibar. The process of getting two tickets for us
somehow took about 20 minutes. The woman
said she was going to get change for me and then disappeared for 15 minutes. Amara and I talked about good books and
reading, so we were happy despite our puzzlement.
Tickets finally in hand, I got my last spice tea at Zenji
while Amara had a fruit and yogurt mix (thinner than a smoothie – I wasn’t the
biggest fan but it’s also nice to get some form of produce in your body, and
the days are hot so it was refreshing).
We stopped into Adam’s Exchange, our favorite ForEx Bureau, for the
third time in as many days, so that Amara could change money and we could
shamelessly grab a handful of the free candy they had on the counter.
The ferry terminal was an interesting scene. We were told to be there by noon for a 12:30
departure but showed up around 12:15.
For some reason, they had us fill out immigration forms even though we
weren’t leaving the country, and as Amara chatted with the officer about why
she was going to Mwanza (“Utafanya kazi?”
“Ndiyo, hospitalini.”), we ran into a little problem. On her visa application forms, she clearly
wrote that she was a student doing unpaid medical research and included her
recommendation letter from the Cornell professor with whom she’s working, and
apparently the appropriate visa is one that says, “employment prohibited,” just
like my visa did. You can see how there
might be problems with saying that you’re ‘working’ if your visa doesn’t allow
it. He told her she could either pay the
$600 fine for her federal offense or pay $200 to buy the appropriate visa. She said both that she was clear about what
her activity would be when she applied for the visa (true) and that she didn’t
have enough money to pay (false). He argued
back a little, and she offered that since our ferry was leaving in seven
minutes and she really needed to go in order not to miss it, she could do it
right when she got into Dar. Thankfully
he let us go without paying anything. He
definitely underestimated how willing and able she’d be to reason with him
instead of simply paying the money out of defeated confusion. She was definitely disturbed by how he could
irrationally demand $600 from her with a big smile on his face.
That was the least of our problems though. We wondered for a while why our ferry wasn’t
even at the dock despite it being past departure time, and around 13:30 the man
who had left his seat next to me returned with a ticket that said 15:30, so I
attempted to listen to his conversation with a few others, finally asked him,
“Nini kinaendelea?” (“What’s going on?”), and he explained in English to me
that the ferry had been cancelled and we needed to go exchange our
tickets. I asked if there were any
earlier ferries than 13:30, but he said there weren’t.
Amara and I then decided that I should go out alone to
exchange the tickets to that the angry immigration man wouldn’t try to get her
to pay again. I went outside the
terminal and looked around to see where the crowd was going in order to follow
them, but there was no real direction.
After walking back and forth, confused, for a minute, I spotted some
wazungu that I’d seen in the ferry terminal.
Their purposeful walk turned into a frantic but directed run, so I
figured that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to jog after them.
I found a mob of Africans pushing forward against one
another and the ferry office window, trying to shove their tickets inside in
hopes that once the tickets were removed from their hands, a refund would be
placed in them. I waited a bit more
patiently than the two frantic German women and the Dutch woman before finally
reaching the window and having $70 returned to me for tickets we purchased for
124,000 TSh ($77). My explanation that I
had paid in shillings and wanted my money back in shillings was to no avail
because the tickets had “$35” written on them despite that being neither the
correct amount nor form of currency of our payments. Oh well.
Then, after fully realizing that this was not just a simple
exchange of a 12:30 ticket for a 15:30 ticket, I went to a different company’s
window, waited with the mob there for a while, and was rather quickly fished
out by a man with broken English who wanted to help the mzungu. They told me I needed $80, rather than the
$70 I had, which was both frustrating because I didn’t want to pay more money
and problematic because I only had a few $100 bills tucked into my money belt,
underneath my shirt tucked into my cool African pants, and I wasn’t about to
dig into that with everyone around.
We went back and forth a few times about why I couldn’t just
pay $70 because it was all I had and still so much more than the local price,
but he wouldn’t budge, so I left to find somewhere to get into my money belt
and was followed by the guy who fished me out.
Finally after making a complete circle around a small office building
and telling him a few times, “Thanks, bye,” I lost him, and I went into a nice
hotel around the corner.
After getting $100 out, I returned to the window to find
that now only VIP was available since it was a full boat, and I needed to pay
$90 for our two tickets. What a
joke. I firmly told him that I would pay
him $140 (the hundred, a twenty, a ten, and two fives – I had received small
bills from the other company, which get a lower exchange rate) if he could give
me a fifty back. I explained that a few
times before I was told that they had no fifties and I should just give him the
hundred so he could go get my tickets.
Thankfully I was able to just give him our names and nationality,
without needing Amara’s passport number, which was lost on the back of the
ticket I returned. I pleaded to be
allowed to follow him to wherever he was going because I didn’t want the $100
bill to just leave my sight and never come back. After my request being declined multiple
times and a nicer man who spoke better English saying something about “no
cheating,” I gave in and sat in the tiny chair in the tiny office and just
hoped and prayed the man would come back with tickets and change. There were a few tears shed in the
overwhelming stress of the situation, and how I had to go it alone without
Amara (those 45 minutes were the longest time we had been apart in 7 days), who
spoke better Swahili than me. I did
laugh inside at the fact that my parents would find my “cultural experience”
very interesting, though.
After successfully getting the tickets and not quite enough
change, I thanked the men, returned to Amara, and read Acts for an hour until
we boarded. The VIP seating was fairly
classy, but the showing of Madagascar wasn’t…
After we left (around 25 minutes late) the young man next to me noticed
that the book I was reading was the Bible, and he asked me about it. I was starting to feel sick but focused on
breathing deeply as I explained a little about what it meant to me to be
Christian. He seemed to feel the need to
justify himself to me, rationalizing that his belief in a god and regular
attendance at church without a full commitment to Christ was the best way for
him to go, especially because of the fun-sucking rules and the hypocrisy that
all too often characterizes those whole claim to be born again.
He got a phone call and I really didn’t feel great, so the
conversation ended there. I proceeded to
throw up four times in the course of the following hour and a half, sat on the
floor in order to lower my center of gravity, and despised the stupid company
for playing Home Alone. Seriously, a
Christmas movie in June?! It was really
quite miserable, and no fun for anyone involved. Amara was such a trouper with me for our last
few hours together! After the hellish
ride, we sat for a few minutes to let my stomach calm down a little and then
proceeded to take cabs to the airport (me) and hostel (her).
My driver said that it would take at least an hour and a
half to get to the airport given the traffic (about which I will write – it’s
rough). We left the ferry terminal in
Dar just before six, which is when the airline told me to arrive, and managed
to make it there by 7:10. Because I had
switched my flight to be a day earlier than originally planned, it took a
little longer to check in, but I think my use of Swahili made them a little
more patient with me. I got through
immigration and security, which is such a breeze here, in no time, and ordered
tea, an omelet, and toast, using up my last ten thousand shillings and one US
dollar. It took a while to come and I
was a little concerned about whether my flight was boarding, but I got to talk
briefly with a businessman from Myanmar in the electricity industry. He was in Dar for some conferences and headed
to Nairobi then Kampala.
My food finally came and tasted delicious after my stomach
had been emptied on the ferry. I wrapped
up half of it as an egg sandwich and boarded the shuttle to our plane. There, I found the frantic but purposeful
German women I’d met earlier, who were much calmer now. They’d ended up getting their ticket refunds
and getting on a flight (paying $70 each rather than the $45 ferry ticket) because
they were worried they’d miss all of their flights. As it turned out, Philip, the sisters’
21-year-old son/nephew, is volunteering just outside Kampala for a year and is
about ten months in. We shared a cab
from Entebbe and talked about lots of stuff, but mainly on Kampala nightlife,
philosophy, and faith.
When I showed up at Mish Mash (backpack and all… Classy, I know.) for Connor’s 21st
birthday celebration, I was on the phone with Titi so Philip’s attempt to give
me his number failed because it didn’t save.
I still feel badly… but hanging out at Mish Mash was fun! Several of people’s coworkers were there and
it was great to be with a big group for a change. Lots of expats. We got home around 1:30, I think, and I was
totally exhausted.
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