An event at the Post Office

Very often I looked at my time in Tanzania as an adventure -even small events. It is easy to fall into the trap that all these Africans are out to rip off all all the white people and that somehow all Africans are hopeless.
In general people have to feed their families - including large extended families and so they go about their business doing their best to that end. Sometime that thing corruption rears its head and sometimes things get interpreted as corruption.
The thing I personally enjoyed was the contact with people and the negotiation. Things usually worked out - sometimes you have to be serious, others just human.

From my diary:-
I walked to the end of the road with Missy and then down to the Post Office where there was mail by the mile (a lot of it) and 3 parcels to be collected (they leave you a chit in the box). Two parcels were to be collected from Mr Boa (the mail handler) and the other was from the customs man. I really needed ID but by now Mr Boa knew me, so it was ok. For the parcels from him the nominal cost was 200/- each and I had to go to window 10 to collect the other.

Well for this guy, my driver's license was not enough, although it had my photo and 4 official stamps across it, nor was the fact Mr Boa knew me - I recited my passport number to him and that was ok.
He brought out this big package and said the customs duty was 3000/-. That was a lot for the time and I did not have that much with me, but I didn't tell him. I said that everything in there would not be worth that much and suggested he just keep the lot.
He decided to open it up to see what was inside. It was from our friends K&T and he went trough it all unwrapping each item but was neat about it. I said that it was all personal stuff for my wife and myself.
The guy kept punching in some perceived value of the items on to a calculator and applied a percent value. It kept coming down each time. In the end I told him I had only 600/- with me, so I offered it to him plus a pen that was in the parcel. He agreed and I was on my way.
Back at home we enjoyed the mail and the little things sent to us.

It must be noted that when people sent us parcels the value has to put on it. Now Tanzanian customs only see the value and think it is in US dollars. TRhey find it difficult to believe that a NZ dollar has only half the value.

Oh I had added - Coming down the Sanawari road I passed a bike that had been rigged to ring its bell all the time! I hoped it would not become a trend. Thankfully it didn't!