Immigration and Observations

I met with Anne and Anande for lunch on Thursday and I will be heading out to Jifundishe on Monday for five days. YAY! After that, I may return for another short stint but we’re playing it by ear. Upside? I got to deal with Immigration again! Did I say ‘upside’? Hmm, and I haven’t even had a beer yet today.

I headed to the Arusha office on Friday (the place of the infamous chest-stare-visa-renewal) and was approved for my volunteer position, but have to return on Monday morning because something wasn’t working that they required to complete the process. I couldn’t understand the gentleman telling me this, it was either the computer or printer or photocopier, or maybe they just couldn’t find a pen. I’m not really sure. I think he said that they needed to make a copy of my passport and the photocopier wasn’t working. I wanted to point out that they already scanned my passport at one of the three immigration lines I had to go through at the airport so my scanned passport should already be in their system, but as I still need the nice man to put yet another Immigration stamp in said passport, I just smiled, asked what time they open on Monday morning, and tried to keep the eye twitching to a minimum.

My plan for the day was that after I visited the Immigration Office, I would stop at ‘The Immigration Canteen’ for lunch. The Canteen is a restaurant on the grounds of the Ministry of Home Affairs (which oversees Immigration) that we loved because it had an outdoor seating area and served fantastic (by Tanzania standards) and cheap pizza. It was the one part of repeated trips to that office that I looked forward to. Alas, alack, sigh, the outdoor seating area is no more. It is now a cheerless white room with almost no natural light. I didn’t even bother to stop and see if they still served pizza.

It’s like Arusha wants me to hate it.

On my various forays around town, I’ve noted that Arusha has at least two different driving schools. I know that, in theory, Tanzanians have to pass a driving test, but is it really so difficult you’d pay to attend a driving school? I imagine the training is something along the lines of “this is the gas and this is the break. Try not to use the break or you will wear it out.”

“Drive on the left side of the road, unless you have a reason to drive on the right. Pretty much anything can be used as a reason.”

“Use your horn all the time, whether or not you need to. Emergency? Hold your horn down and drive in the middle of the road.”

“Your blinker can be used to indicate a turn, if you want. It’s not necessary. It can also be used to thank the driver of an oncoming vehicle BECAUSE THAT IS IN NO WAY CONFUSING!”

“Only stop at a stoplight if you can see there is traffic in the lane that has the right-of-way.”

“It is acceptable to start turning 20 meters before the corner if you see an opening in the traffic.”

One of the highest causes of death in Tanzania is traffic fatalities. I can’t think why.