Getting a TZ driver's license: an all day event!

When I was here in '06-'07, I got a TZ driver's license, but had gone without one all last year. Finally, I decided a second year was pushing it, so Jenny, my Imara friend, and I decided to go get ours this week. When Bruce and Carly, 2 other Imara workers, heard about it, they wanted to come, too. This is such an ordeal that you really do want company for it! We decided on Thursday, in the event that if we had to come back for a second day, we could come back on Friday. (I had heard of people who took a second day, so I was preparing for the worst!)

After a fairly unnerving morning where my car refused to start(!, and the guys from the garage had to come over and clean off terminals, etc.,I got an emergency phone call from Jenny saying she had gotten application forms the day before to speed up the process (Right!), and she wanted to let me know I needed a TIN - Tanzania identification number. I didn't know what that was and thought it might be on my registration card, which was in our accountant's office, as they were using it to go get my road license, which had expired a week ago. I rushed down there, and it wasn't on there. Happy, our fill-in accountant said this was a "must." I gave up on it, and went to town, anyway. I met everyone at the Imara office and sat down to fill out the application. Jenny showed me where her number was, so I called back to my house and got Sarah to look for a similar piece of paper, number, etc. She found a number, and gave it to me, but we weren't convinced it was the right number.

Carly is a preschool teacher who's only been here about a month, and Bruce had wanted me to unofficially interview her, talk about school expectations as she works with Imara, fill her in on background here, etc., so we planned to do that while we stood in lines. She had to go meet her mechanic to get her TIN, and he called to say he had heard that TRA, the place we had to go to for our licenses, was closing at 11! This is not unusual, so we believed it! Jenny and Bruce were just going in to a meeting, so Carly and I decided to go ahead and at least be standing in line. We got there a little after 10, and Eliasante, the mechanic, said no, TRA wasn't closing at 11, just the guy Carly needed to see for her TIN. So, he arranged all of that, and he took us in to shepherd us through the beginning of the process.

First, we went upstairs for photos and fingerprints. When the photo man looked at the TIN I had written down, and checked it in his sysytem, he said it didn't exist. I had been a little afraid of that, so I went back downstairs and asked Eliasante if I should get a new number. He said, no, I should wait and check through my paperwork at home for it. Carly and I went ahead and stood in the first line, or what we hoped was the right first line, as any signs there were were, of course, mostly in Swahili, so we were playing it by ear, looking at other people's paperwork, etc. We probably stood in line for close to an hour before Jenny and Bruce got there, and they found another office we had to go to first for an official stamp. Since I didn't think it would matter to me, I kept holding our place in line while they took turns going and standing in THAT line! Finally, Jenny said, "Why don't you just go in and ask him if you need a TIN? Bruce didn't have one, and he said that was fine." So, I went, and he said my passport number would do just as well. THAT I had! So, he stamped my paperwork, and I got back in line. About another hour later, Carly and I got in to the office where you turn in your paperwork, and they took my photo and fingerprints there, so that worked out fine. Jenny and Bruce were a few people back in line, so we went outside to wait for them. After standing for so long, our legs and backs were killing us, so we slid down to the floor and leaned against the wall. Very shortly, a security guard came and asked us to come inside and sit on chairs: we decided we must have been loitering! Probably, having 2 white women sitting on the floor is very culturally unapproved of!

The NEXT thing we were supposed to do was go down the street to the polce dept. for another signature or something, but we took a lunch break, figuring they would, too. We went to the Maasai Italian restaurant just around the corner and had pizza and calzones and a Diet Coke (me) and coffees (everyone else) to fortify ourselves for the afternoon!

Then, off to the police station, and seeing 2 police officials who pulled up our registrations and approved of them, or entered them into their records; I'm truthfully not sure what they did, but we answered their questions, and were allowed to go back to the place we'd started this all. Then we had to go the bank, right next door, and pay for our licenses! It was about 3:30 by then, and that was all we could do that day. Once the TRA gets notice that our cash deposit was in their account, we can go back, stand in another line, and be given our licenses! I'll be gone next week, but Jenny said she'd pick mine up, if they let her!

When we finally left, I said to Carly, "I feel like we should have our picture taken here as we spent so much time here!"

We all celebrated by going to a cafe for cheesecake, then I went home and fixed dinner! My entire day, and what I accomplished was to apply for a driver's license, do a tiny bit of grocery shopping, and fix dinner - and I was completely exhausted! But, I can almost stop praying for invisibility from all the police doing license and registration checks everywhere I go!

Wedding, Tanzania-Style!

Our Joshua accountant, Magreth, got married this past Saturday. Invitations were word-of-mouth, and all of the mentors wanted to go (we love weddings and dressing up!). However, up until Saturday morning, we had no idea what time the wedding was! One of her friends sent a text that it was at 12, but her boss on the base sent an email that it was 1! We went with 1, knowing how un-promptly these things happen here. I took the other 4 mentors, and we got to the church (a large "city" church) at 1:15, as the first car there! That told us it wouldn't be any time soon, so we went to a nearby cafe and had cake while we waited! We weren't invited to the sit-down dinner reception, so we thought we'd have our cake BEFORE the wedding! We dilly-dallied till about 2, then tried again. We drove up just as the bride's car pulled up, so we felt good about that. We went into the church, where the singers were warming up, and about 10 people were there! The pastor, a few minutes later, announced that even though the groom wasn't here, yet, we'd go ahead and start! He must have been there, though, because he and the best man came out a few minutes later. Then there was the usual processional, Magreth looked beautiful, and the wedding started. There was a time of praise of worship, then a full sermon by the pastor, then a second sermon by the pastor's wife, then the children's choir sang, then everyone in both families joined the couple on stage and prayed for them, then an offering was taken up! People had drifted in as the service went on and there ended being a nice crowd of 100 or so people there. Altogether, about 2 and 1/2 hours later, it was over! Then, the couple went out front for pictures with families AND the 5 wazungu (white people) - us mentors! We left after that, but managed to be in the bridal convoy for a little while, where we honked our horn and waved!

The funniest anti-climax was that we had to run into the local market for a few groceries, and there we were, in our wedding finery! Not so surprising, really, as weddings are a big weekend entertainment here.

Quite an exciting week in Karanse!

Though it wasn't all the good kind of exciting!

The first part was: our student teachers' last teaching week before they go into their "real" schools in January. We were expecting big things from them, and told them so, as this was their 6th teaching week in over a year. Overall, we were very pleased. We saw computers being used in ICT (Information, Communication, and Technology), one of the students cooked pillau with his class (his first time ever, so he had one of the lady teachers help him!), we saw some good (and improving) devotions lessons, civics, geography, English, math, personality and sports with lots more assessments (things to grade, basically), better conclusions to lessons, rules posted of expected student behavior - all things we'd told them we were looking for. So that was all good.

However, on Wednesday, right after lunch, I looked out the window to see a small boy on the ground with teachers around him and lots of blood. When I saw someone arrive with a bike, I knew that was to take him to the clinic, so I volunteered my car and was quickly accepted. Issagya, the pre-one teacher, went with me so he could explain to the nurses at the clinic what had happened. There was so much blood that it was hard to tell at frst, but I suspected a broken nose because that's what appeared to be doing the bleeding. At the clinic, there was a line of people waiting, but bleeding boys must get priority because we walked right into an exam room. After lots of swabbing (and spitting up even more blood) it was determined that he might have broken blood vessels in the inside of his nose. However, about that time, Kellie (Kelvin, but that's what Issagya kept calling him) also started complaining of the back of his head hurting. He and another boy had been playing on the hill, and the other boy's knee had smashed into Kellie's nose, and Kellie fell back on the ground. The sister/nurse gave him a pain pill, put ice on his head, then he fell asleep. I was thinking concussion at this point, and we kept waking him up, asking him who we were, etc. Godfrey arrived, and after a consultation, he took Kellie home. Amazingly, he was back at school the next day!

That was certainly more important than the last of the exciting things to happen, which involves mice in our guest house at Angaza! Wednesday night, I was standing in the kitchen, getting veggies ready for the soup we would cook in our crock pot that night (whle we had power), and a mouse ran into the kitchen! I don't know who was more surprised, but Joelle said I was louder! He ran and hid, and we left the kitchen as soon as we could! When I got in bed, I noticed this odor in my room, so I sprayed something and just went to sleep, knowing I couldn't deal with it at night. My bed is next to a wardrobe/cupboard, and I had a feeling something dead was in there. The next morning I looked , and nothing. So, I pulled my bed away from the wall, and saw a tail! I went and got Joelle and asked her to look and see if it was, indeed, a dead mouse. Since I knew I had slept over it all night, I just couldn't bear to see it! It was, and she disposed of it!

The story doesn't end there! I said, "mice," in our house! Thursday late afternoon, Joelle decided to take a shower, and I heard an, "Eeeek," sound from the shower room! I was so hoping it was just cold water, as the water heater hadn't been on very long, but, no. She came and said, "The mouse ran across my foot! And now he's just sitting there looking at me!" I told her I'd go get James, the young man who does everything at Angaza, but she said, no, she'd take care of it. I gave her a blanket, she wrapped it up and took it outside. We both saw it run off, terrified, I'm sure! I so missed Moses at that point!!!!

Daddy's t-shirts in Tanzania!

When was home, Mama had quite an assortment of Daddy's old track and meet t-shirts. They wouldn't fit n my suitcase, so she sent them with a recent Perimeter team. I gave them to my student teachers, who were beyond thrilled. I told them if they wore them this week, I'd take ther picture, so here are 2 of them, for Mama to see!