Holy Bureaucracy Batman! (Part 3: The Bittersweet End)

Like all epic stories, this one is a trilogy...With my stamped carbon copy bank deposit receipt in hand, I headed directly back to the accounting department at COSTECH. The accounting guy accepted by deposit receipt, pulled out his ledger and gave me a COSTECH receipt. I take that up to the clearance guy, he says ok, come back tomorrow and pick your research clearance. Victoriously, I leave COSTECH and head to Ardhi University where I’ve been trying to workout an alternative research collaboration since my original plans fell through to check on my immigration letter from them. Although I’d been making research plans with them for close to two months, they decide that they need for me to apply to be a student at the university, which amongst various forms and documents requires copies of my diplomas, before they can write me an immigration letter. Since my diplomas are in boxes in a storage space in California and therefore impossible to get to, I try to appease their bureaucracy, with copies of my transcripts from my B.S. and M.S. from my application file at UCSB. For three days, I went back and forth with variations on the fax number to Ardhi University with the administrative assistant at UCSB over email because the fax won’t go through and the 11 hour times change means we can have only one email exchange in a day (Brandt had exactly the same problem when he tried to have his transcripts faxed to IHRDC. Apparently the fax machines in the offices here are purely decorations). Finally she scanned and emailed them and I forwarded them on to the professor at Ardhi gently reminding him how urgently I needed that letter. When I arrive to pick up my letter, it’s this weird and very vague statement about my conditional acceptance to Ardhi University, pending the receipt of copies of my diplomas. Trying to hide my frustration, I explain that it is impossible for me to get copies of my diplomas and that my transcripts clearly state that I have received my degrees and say that the letter wasn’t really what I was expecting as it said nothing about the research project I had agreed to help with. He said well just try this one and if it doesn’t work, come back and I’ll write you another one. Great. So I take my letter, at least it had all sorts of official stamps on it which really seems to be the most important thing.
Meanwhile, I go back to COSTECH the next morning. A woman who works in the clearance guy’s office tells me he’ll be in a meeting all day today. Here’s your research clearance. It looks like it’s all ready but for some reason he didn’t sign in. You should come back tomorrow. I get the guys cell phone number so I can call him in the morning to make sure he’s there and on the second try I get my research clearance. With my letters, clearance, 5 passport photos, transcripts, financial guarantee, and $US 120 exchanged from shillings at an exchange bureau rather than the bank, I embark on the two dala journey to Dennis’s office. There I fill out the application form, in triplicate with carbon paper. I love that use of carbon paper is still alive and well in Tanzania. I think it faded out of existence in the U.S. when I was in elementary school. Meanwhile, Dennis drafts a letter on behalf of his boss who’s currently in the U.K. stating something about my affiliation with the local Rotary Club. Chaos breaks out when they can’t find the boss’s official stamp. I also love the stamping of everything. The only way it could be better is if they busted out wax seals for closing envelopes. Dennis asks me for my passport photos- I hope the background is blue he says. Fortunately it was, I think I may have lost it if I had to go get two more sets of photos made (they come in 4s and of course the application requires 5) because the background was the wrong color. In the end we assemble a file that is a half an inch thick which Dennis hands off to his sidekick Robert to take to the immigration office. At this point, I have 5 days left on my current visa. Don’t worry. No problem they tell me.
Done with Dar, I say bye to Cathryn and hop on the dala to beautiful Bagamoyo. I get up here to find that IHRDC has done almost nothing about Brandt’s residency permit. Four days tick by and I hear nothing. A bit panicked, I call Dennis. He tells me to bring my passport down and they’ll get me a month extension. I ask if he can get one from Brandt as well since all anyone at IHRDC does is tell him not to worry about it. In the end my residency permit came through about 4 days before the extension expired. Brandt is still waiting for his. It was probably a bit unnecessary for me to bore everyone with a trilogy but it consumed my life for 2 weeks and the ridiculous details of this story really illustrate what it takes to get anything and everything done in this country. There is no such thing as a simple task here. It’s all a journey.