A Three Hour Cruise...

Nothing to make one yearn for a desk job like hard, grueling labor. Take, say, cattle roping, working an offshore oilrig, or heavy construction. All look pretty cush after three days of three hours straight with 15 toddlers.

Yes it’s joyful to spend time and share in the innocence and play of children blah blah blah. But I am wearing out the little belt holster on my cell phone from checking the time so often. It is astounding the pure elasticity of time from, say, 10:42 to 10:44. Can that really only have been two minutes? We just sang, crawled like crabs and did an art project? In contrast to the Buddhist idea of relaxing into the impermanence of everything, that time is passing and so shall all things, I may well have discovered the one thing that brings time to a clawing, numbing, screeching halt.

So 15 kids – Adler, August, Bodie, Bennett, Clara, Ethan, Hannah, Jessie, Joshua, Juri, Kanto, Marisa, Matthias, Rohan and Sadie. All cute and charming individually. Put them together and I feel like the targeted Piggy in Lord of the Flies.

This week we tried a range of activities: collecting and painting rocks like lady bugs, singing everything from Rolly Polly to I’m a Little Tea Pot, dancing to Aloyce the drummer, and crown-making This is the stuff of college application essays.

Lessons learned from week one at Camp Msasani:

• Many short activities are needed. The morning is now broken into 8 different segments ranging from circle time/singing to art activities to movement activities, with plenty of free time.
• Hydrate hydrate hydrate – dealing with toddlers for three hours is, according to experts, comparable to running a marathon. So lots of liquids, carbo-loading, and glucose gel.
• Have bloody mary’s ready at 11:30 pick-up. It gets parents there on time and is a nice carrot to make it through the morning.
• Change Ivy League curricula to somewhere address toddler’s mercurial needs. Maybe cut a little Milton or Shakespeare and substitute with something more real world, like how to deal with a screaming two year old in the midst of a temper tantrum because the dog won’t let her grab its tail.
• Finally, don’t worry if you screw up. Stay just shy of permanent traumatization and you’ll be fine. They won’t remember any of this, because, hey, they’re only two years old!

Camp Msasani

“Desperate times call for drastic measures.”

Preschool ended last week. Little Scholars had an end of semester party, which meant Bodie was buzzing on a chocolate cake sugar high when I picked him up. He was running around manically hugging teachers and unwary kids, saying, as everyone else did, “have a great summer!” I doubt he really understood what this meant. Walking home from school, we passed a goat munching grass on the side of the road. “Have a great summer, goat”, yelled Bodie.

As we were leaving, I was handed his first report card. I had a flash of fear – I’m a dad now and I need to treat this report card with some gravity. In my mind, we needed to have a sit down and celebrate his strengths but also address some issues. We needed to have a man to, well, 2-year-old talk about how he was doing. I remember those talks vividly, and I’ll be damned if he isn’t going to have that same trembling fear at the end of each year also.

(This next paragraph is mostly, rather, entirely, for my mom). According to his report card, Bodie seemed to excel at preschool. In terms of Personal Development, “He is a well-behaved and polite student. He is very independent when playing and picking out the toys of his choice. He enjoys doing many tasks on his own such as finding his own shoes, getting his bag ready for snack time and picking out the color crayon that he would prefer.” (I’ve been working with him in the evenings on picking out crayons, so am glad to see that hard work rewarded.) Here is the room for improvement: “Although he rarely gets in trouble on his own accord, he sometimes gets influenced by the older boys (this trait is hereditary from Hillary’s side.) “When playing with blocks, he can stack 6-8 objects and expresses good eye-hand co-ordination especially while throwing or catching (all those long training afternoons in the backyard are paying off!). He enjoys dramatic play including make believe kitchen (from Grammy) and talking over the toy telephone (goes without saying). He has a wonderful sense of humor, and he “enjoys hugs.” “He is particularly concerned about the well being of the other students – wants to know why they are crying or lets the teacher know if anyone fell down” (I’ll own the compassion part). He shows well developed communication skills and uses them when wanting to express his feelings and thoughts (I’m guessing this one isn’t from me…) And critically, “he uses play dough properly and enjoys molding it”!

All in all, a pretty successful first stab venturing out into the world of critiquing. All that money we’ve chosen to stock away in his therapy fund instead of a college fund looks like it can accrue a little more interest.

It took a day for it to fully dawn on me. No school means, well, no school. So Bodie in the morning, Bodie at lunch, Bodie in the afternoon and Bodie in the evening. This is good, I told myself. I love him. I love spending time with him. He is funny and I get to spend all day with him. The entire, livelong day, every day… Argh!

A drastic measure was needed. I googled, but could find no sleep away summer camps for two year olds in East Africa. I needed another plan. Out of sheer panic, Camp Msasani is being launched as a place for 18-month to 3-year-old kids to congregate and play three mornings a week. Why, if one scrambling toddler is overwhelming, would I want to submit myself to a dozen? One word: reinforcements.

Most toddlers will come accompanied by a parent or nanny. I’ve hired a teacher from the preschool. I imagine that I’ll be able to sit and have a Bloody Mary and issue directives: “ok, you kids, I need you to clear these concrete blocks from the back yard now.”

Camp Msasani (the name of the peninsula where we live) kicks off next week with a dozen registrants, a teacher, a guy who plays African drums with kids, and a fresh stock of arts and crafts supplies. I am banking on the court system here being arduous and arcane, so any liability suits that may ensue will take years to catch up with us.

Let the Comeuppance Continue

Our car was finally received, less the radio, which mysteriously was listed as “not included” in the papers from the Dar Port Authority. My take is that some higher power is suggesting that rather than drumming and swaying to African music on the road, we should pay attention to swaying cars, buses, roaming goats, bicycles, carts, chickens, etc.

While the car is here, it doesn’t have plates, registration papers, or insurance yet. Getting these essential things entails another dive into the muck of local bureaucracy.

So, knowing full well that it is stupid, I have been driving around when I need to. I don’t know what Tanzanian prison is like. I’ve seen plenty of movies with South American prisons and Turkish prisons holding drug mules, and can only guess that those might look like a Four Seasons in comparison. But my thinking is, most of the police here are on foot. What are they gonna do? Run after me? Or call on their radio (which I’m pretty sure they don’t even have) for someone with a car to go after a car with plates… oh wait, there are no plates. I’m sure there are significant disadvantages to having a police force so under funded that they don’t have vehicles, but in this one instance…

Bodie is still surfacing from his bout with stomach flu almost a week ago, and has eaten very little. Getting him plump had been a fervent mission of our housekeeper and our nanny, Judith and Grace. Grace had a prepared a weekly menu of high-carb mush – potatoes with carrots and leeks, or some variation. Each afternoon, they’d each wield a spoon as he’d go racing around. It was almost like a lacrosse game, with each holding a spoon, and Bodie’s mouth the net. And it worked. He got rounder and fuller.

But all the nice rolling little neck jowls and rounded belly that Judith and Grace were so proud to put on him disappeared over the last week. He has become, like his cousins, (and his parents until relatively recently) skinny. He has refused virtually all food for a week. And if anything were ever going to turn me into my food-pushing Jewish mother, this was it. Here Bodie, try this special sandwich I made you, here is chocolate for breakfast, how about this yummy cookie with jelly…

Yesterday, I threw out the idea of pancakes and, for the first time in a week, he showed real excitement. I drove our cute little unlicensed, unregistered, uninsured car up to Slipway with Bodie singing ‘pancakes, pancakes” in back. As only my mother's voice deep in my head could say, he doesn't need to go to school, he's going to eat!"

So focused on pancakes and food actually going in Bodie, I forgot that that’s where Barclays bank is. And where a bank is, police are. As soon as we pulled up, a policeman, rifle slung over his shoulder, beige uniform, black boots and beret, came over. “Where are your plates?” he demanded. I told him they were coming later in the day and I just drove down the road to feed my son. I thought some element of that worked, because we walked away and he seemed satisfied.

After pancakes, and playing at a playground, and looking at boats, so a good hour and a half later, Bodie and I went back to the car. The policeman was still right where we’d left him, standing by the driver’s door. He said, “in this country, this is a serious matter.” I was thinking of saying I was an ambassador, but was unshaven and in shorts, so instead said I’d take the car straight home and not drive. He stared at me for a while, then gazed off in the distance, mulling his options.

Thoughts of how I wished I’d paid better attention to Swahili class to navigate Tanzanian prison danced through my mind. I wondered, who is going to take Bodie to school in the morning. I wondered if I’d be able to blog from prison. After what seemed like many minutes, he said, “I want a soda.”

“I’m sorry?” I said, thinking that I completely misheard him.

“Give me money”, he responded.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a crumpled 1,000 shilling note (about $1) and he shook it off like a pitcher shaking off a catcher. I handed him a 10,000 shillings note (about $10). He smiled, took it, cautioned again that I shouldn’t be driving, and walked away.

I knew I had been playing a dangerous game, but got out of it for a simple $10. I was no fool.

It was only later, with the retelling of the story to Hillary, and her, compassionate response, “he was a security guard, not police”, with the unsaid, “you idiot”, that I realized while I thought he was mulling his options, he was trying to assess whether I’d be dumb enough to think he had some real standing. He had correctly sized me up.

Anniversary Do’s and Don’t’s

Anniversary Do’s, clearly seen in Hallmark ads or commercials for diamonds, include: romantically gazing into each other’s eyes over a fancy white tablecloth dinner murmuring little loving quips in a loving way, maybe some hugging and effortless swinging of the wife around in a circle on a beach, maybe champagne being raised in a toast with recollections of this day X years ago in which you exchanged vows of devotion in front of family and friends….

Anniversary Don’ts include slim jims, a broken car window, and the ever-present, but necessary for full effect, kid heave-o-rama.

The evening started with great promise. A friend, K, generously offered to take Bodie for the night so Hillary and I could follow the prescription for Anniversary Do’s. She came to pick up Bodie, and as I shoveled him and a week’s worth of diapers into the back seat, where Marissa, her one-and-a-half year-old was strapped in, K asked if he needed a car seat. I figured he could hang on as they weren’t going far. Not wanting to be seen as the type of parent who thinks that his two-year old could simply hang on, I ran to retrieve the car seat, installed it, strapped Bodie in, kissed him good night. He was begging for some keys to play with, just like Marissa had, so K graciously offered him another set of keys to play with. I shut his door and K, shut the door on Marissa’s side.

Instantly, we heard beep beep It’s a familiar and usually reassuring beep beep. The car is locked and all is safe thanks to the magic of Japanese inventiveness that allows you to push a little button and lock all four doors and the rear hatch at once! Marissa had found the lock button on her keys, which weren’t really play keys, but the keys to the car. Both kids were strapped in, safe, like two astronauts ready for blast-off, because that’s the good kind of parents we are.

K was calm and suggested calling the security company as they have an auto service, so would easily be able to slim jim the door open. I called and tried to explain the situation. The emergency operator kept asking me the wrong questions and clearly didn’t understand what I was trying to explain. The tenor and pitch of my voice rising with aggravation might not have been the best way for me to communicate. I ended up demanding someone that spoke English better (which I’m sure was well received). Meanwhile, Hillary, not one for nuances of a phone conversation in a crisis, had pushed the panic button. Five minutes later, the security car, sirens blaring, pulled up.

Five minutes is a long time if you measure it in verses of Old MacDonald. K and I stood outside the back windows, singing at the top of our voices, verse after verse. Bodie and Marissa, strapped in, clapped and moo mooed here and neigh neighed there, enjoying the game.

When the security guards came though, Bodie wanted out. He had had enough of the game and started to cry and reach for Hillary. If you were to examine the evening like an archeologist with various phases, that was the end of the Calmozoic Era. I wanted to break the window and end this, but there was a conference of six security guards standing around the car, talking over each other. They checked the doors. Yup, locked. Lots of gesturing with prying motions, lock picking intimations, and more conversation.

Hillary, seeing Bodie crying, said sternly, “Alfred, break the window.”

I grabbed a large garden hoe, but waited another minute as the conference of security guards poked and prodded the Land Cruiser like a giant acorn squash, to see if there might be some soft points for easy access.

It wasn’t until Bodie was wailing full throttle, reaching for Hillary through the glass, yelling, “Mama!” that Hillary said with an appropriate degree of hysteria, “Break the f#*@ing window!”

Hillary grabbed the garden hoe and raised it shoulder high as if a curveball had been pitched. I had this vision of any trekking guide carefully explaining that when hiking, you never want to get in between a mother bear/elephant/lion/hippo etc. and her cub. I nevertheless stepped in between Hillary and the car and grabbed the hoe. Dangerous a maneuver as it was, I sure wasn’t going to be emasculated in front of six guards and K while my wife broke the window. I was going to smash it.

One of the members of the guard committee had a crowbar and was gently prying a back window. I told him to push and break the window, which he did. Glass pebbles rained down on the driveway. I hopped in through the open window and freed the kids.

Kids released, safely enfolded in mother’s crushing arms, we decided that Bodie going over to K’s house might not be the best thing for him or us right then, so we all went out to dinner at a TGIFridays imitation steakhouse. The restaurant clearly didn’t know they were supposed to have white tablecloths for us. There were crayons on the tables, a playground with legos for kids, and blaring American pop music. Thinking the trauma of the evening was over, Hillary had a gin and tonic at the playground, and we went home.

About the time that I should have been tossing Hillary around in a circle on a beach per protocol, Bodie offered his own version of an anniversary gift with a different type of tossing. At 1 am he heaved (and answered the question that had been in my mind for a few weeks of whether he was really eating the snack I packed for him everyday in preschool, which I was glad to see that he was). He is not a kid to just dabble in things though. He took a measured, metronomic approach. He retched all over his bed at 2 am, ralphed on his clothes and our bed at 3 am, hurled on the new sheets we’d put on at 4 am, and culminated with a good effort pillow and floor-covering heave at 5 am.

So perhaps not worthy of a De Beers ad, this Anniversary actually may be a better real world reflection of how we’ve managed to create cohesion out of two separate lives over the past few years. Anyone can weather a fancy dinner marred only by a soggy profiterole, but we managed to extract two trapped toddlers, wash three loads of laundry and nurse a feverish son, all with coherence and solidarity in approach and a fair divvying of duties. Somehow that makes this anniversary more telling.

A Life Well-Cobbled

I’m trying to learn lessons from our night guard, Sebastian, who I’ve referred to as the happiest man on the planet. He doesn’t seem to let work stress get him down. His job is to be on alert through the night. That is pretty much it. Yet he rides his bike to work each evening with a pillow strapped behind his seat. After he gets here, does a round of checking things out, he settles down, pillow wedged against the wall, into a pretty comfortable fetal-like position. He may be the only askari who is often barefoot. For a better night’s rest no doubt. (We do sleep soundly though as Dexter is on vigilant alert.)

Tonight, at 9 pm, Hillary was reading to Bodie before putting him to sleep, and I prepared and brought out tea for Sebastian. I walked quietly so I wouldn’t wake him. I knew it was absurd as I was doing it, but I still tiptoed. Meanwhile, Bodie is running up and down the hall, screaming, “I’m an airplane, I’m an airplane. Vroooooooooom.” Sebastian snored lightly.

Which raises the question of satisfaction in work. I’ve been motivated for a while to try to create social good, to help others who are improving lives. Here, two months in in Tanzania, where the social need far surpasses anything I’ve ever seen or imagined, I am struggling with where to put my time and energy. Here is my struggle: there is so much need that my experience in social enterprise work, or NGO or project management could be put to good use, and I might even see real, tangible results.

At the same time, if one more person mentions to me that “there is so much opportunity here, it is like the wild west” for business, I’ll wrap my pacifist little fingers around his neck. The implication is that if you're a notch up from comatose, you can just trip on a gillion dollar business opportunity.

I’ve been touting entrepreneurial values for a long time, and this may be the time to truly take a risk and try to start something. I want to contribute and make a difference, but this might also be a time try start a venture that can generate some real revenue (Bodie might top out, stretched on a rack like his dad, at 5’ 8”, so I’m guessing will have limited athletic scholarship options.) It is not a purely black and white decision – the trick is figuring out a business with a sound model that can also do good.

And now – in between things (the expression comes to mind, “when one door closes, another opens, but sometimes there is a long hallway in the middle”) or being in the hallway, I’m wrestling with work/life balance. Rather imbalance. It is all life at this point. And life doesn’t allow you to do work plans, and chart progress against milestones. I have no idea of whether I’m tracking against plan.

I’ve long respected people that assemble certain elements into a cohesive life. This is more of a West Coast approach and decidedly anti-DC career pathing. I’m thinking of those old guys with hairy ears and a straw Fedora, with a business card that says “magician, chess player, trout fisherman”.

So in the immediate future I have a few projects:

• An assessment project with KickStart, an innovative NGO that focuses on bringing micro-irrigation to small farmers. This has shown to quadruple crop yield and, thereby, household income. 80% of Tanzania is comprised of small farmers, so the need is significant.
• Working with SolarAid to help them get set up and get going in Tanzania, bringing micro-solar products to off-the-grid rural households.
• Building a boat. My friend, Mason (pictured with his son, Arlo, who should probably be wearing safety glasses, ready to do some cutting), shipped over a workshop full of tools, and we’re going to build a 15’ sloop. We purchased plans from Devlin Boatbuilding for a boat called a Nancy’s China, and had them shipped over. Now we just need to source some marine grade plywood (well, and then build it.) The thinking goes, if I get to set my own agenda, why not set an agenda that I would have set at age 14, but this time under the auspices of building a “family” sailboat.

Throw in Bodie-time at the beach, and Dexter walks, and squeeze in evenings for Hillary, and an interesting life in Tanzania feels like it is being cobbled together.

Comeuppance in Africa

Comeuppance… I looked it up and it is defined as “just deserts, just punishment, due, retribution, requital, what's coming to one.” It might as well be redefined as “smart suburban American, thinking he can outsmart deeply rooted African culture, learns that he is but a piece of flotsam or jetsam floating in a sea of “I’ll call you back”” or even, “wife earns Academy Award in category of feigned empathy as husband battles the bureaucracy of Tanzania…”

I did think I was savvy and street smart -- whelped on the rocky, rugged north shore of Boston, schooled in the hard suburban streets of Bethesda, jostled on the pre-Giuliani rough and tumble roads of New York City, I thought I was a match for the smiling, tell you what would-make-you-happy-and-get-you-out-of-the-office-quickly rutted roads of Dar es Salaam.

Our cute Nissan X-trail imported from Japan, which trusted agent Paul promised as ours in a mere three to four days, is still at the port. Idiot that I am, I never asked “three or four days from when?”. From a certain rare Tanzanian holiday celebration? From when Paul’s daughter in South Africa finely marries her boyfriend? From Bodie’s valedictory speech at Harvard?

Three weeks later, it is still only three to four days away. I think I saw someone with a blue “Dar Port Authority” baseball cap, windows down, music blaring, peeling out in our X-Trail yesterday. The gods, clearly sitting on Mt. Kilimanjaro, unhindered by any sort of longbearded, jarring wrath from, say, an Old Testament deity looking out for one of his own, are having a good ol’ time.

As recognition of my comeuppance, I am starting on my 12-Step plan:
• I admit that I am powerless…
• I recognize that a greater power, the Dar es Salaam Port Authority, has strength…
• I should have listened to experienced, wiser locals, who laughed at my aspirations of three days…

Being carless, I have gained great learning and humility in walking, walking, walking to buy diapers and wipes. I’ve met people on the road. “Hello, diaper and wipe man,” they call out. My arms, wrapped around plasticized Pampers, wave a feeble hello.

Deep deep inside, I know I’ll find this to be a beautiful lesson some day.

Friday Night Adventures

I doubt it is healthy to have this perspective, but as I was racing down a road near our house at 1:30 am Friday night, a green frog sippy cup clenched in one hand, a tall prostitute in 3” stiletto heels chasing close behind, yelling, “Friend, Friend!”, I thought, this one may be worth writing about.

The evening began normally enough – Bodie and I picked up Hillary at work. Bodie, as he does most nights, raced around Hillary’s office doling out paperclips one at a time to her colleagues. When we got home, he seemed hot, but it could have been from the frenetic paperclip relay race just completed. We realized he was running a bit of a fever, so dosed him with some liquid ibuprofen.

While not listed on the bottle, I would testify in court that the medicine contained significant amounts of methamphetamines. Bodie revved to a hyped-up, limbs flailing, Barney in minutes – “come run with me sing this song I am a dog I am a dog woof woof woof the wheels on the bus go round and round…”

At around 1 am, he started coughing and gagging. As first time parents, any deeply held common sense approach vanishes in a flash. We pulled the lever for the ambulance, a service provided by our security company, convinced something serious was wrong.

A security car, siren wailing, was here within minutes. We raced into it and sped away to intercept the ambulance. When Bodie was pointing at the security guards and counting “one, two, three policeman. Look papa, three!” Hillary and I looked at each other wondering if we should just go home. But we were in it too deeply at this point.

We intercepted the ambulance a few blocks away and transferred over. Bodie was marveling at being in the ambulance and talking with the ambulance driver. Hillary and I looked at each other again – maybe he’ll have another real fit so we don’t look like we’re starting to feel right now…

En route to the clinic, they dropped me off a few blocks from our house so I could run home and get our car. For some reason, Ghuba Road, the street leading to our road, is a red light zone at night. Every night, especially on weekends, a dozen hookers stand by the side of the road wearing skimpy clothing and sashaying whenever a car goes down the street.

I hopped out of the ambulance – lights flashing, siren going, Bodie in awe – and jogged up Ghuba Road. Not many mzungus are out jogging with a sippy cup at 1:30 am, so I got a few looks as I passed by the posing women. One, tall in a red mini dress and 3” heels, seemed to think I was testing them to see who could keep up with me. She shouted “rafiki, rafiki…” and started racing after me at a pretty good clip. I picked up the pace and lost her.

I opened the gate to our yard and ran up. Sebastian our night guard, who had been awakened earlier by the arrival of the siren-blaring security car, was still up and ran over to see if everything was ok. Dexter was barking furiously inside the house.

A quick aside – Dexter doesn’t like Sebastian. He barks at him ferociously every night. Thursday, the previous night, as Dexter, growling with ridge raised, positioned himself between Sebastian and us to protect us, Sebastian kept approaching. Dexter lunged and bit him in the leg. Not badly, but drawing a little blood.

So Dexter is barking inside the house, when he somehow noses open the screen and starts racing around barking. Sebastian screams in fear and cowers behind me, which I knew Dexter would view as more of a threat. I imagine Dexter looking at Sebastian as a menacing shish kabob. I race down the driveway to intercept our lunging Ridgeback, thinking that since I am going to the clinic, I might get a two-fer.

Dog safely ensconced in the house, Sebastian safely back at his guard post, I head off to the clinic.

The IST Clinic is open around the clock, but is only marginally staffed after hours. The nurse told us that they had two serious cases in the exam rooms – evidenced by low moaning and wailing – so asked us to stay in the waiting area. By this point, Bodie is warm, but if he knew how to tap dance, he probably would have. Our instinct was to exaggerate the story somewhat so as not to look like exactly what we were – over-reacting, nervous, new Africa parents.

They send us home with some more ibuprofen. They also gave us a valium-suppository, ostensibly in case he had another set of convulsions, but I think they might have intended it for us.

A Small Victory

The world of work offers innumerable moments of small victories – a milestone achieved, a pat on the back, a deal brought in... Not having these little victories, albeit meaningless, can be difficult. But today there was a small victory.

Like many people, rather than pay twice U.S. costs for a new car, or buy a used vehicle that has been flogged over local rutted roads for years, we chose to import a car from Japan. We’ve seen that 10-year old cars regularly sell here for their original pre-drive-off-the-lot price. Since there are so few new cars here, used cars depreciate little if at all.

We were advised to use Yoshi, who has sold cars to at least five other ex-pats we know here who raved about his service. In an Internet posting-board-deprived world, good service makes the ex-pat word-of-mouth rounds quickly.

Purchasing the car is easy (pictures emailed, money wired to Japan); actually getting the car is the challenge. It was placed on a carrier from Japan a month ago. Again, easy. But getting through the maze of import customs, regulations, tariffs, wharfage fees, etc. requires a clearing agent, specifically, someone who knows how to navigate the rules and which outstretched palms need the most attention.

The agent we started with – me, typically compulsive one month before the car arrived -- took it upon himself to educate the new guy to how things are done here. In short: in business transactions, you are told what you want to hear to make you happy. So a, “I’ll pick that up by the end of the day” gets you off the phone feeling like you’re communicating well, have established good rapport, are moving forward together with a shared understanding, and both of you understand the timeliness involved. That good feeling of being able to manage your affairs in Africa can carry you through the day. Until the end of the day passes. And the end of the next day. And so on. There is not necessarily any correlation between words and action.

It is a business equivalent of the common question, “does this make me look fat?” Words and promises are like little droplets of happiness doled out that dissipate by the end of the day.

After a week of Agent X (I’ll call him) failing to pick up the documents as promised (tomorrow… tomorrow) as numerous unexpected things kept coming up, I was told there was nothing to do until a letter of exemption was signed by the High Secretary of the Department of Agriculture. An equivalent scenario is getting Condoleezza Rice to sign papers so you can bring your car in. Hillary managed to arrange a meeting with the High Secretary of Agriculture to “introduce herself” on behalf of TechnoServe, and oh, incidentally, here are some papers that she’d appreciate having signed. Agent X was working for a colleague of Hillary’s in parallel, so both sets of paperwork should have been ready to be signed. Except that our paperwork wasn’t prepared ahead of time.

With the meeting in a few hours, I asked Agent X to meet me at the TechnoServe offices to try to have the paperwork ready. He indicated that the forms (which are standard blank forms photocopied over and over again since 1964), had to be picked up from an office at the Bureau of Taxation and that would take some time. When we did finally meet, I asked why my paperwork hadn’t been prepared and Hillary’s colleague’s had. He said that it was my responsibility and they did it for her for “good will.” I certainly felt good that there was some good will going on somewhere, because he then sat and just watched as I tried to fill in the paperwork in time for the meeting.

I told Hillary that night that I wanted to switch agents. She rolled her eyes, supportively. Later, she told me that she had told her office administrator that I was in for a little lesson on living in Africa.

I called four agents in the Tanzanian Yellow Pages. I was told by two that I would have a quote by the end of the day (how that made me happy), and by another that the manager would get right back to me (more happy). As the sun set and we finished dinner, I sat at the table, hitting the refresh button on my computer over and over, disbelieving.

A friend offered a recommendation for her agent, who I called. He spoke in a language I could understand: PowerPoint -- using bullet points! We needed:
• 3 bills of lading, signed on the reverse
• Supplier’s invoice
• Export Inspection from Trading Country
• Letter of Exemption
• Authorization letter for clearing agent

Costs were likewise detailed! Yea - costs known in advance!!

We arranged to meet the next day. He showed up! (Normally you wouldn’t need a sentence indicating that– but he did it; he showed up!) Our little X-Trail (this is a picture from Japan) is in capable hands with Agent Paul and I have no doubt he’ll navigate the labyrinth of clearance customs within a few days.

More importantly, I got to gloat that I didn’t receive my comeuppance a la Africa (at least, not yet).