Border Business

Wow, it has been almost a week and we've certainly been out n back. We'll try to catch you up on what has happened since we arrived in Tanzania. Internet connections since we arrived have been limited. Also, our time has been limited.

As mentioned, we had trouble at the border. Finally we ended up paying duty on our DVD players, a fee we should not have had to pay. Viorel and I waited in the car while the Africans took care of the negotiations. It took a whole day. While we were there we photographed African life at the border. Here you see technology is coming to Africa in the way of cell phones. Even the Maasai had them!

"Had your driver offered $100 we would have waved you by," the duty officer explained. Negotiations after that point consumed an entire day. Even to involvement of supervisory staff. After a rate was determined the payoff of various people along the process didn't stop. Graft and corruption are the way of life in every level of government. Needless to say, there were prayers of rejoicing when our goods were finally received.

Arriving late in the evening with everything in Arusha, our team worked several hours to reduce the number of containers so we could take them and ourselves to Morogoro another day's travel. We had a 20 passenger hotel van from Nairobi to Arusha, a 10 passenger van and Toyota Land Cruiser from Arusha to Morogoro.