Holy Bureaucracy Batman! (Part 1: The Bribe)

Today is a proud day for me. I am officially a Class C Resident of the United Republic Tanzania. I’d sing the Tanzanian national anthem if it knew it. Attaining this revered status was one of the most ridiculous and convoluted experiences of my life. Since I bailed on the jerk professor I had intended to work with, I couldn’t get my residency through the University of Dar es Salaam as planned. My scholarship is through Rotary International and one of the local Rotarians is conveniently the president of Toyota Tanzania. He told one of his HR people, Dennis, to help me get my residency permit. I would never ever have managed it on my own. So Brandt left for Bagamoyo and for two weeks, I ran around Dar like a chicken with my head cut off, taking dalas all over the city (as many as 5 in day) to round up all the paperwork. On the top of the list was my research clearance from the Tanzanian Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH). I had sent my research clearance application last October, 3 months before I left for Tanzania and heard nothing. My emails inquiring about the status of my clearance have all gone unanswered so I decided to just show up at the office to figure out what the deal was. The guy whose job it is to process research clearances for all foreign scientists claims he hasn’t received my application (or any of my emails and assured me I hadn’t sent any emails because he always responds to every email always). He sends me down to accounting to see if there is a record of my application fee. The accounting guy takes me to a woman who pulls out a ledger book and casually flips through the pages looking for my name. No computer. No electronic records. No way of knowing whether my application was received or not. I go back upstairs and ask if I bring all the application materials (including another $50 travelers check for application which is probably the reason the original application has magically disappeared), how long to get my clearance approved? It will take 3 months. I ask if there’s anyway to get it any sooner and he just smirks. I go home and forward the guy the emails that we had previously exchanged to jog his memory. I get no response. I go back to Dennis. He says he knows this guy. He paid him a $300 bribe less than a year ago to get research clearances for a group of students that came over to work in one of the regfugee camps. So Dennis gets on the phone with the guy and sets up a meeting for the next day. We have a little chat which is mostly this guy making up excuses for not doing his job. Then they send me out of the room to go (re)pay my $50 application fee. When I come back, Dennis is ready to go. All I have to do is go deposit $300 into the COSTECH bank account and bring back the receipt and my clearance will be ready to go. It was like magic!