Sorry for the delay in posting. I
know that many of you are wondering what happened with Zanzibar’s immigration office
and getting forced back on the plane, so here we go!
Let's rewind back to Thursday… We started our morning at the clinic, and showed the nurses and doctors how their new protocol and medication administration record sheets will work. The response was great and we are very optimistic that these will improve their daily practice. After the meeting, Evelyn, the clinic's care coordinator, said we would go shopping so we could buy the clinic a new printer. The one they currently have is not very fast and they often do not have the correct ink readily available. So we set off...thinking it would be a 2 hour process. Boy were we wrong!!
We headed to the first printer shop and set our budget, which was very generous thanks to so many of our family and friends that donated back home. We found a model that we were interested in and quickly learned that the price was 2.5 million shillings ($1100 USD). Being that the printer was around our budget, we considered it but thought we better shop around a bit. To make a long story short, we went to four other printer shops, 2 stationary stores, a coffee shop, 2 souvenir shops, 2 travel agents (more on this later), bottomed out Evelyn's car causing us to enjoy an awful screeching noise the rest of the trip, before landing back at the second printer shop to make our purchase on a great printer. By this time, 4 hours had passed and we got in and out of the car probably 9 times. So the printer shop told us our final price and I pulled out our fund's debt card excited to finally pay...only to find out that they do not accept credit cards. I'M SORRY, WHAT?! We all had a look of panic on our face before we started thinking about how the heck we were going to get 2.4 million shillings in cash. All of our credit and debit cards have a daily limit of $180, so we thought the entire chaotic day was all for nothing. We put our heads together, did some serious math using our currency converter app, and decided that if we all took out our maximum daily limit, used the $200 USD I had in my wallet, and if I drew from one of my additional personal cards, we had enough money to buy the printer. We put all of the money into the printing company's bank account, took the receipt to the printer shop, got a receipt for the purchase, and arranged for them to delivery the printer to the clinic for later that afternoon. After all was said and done, we spent 6 hours printer shopping, but it was ALL worth it when we saw how excited the entire staff was at KCMC. Instead of a small and slow printer that wasn't usable much of the time, they now had an industrial printer that can print double sided, 25 pages per minute, can make copies, and can scan and fax. This will help the clinic so much. Furaha was busy doing hospital rounds when the new printer was delivered, so we thought we would give him an extra surprise. As we saw Furaha walking back toward the clinic, Kari and Nat quickly jumped into the huge printer box and we closed it up. When he returned, he and Oliver (who was in on the joke), opened the box and Furaha jumped back about 5 feet as Nat popped out first. I took video of this and we have all had a good laugh watching it back.
Setting up the new printer -
So going back to our two stops at the travel agent office earlier in the day...
When we planned our trip to Zanzibar, we planned on staying until Monday which would only leave one more night in Moshi before heading back to the states. Thinking it through more we all agreed that it would be nice to have two more days at the clinic instead of one, so we wanted to see if we could change our return flight. We headed to Fast Jet only to learn that we were not booked on a flight TO Zanzibar. Again we all panicked and I immediately pulled up the email that clearly showed our confirmed flight to Zanzibar. We were told again and again that the flight didn't exist, but “Hakuna Matata”, because we had a return flight. Awesome, thanks lady. A return flight does wonders for us if we don't have a flight there. So we all decided we wouldn't change our return flight because who knows when we would get to Zanzibar now. So, we hopped into the car (AGAIN!) and headed to Precision Air which is what we were flying to Zanzibar. When we got to that travel agent's office, things went south REALLY fast. To spare you all the ugly details, they said our flight no longer existed, so we would have to pay $260 EACH to re-book a new flight to Zanzibar. At this point, Nat started blowing smoke out of her ears, her face turned bright red, and her head started spinning in circles. Nat scolded the two ladies, told them they were cheating us, and that they better fix this and put us on a new flight for free because we had already bought a flight. One of the ladies called her manager to see if there was anything that could be done, but started to look terrified toward the end of the conversation. Being Nat understands quite a bit of Swahili, she heard the travel agent say to her manager in Swahili, "I'm so scared. I swear to god I'm afraid to tell her!" Knowing this after the fact is hilarious and shows how upset we were about the situation. At this point, Brittany and Evelyn came back from a neighboring store, and once the travel agents saw that we had a local with us, their entire attitude changed and they magically had us booked on another flight for later that morning for free. This was a big learning point for us as we realized how badly Mzungu can be treated, and that some bad apples will try to get more money from us. So they printed our new tickets and we were on our way, swearing to never fly Precision Air again.
Later that evening we went to the local biker bar for drinks with Furaha and Oliver, Peter (the German pharmacist), and Evelyn and Jane. We had so many great laughs and shared stories with each other about past experiences. This was one of my favorite evenings of the trip. Getting to know each other and laugh was so welcoming after our crazy day! After drinks we walked home and packed for our weekend in Zanzibar...this time packing with the power on!
We woke up early on Friday and were picked up by our trusty driver, Festo. We drove the 45 minutes to Kilimanjaro's International Airport. We walked in and went straight to the check-in counter where I was asked to show the credit card that I booked the flights on. (Side note: we booked our round trip flights on Kiwi.com. NEVER use this company) I gave them my credit card and they told me this was not the correct card number. I started to get hot and sweaty as I remembered that the CEO of Kiwi sent me his credit card information (yes, you read that correctly), so I handed the lady my phone so she could look at the email, and what do you know...it worked.
We walked to our gate and took a seat. It wasn't long before they said "rows 1-10 can come board the bus to go to the plane". We all jumped up and hopped on the bus. We headed toward the plane, whipped a U-turn, and then stopped. A lady on the bus said "the pilot suddenly got food poisoning, so there is another one 10 minutes away." For those that know me, you know I HATE to fly. Thoughts started swirling in my mind about the airline picking some 17 year old off the street who is interested in flying a plane. So, we were then returned to the gate, got off the bus, and five minutes later were told we could get back on the bus because the pilot was magically better. My food poisoning experiences generally last 5 minutes too….not! As we walked on the runway toward the plane, we saw a suspicious group of guys and our “creep alerts” instantly went off. One was wearing a black cut off tank and had a strange walking cane. When one of the airline employees asked to take the cane and put it under the plane, he refused and started limping, insinuating that he needed it for medical reasons. Nat immediately said that there was most likely cocaine in the cane, and we all 100% agreed. We hopped on the hot and muggy plane and settled in for our 45 minute flight to our layover in Zanzibar. Our original flight did not have a layover in Zanzibar, but now that we had to stop there prior to going to Dar es Saalem, we decided that we should just get off the plane in Zanzibar being that was our final destination. During flight Nat kept a close eye on the “drug lords”. Once we reached our cruising altitude and the seat belt sign went off, the guy with the cocaine cane immediately hopped out of his seat and walked back toward the back of the plane. Nat and I were watching him like a hawk because he was acting so suspicious. Nat had even created an entire plan in her mind about how she was going to take them all down if they tried to hijack the plane (this was how bizarre they were acting). Anyway, the plane safely landed in Zanzibar without being hijacked and we grabbed our bags from the overhead cabinets. Kari and I were the first to get off the plane and as we walked down the stairs and onto the runway, rap music started playing in our minds, and we realized we hit baller status. We waited for Nat and Britt to get off the plane and we all headed to the shuttle bus. We sat down and holy buckets….we did it!!! Just kidding, things get really sour here. We sat there for probably two minutes before a security guard came onto the bus and started asking people for their boarding pass. We hear, “There are four people missing from that plane, and they need to get back on it right now”. NOOOOOOO!! We all got a pit in our stomach and once again for the 100th time in two days, started to freak out a little bit. One of the girls behind us, quickly handed her boarding pass to Kari which would show that she could get off in Zanzibar. I leaned over and told her not to show that because I felt that we could get into A LOT more trouble if we used a fake ticket rather than if we just got off at the wrong stop. So Kari, Nat, Britt, and I all just “magically lost our tickets or threw them away on the plane”. The security guard was not having it and called in back-up. Suddenly there were 6 security guards/flight attendants surrounding us and we were adamant that we were not getting off that shuttle and back on the plane. We tried everything. “This is not our fault. Our original flight got rescheduled.” “We want to talk to a manager. We are not getting back on that plane”. “Precision Air said we could get off here because of the flight cancellation”. Nothing. Was. Working. I am not sure how many times we got yelled at by them to get back on the plane before the drug lords started to yell, “Let’s go. Get off the bus”. After a good 10 minutes of arguing (so well that we actually had convinced ourselves that we were the ones that had been wronged), we did the walk of shame back onto the runway, climbed the stairs, and sat down again on the damn hot and muggy plane! We flew 20 minutes before landing in Dar. We originally planned on taking the 12:30 pm ferry from Dar to Zanzibar (about a 90 minute boat ride). We got off the plane at 11:45 and hoped that we could still catch that ferry. Google Maps, which has been our best friend here, said that it would take 35 minutes to get there, so we quickly grabbed a taxi driver and negotiated our price. He said that it was possible to still catch the ferry, and we quickly learned that this guy flat out lied. It took us AN HOUR AND A HALF!! Argh! This guy took us through markets, villages, and scared the crap out of Britt who was sitting in the front. He told us not to go out in Zanzibar at night time, watch our bags because people will pick pocket us, etc….really all common sense things that we had already been doing, but because of the fact that he told us like he was telling a haunted story around a campfire, Brittany was about ready to jump. He dropped us off at the ferry where we were swarmed by random strangers in orange construction vests grabbing for our bags. We quickly learned that if you let them take your bag to carry it, they will demand $50 USD no matter if you wanted them to or not. We all put our backpacks on our chests and held on for dear life. We went up to the ticket office and there was a lovely lady who helped us get onto a 2:00 ferry. We kept asking her if it was time for us to board or what we should be doing, so when it was finally time to board, she grabbed a worker and told him in Swahili, “Please take these four girls to the boat. They are very scared”. Haha. We walked through 3 security points, showed our ticket and passport to what seemed like 20 people, and we were given an immigration form to fill out for when we arrived in Zanzibar. For those that do not know, Zanzibar is technically part of Tanzania, but they desire to be an independent country, so we knew we were in for a treat. We sat in comfy seats in an air conditioned room and enjoyed the boat ride. Along the way, Nat started talking to a man named, Abdul. Abdul was a business man who knew everyone and everything about Zanzibar. We told him a bit of our story and how we wanted to take a flight from Zanzibar back to either Dar or Moshi so we could avoid the ferry fiasco all together on the way back. He started making calls and instantly had quotes for flights for us. He made a plan for us to stop at the airport in Zanzibar (great, they loved us!), and meet a man who would book our flights. How would we get there you ask? Oh he had already arranged for a driver to be waiting for us when the ferry arrived. Who is this guy?? The ferry docked and we walked up to the immigration counter. I was the lucky one to reach them first, so I handed a man wearing a beret my passport and my immigration paperwork. He took one look at me and immediately started drilling me with questions. Looking back, I now know that he was looking for one wrong answer or a loop hole to change my entire story. He asked where I came from – I told him I took the ferry from Dar. He asked where I was before Dar – I told him Moshi. He asked how long I was in Moshi – I told him 3 weeks. He asked where I was staying – I automatically said KCMC (Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre). There is was. He found the loop hole and I immediately was told that I have the wrong travel visa. By me saying that I was at KCMC meant that I was here on business, but we only had a tourist visa. The visa that we had was the tourist/mission trip visa and we had not had any issues until Zanzibar. I told him that we were not in Moshi conducting any kind of business and we were here as a tourist. Nat could hear me and the guy arguing and asked what was going on. As Nat chimed in and we told the man in the beret over and over that we conducted zero business, he attempted to scare us by saying we have been “breaking the law”. We said that Nat had been to and from Kenya, we all had flown from Amsterdam to Moshi without issues, but all of the sudden we were criminals and would be forced to each pay $300 USD for the correct visa. Nat and I started getting super heated and told him that this was unfair and that we were not paying $300 each just because we were Mzungu. Mr. Beret was on the verge of telling us to get back on the ferry and go back to Dar when suddenly a Mzungu angel in a red shirt appeared behind us and asked what was going on. Britt and Kari explained the situation to him and before we knew it, he went into the immigration office (behind the glass), talked to the immigration officers for 3 minutes, and then our passports were magically being stamped. Mr. Beret was so mad and slammed our passports on the counter and slid them under the glass to me. We grabbed those suckers and ran toward the exit! Abdul walked us out and we were greeted by our driver. We jumped into a van and headed toward the airport. Once there, we were whisked away into an office that was the size of a bathroom, and were greeted by a man that resembled Ceelo Green. He had booked us a flight on Safari Air Link and it would cost us $70 each. Not wanting to deal with the ferry and Dar, we gladly handed over $70. We thanked him and he told us to come meet him at his office on Monday prior to our return trip.
-Walking onto the ferry
Thanks for taking the time to read this novel. It was a rough couple of days but made for some great stories!
- Cari
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