Posted on by crystal · 15 Comments

Sometimes I hate, hate, HATE this effing place!!!

I want to go home.

In the real world, you own your money. It doesn’t matter whether you earned, faked it, or stole it – if it’s in your wallet, then it’s yours. But this is TZ, and here, if it has their president and it’s in their borders, then it’s theirs.

Here’s the deal. I like to send money home. And I use western union TZ. For some reason, each time I wire cash, I have to present my passport, which is fine, they do that everywhere. But in TZ, i’m also required to present photocopies of four separate pages of my passport – The number page, the visa page, the photograph page, and the name change page.

I had my baptismal name added to the passport a few years back, to synchronise my documents, and our very Kenyan immigration, rather than issuing a new passport, simply crossed out the old name, penned in the new name, and put an official stamp on it. Tanzanians don’t believe in this, so I also need to explain it, every single time. And if I find a particularly grouchy teller, I get yelled for that as well.

So, to send money out of TZ, I need cash, passport, photocopies of said passport, and oh, I have to give a written reason why I am sending their money out of their country.

Today I needed to send money to Asia, so I carried the standard documents. But noooo. Since I am a Kenyan citizen, I am only allowed to send their money to Kenya. If I need to send money to Asia, I have to have Asian documents. WTF?! It’s my effing money, what do you care where I send it?

It is calmly expalined that if I can just ask the recipient to fax me their documents from Asia, then I can proceed. Well, guess what, the recipient isn’t Asian. Oh, I’m sorry, the western union ladies say, but you can’t send the money.

Now, before you get all indignant, it’s not just because I’m Kenyan. Apparently, TZ citizens are only allowed to send money within Tanzania. No external wire transfers. I go to western union a lot, and I once had to help a guy send money to his girl in cameroon, because they wouldn’t let him, so I sent it using my name. And yes, I had to produce the recipient’s documents.

It gets worse. If I have an account with, say, Barcalys Tanzania, and I need to move funds to my account in Barclays Kenya, well, I can’t!! I can only transfer my funds if I am moving back home, and I need documents to prove it. My own bloody account!!

I am so mad right now.

Even bank transactions are a problem, since payments to business partners abroad have to be documented and justified. A friend wanted to buy a car, so he deposited funds in his brother’s account for the transaction. And when the brother went to withdraw the money – from his own account, he had to produce a whole list of documents to explain why he needed to withdraw such a large amount.

I got a Christmas bonus once, and decided to draw all the money and send it home. The bank manager had to be called before they would let me do it. I understand that they want their economy to remain centralised and all that, but it’s my blasted money!!!

Sigh.

In less frustrating news, princess and I made a new word. Tabcole. I am too jazzed to correct her. Well, I did try, several times, but she wouldn’t get it, and it’s just so cute!! Almost as cute as oof. Or Michael Axjon aka jonsekt/jansokt/jansox [it gets worse each time we correct it!!] And no, I didn’t just make that up. She truly is the wind beneath my wings.

Happy valentines!

PS: I keep seeing this notice above my post:

We will be making some code changes in about 26 hours which will log you out of your WordPress.com account. They should only take a few seconds and you should be able to log in afterwards without any problems.

SHOULD???!!!

Ooh, ooh, almost forgot. I went to a phone shop today, authorised dealer no less, to get new batteries. The lady at the shop told me it’s 10K for regulars and 25 for originals. I asked what the difference was, and she said something about grade, so I asked for two regulars. She referred me to some grey-haired Indian guy whose hands were vibrating.

The Indian guy asked me to show him the phones, then he snatched the cash and gave me two batteries, asking me to put them in my bag and leave. No receipt. The shop was packed, and the guy was clearly trying to sneak a few bob from his boss.

I felt uneasy, but I left anyway. It kept nagging me, why life in an honest nyerere-ism is so cut-throat that even the kalasingas steal from their bosses. Then I felt guilty for abbetting, and noticed that the packs said 3220, which my phone clearly is not. I thought, ironically, that it would serve me right if they were the wrong ones.

Guess what. They are. Shiny and new, with ‘original’ branded all over them in shiny sticky things. But they’re way too small, they can barely fit in the phones. Sigh. And I can’t go back coz I have no receipt, so I’ve just wasted a K. Oh well. Siku za mwizi ni…well, in my case, it was barely 4 hours…

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Posted on by crystal · 7 Comments

The spirit of anti-valentine

I’ve just grabbed a fanta from the office cooler and realised it’s already open. Somebody uncapped the bottle-top then slammed it back on. The innocent in me says a client made a wrong order, and that the guy in charge of sodas didn’t want to waste the drink. The cynic in me is hoping it isn’t spiked, wondering why it tastes fishy, and hoping this weird dizzy feeling is all in my head…

I was listening to the Friday sermon from the mosque across the street, and I couldn’t help giggling. First, the crowd were blasted for salamu za kimtandao. The speaker was annoyed that his people greet each other with vipi, mambo, and even the utterly blasphemous [you could hear it in his voice as he said it]  Haaiii!! There is only one prescribed greeting that is acceptable, according to him…and I won’t try to pronounce it.

This guy is hard. I mean he convinced his audience to raise their sadaka from 30K to 150K, just by heckling their meanness. Their collection plate is usually open, so he looked at it and made such scathing comments about the VXs parked outside and the Gucci shoes at the door that people dug deeper.

Then he said a mosque at this address can’t possibly raise less than 60K, and went on handaing till they gave 150. When this dude talks people listen. Next he attacked the whole idea of Vals. After all, he said, if you have to wait the whole year for this one day to show your love, you must be a moron for not loving her the rest of the year.

Now I’m a born romantic, so I love vals, even though I’ve never had a ‘real’ one. The closest I got was last year when the office janitor was asked to throw away some week-old red roses, and instead gave one to every girl in the office, complete with soda bottles filled with sugar syrup to put the flowers in.

I’m not the type that asks for candle dinners and giant bouquets [i won’t refuse milk chocolate though] or anything like that. I rarely wear red on the day, though lately I like the colour, so I might. It’s just that I’m wondering why people put so much energy into blasting vals.

Okay, so it’s commercial, and puts pressure on guys to be ‘romantic’, and most people think it’s fake. But think about it. On easter, people take spring breaks. On christmas, people buy trees. On birthdays, we throw parties and eat cake. None of those rituals have anything to do with anything, so what’s one more? If the day you were born is an excuse to dress up and get drunk, then what’s so wrong with having one day in a year that’s an excuse to show love?

People are alive everyday, and people love their friends everyday. They don’t value them any more or less on their birthdays, but they do go out and spend money buying rounds or presents. So why is vals so different? You love your dear all year long, why is it so bad to take one day to show it in a special way?

Just asking.

Don’t be humbug, that is so last year. Give your love a rose. It doesn’t mean much to you, but it just might make their day.

Besides, according to Kirima, there’s a sale on edible underwear in the classifieds…you just might get lucky 😉

PS: the unofficial rose code states that:

  • One rose means I only have eyes for you [and works better for chicks like me who don’t dig flowers except with a trowel and spade]
  • Many roses mean niliona offer
  • Red means let’s get naughty [or alternately, i’ll kill the next guy that looks at you]
  • Orange [and peach, depending on the intensity of the feeling] means I have a crush on you
  • Yellow means let’s just be friends
  • White means let’s not fight anymore
  • Pink means love, love, beautiful love
  • Black means go jump off a cliff
  • Purple means I’m such a geek I’m into cloning, but you’re kinda cute
  • Blue means one of us is totally high on cheap sawdust, but I sure hope I can score tonight
  • And carnations are totally out of the question!!

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    Posted on by crystal · 114 Comments

    10 thousand spoons when all you need is a knife!!

    That is how I feel today.

    Warning!…

    So. Don’t believe in coincidences, but I am pretty stubborn, I admit. I want things my way, on my terms. So when I write a poem and want to post it, then dammit I’m going to find a way to do it.

    So I called my resident art critic to look at it, and tell me if it was worthy. I haven’t poeted [yes, it’s a word. period] in a while, I needed to be sure it didn’t uncommunicate any inadvertent communications and stuff like that, you know, that kind of thing.

    Buuuuuuut, the phone was off. Which is strange. So I tried text, on two different lines. Both bounced. Very, very weird.

    So I thought I’d send it on email. Aaaaaand my gmail died. How odd. Okay, let’s do yahoo. But noooo, for some inexplicable reason, the poem up and deleted itself, just like that. Now I know I’m a cyber clutz, prone to typing backwards and things like that, but surely, posts don’t just delete themselves!!

    Apparently, somebody somewhere did not want this message getting out. Aye aye sir, I concede. Grumblingly, yes, but I concede. The poesy [old english] was just not meant to be. Which is all very well coz I keep trying to rewrite it, but the words won’t come. Sigh.

    In other news, why is it that you can get anyone in the world except the one person you want? I mean I’ve got candymen popping up left, right and middle, one hour phonecalls from my ‘just a friend’, droolers who crash cars when I try to cross, sheikhs with castles and diamonds and oil wells and…and all I have to do is flick my wrist and smile.

    But the one thing I want, a nice, plain, spectacled espresso …eh… mochaccino cafe latte sth sth…well apparently, I am now lactose intolerant. Sigh. I wish I could learn to like soy milk.

    Thank you for protecting me. 🙂

    End of rant.

    Normal services may resume…or they may not.

    Edit post

    I have this theory that cyberbuffs are all introverts. We spend all our time online chatting and twitting and trawling and stuff like that, playing digital native, but we never quite want to take things offline. It’s curious.

    I mean human beings need interaction on some level, even us hermits. Whether its family or soliloquy or talking to plants, we all need some form of commune. It’s why jailbirds write books and monks are great poets. So those of us who…don’t like people, do it online. It’s the perfect solution. We get to mix and mingle without having to mix and mingle.

    Not that everybody online is temperophobic [fear of 37 derees…figure it out?] Just that most people spend more time offline than on. They go out there and actually meet people, while people like me … well, there’s this cartoon I like, I can’t find it right now, but it’s got this guy hugging a monitor and saying ‘I love my computer, because all my friends live in it.’

    Thank heavens for world wide web 😉

    PS: isn’t it interesting how in Italian ch is k, ci is s, and cc is ch?

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