This is a RANT, so BEWARE.

This is not the place to read about the wonders of Tanzania today, so consider yourself warned. If you want to read about that sort of stuff, I'm sure there's some website somewhere that'll have it. Maybe a travel guide or something.

This is about how INSANE things can be here. Particularly Precision Air. Because they are COMPLETELY INSANE.

I booked 7 tickets to Egypt back in March. Precision Air does not take credit cards and won't accept shillings for international flights, only US dollars. That in and of itself is annoying...a Tanzanian company refusing to take its own currency. Getting access to that much money at one time is almost impossible for us, so dear friend Karen brought $6,000 in June to pay for the tickets and trip costs. At the time I made the reservation I asked about the costs, double-checked to make sure it was the TOTAL cost (taxes, etc.) and then waited for the money.

Today, the day in HELL, I got up and toted all my money down to the office to finally pay for the ticket. Except that I can't. Why? No reason that I can understand, but after an hour, they said I needed to come back. So I did. At 11:00. And 12:00. And 1:00. And 2:00. Because in that true Tanzanian fashion, no one else but that one person could possibly help me and of course she's gone to lunch and will be back soon. When? Soon. In 30 minutes? Soon. In one hour? Soon. This is a seriously true conversation.

At 3:00 I turned all ugly American and demanded that one of the 6 other people in the office let me pay for the ticket. Turns out the price went up almost $1000. Now I don't have enough cash to pay for the tickets and I'll have to go buy a bunch of USD. Wait, wait, let us see if we can help. At 4:00 the price is down $800. Now I have enough money. I cheerfully hand over $5,000 perfectly beautiful crispy American dollars, Ben Franklin smiling up from each and every one.

And then they give $3000 back. They won't take them. Because they were printed in 1996 and they are too old. They're not usable. They question whether businesses in America would take them. They certainly can't be taking such old money. And could I just go and get some different ones and bring them back? I said, who do you think I am? I live here, I have no US dollars, do you think I have money just laying around? I won't even go into the fact that you won't accept YOUR OWN CURRENCY. I pointed out that the bills aren't even creased. The manager assures me that they can get the old money exchanged for new money tomorrow and then everything will be fine and I can just leave all my money with him. I said, fine--just issue me the tickets and keep the money and change it tomorrow.

"No, that we cannot do."
"Why?"
"Because we can't accept this money."
"But you'll change it for me tomorrow."
"Yes."
"And you're absolutely sure that it will get changed."
"And you won't cancel the ticket."
"No."
"But you won't issue me the ticket and change the money for yourself."
"No."
"Why?"
"Because we can't take the money. You come tomorrow at 10:00."
"I can't come tomorrow at 10:00."
"Yes, this is important."
"No, I am meeting the President tomorrow and that is very important."
"No, you're not. Why are you saying this?"
"Because it's true and I want to meet the President."
"If you come afternoon, the money will be gone from the forex the tickets will be cancelled."
"So give me the tickets today and change the money yourself tomorrow."
"No, we can't do this thing."
"Why?"
"Because we cannot take this money."

And that took until 5:00. And, for the record, I really am going to have a chance to meet the President of Tanzania tomorrow. It's not like I was throwing that around trying to impress anyone. I was merely trying to show that the reason I wasn't going to be in their office tomorrow was a little more important than just not wanting to.

So...a Tanzanian business won't accept their own currency. And won't accept a currency that (correct me if I'm wrong) is quite popular and generally preferred in much of the world. I won't even mention that the forex that will potentially be giving me newer $100 bills for my current ones is going to charge 2 cents on the dollar. And as much as I'm working not to lose my temper, I wanted to SMACK the guy for his general assumption that I just have lots of more of these laying around and have easy access to this amount of American cash. Or for his insistence that Precision Air prides itself on its customer service and that they really really want to help and how much they value my business. See if they get my 3 tickets to Dar es Salaam I need to buy next week.

AND I didn't get my water bill paid. Or get any grocery shopping done. Or get any other errands done. It's so TYPICAL of how easy things get completely SCREWED UP with some sort of inefficiency and rules that don't make sense.

AND, lest I heap it all on this one company, let me just say that when I went to Tanesco to pay my electric bill (you bring in the old bill and they use the numbers to print the new one) they refused because it was wrinkled on the numbers and they couldn't be sure. When I suggested they have a go at it because the name of the house owner is clearly readable and can be verified that way, they said, "no." So I had to go home and rummage around for a less wrinkled bill. This was over an hour of standing in line, not including the trip back to the house.

DHL refused to take a package consisting of two photocopies and two passport photos because I didn't have the specific number for the person at the Embassy. I tried to make one up, not having one (and getting one would require me to email the Embassy and wait for a response). She caught that one. Finally, SHE thought to pull out the good ol' PHONE BOOK and look it up. OK, I didn't even know they had a phone book here, but I do have serious doubts as to how accurate it is. But even that simple act took over 30 minutes.

What a rotten day.

Rant update: Spent another hour at 3 high-end hotels trying to convince their forex booths to switch me some dollars. No go. Why? No reason, just no. 8:00 am found me at our bank (we have a PHF account, but not a personal one and it's shillings only). They have a machine that runs the bills to see if they are conterfeit. I begged and pleaded with them to run them through the machine. No go. I need to deposit the money (thereby switching to shillings), then write a check and withdraw it, and THEN convert it back to dollars. The double exchange, of course, would lose me money. FINALLY, I found a forex bureau that would do it...for $30 per $1,000. So I did get it done, and the cost wasn't astronomical. It's the principal of the whole thing. Funny that it's the first time I've felt offended as an American that they considered my money unusable!