Eish. Long day. And here, with the headlines is G:
Wake up, pack up, head to town, much better traffic this early (07:30).
Get to Roika tour’s offices. Still haven’t tracked payments. Wait. Phone, wait (incompetence is not a virtue)
Wait some more, establish that over above the deposits, they have no credit card facility, so no card payments.
We can’t pay it all in dollars. Now what? Wait some more. 09:00, no traction, only frustration.
More calls to Barclays Tanzania, FINALLY manage to track payments in another Roika account (the one on the invoice, you ninny! Did I mention incompetence is NOT a virtue??). And if somebody says Hakuna Matata one more time I do believe I will need to kill him.
Phone the bosses wife, who handles the finances, wait for her to arrive, very nice lady. Her name is Edna. We discuss some options about payment and why they don’t have the facilities (they where fraudulated a few months ago). We explain the concept of chip and pin, or even POS solutions, not the old school, wide open to fraud manual credit card sliders. She’ll look into it. In the meantime, we need to get our hands on a mere 3 million Tanzanian Shillings each.
Test drive Mattie’s card, ATM’s only allow 400 000 per day, or until you hit your card limit, whichever comes first.
We try the only foreign exchange in town (on a hot tip from the Barclays bank manager) that will accept credit cards, at the Impala Hotel. The Impala Hotel wants to rape and pillage us with their rate. We say “hapana santi” (no thanks). More arguing, I get pepperoni pizza. I eat the pepperoni pizza on the way back to offices, give Annelie a few slices.
More talking.
I buy 2 oil paintings from a hawker. Big mistake. Other hawkers smell money and swarm me. Word gets round, I can’t step onto the street without being hounded. This must be what celebrities feel like.
I spot 6 ninjas on my way to a gem store to look at Tanzanite. Must remember to warn others.
I think about bacon. Or baconi, in Swahili. This trip needs more bacon.
I haggle for a English to Swahili phrase book, 5000 down from 12 000 TZh. Getting good at this, can’t wait to try it at Harrods.
Looking for stationary store for a tube for my new paintings. Nada. One of my cult following (as I call them now, since they all offer sage advice and shower me with compliments. More join) offers to find me one.
13:00, escape into the Roika office. Still nothing. Edna in the meantime tried to work out something with the Bank manager at NBC bank (local bank here). Nada. We propose a SWIFT transfer from South Africa. That will take days, at least 4. Nada.
To the car to fetch more TP, cult follower offers tube. I send him away, tube too small. BEGONE!
Annelie still feeling shit, cramps, to bathroom often, drained. My patience exhausted, since I’ve had to do 2 peoples work and driving for 4 days plus. I call it a day, and declare us out. I hand my deposit to Mattie, effectively paying for his trip.
Turns out, you CAN draw more that 400 000 TZs a day from an ATM. Dirk arrives with a bucket full of money (10 000 is the biggest note you can get)
HAVE YOU EVER SEEN WHAT 12 000 000 TZs looks like, in 10 000 note denominations!
More time... to actually count all this paper. Annelie and I retire to the Bureau de change on the 1st floor (also owned by Roika. No, they don’t accept credit cards, but their rates are pretty decent). We’ve been taking water from their water cooler all day for Annelie, and it’s nice and cool and less frustrating and busy down here.
We decide it’s best actually. I don’t think in the end it’s worth the $1800 or whatever to see a bunch of animals we can probably seen again later on the trip. Ok, fine, it’s the Serengeti. But Annelie still feels shit and I’m tired of being jerked around. It is now 14:30 ish.
14:40 ish we’re finally out of the offices. Cult follower offers another tube. I am pleased. Wants 8000 TZs for it. I am displeased. 2000 Shillings, no more, and begone from my sight before I smite you! He scuttles away, I have a tube for my one of a kind original paintings (it's from a street hawker, of course he was telling the truth, right??)
We leave for the Roika residence, where we will be camping for the evening, before they all head off for the Serengeti. We go shopping at Shoprite, and I buy a kilo of beans from a coffee shop around the corner. They have coffee plantations all over Tanzania. Day beginning to look better, Annelie feeling better, ish.
Setup shop, big house! Same deal, drive up narrow dirt road, get to a gate and voila! Paradise. We setup in his huge fruit garden with bananas, apples, mangos, papayas, Palma granites and more. I grab a rivet gun and pop rivet the roof racks in place (HA! Let’s see you move NOW!) and replace the roof coil with new bolts so the Bullet had that streamlined sexy Ima-gonna-getcha look again.
Very helpful staff helps us hook the 4x4’s fridges up to mains and asks if there is anything else he can do for us. I still complain about some things, say “I need more power” (not in Scotty Star Trek voice, even though it sounded like Scotty in my head). He humbly obeys. I think he should join my cult. He brings me an extension cord and goes out of his way to check if it’s ok and if it’s working etc etc etc.
He phaffs over everyone and makes sure all is good. I think this guy is more like it.
I get knocked on my ass when I realise THIS is Luca Roika. The owner of the house (and many like it, I find out later), the Tented Lodge, the Tour Company, the Bureau de Change (no small feat, you need a banking licence for that!) and... a Tanzanite mine!!! 4 Mines, in fact.
Fuck.
How can it be, that this laid back, humble, hospitable, totally cool dude owns all this shit? Where I’m from, no way in hell would the big boss be doing what he is doing. You could argue business is slow, or make some other BS excuse. But what I was sensing was nothing like that at all. This guy was just... a guy. A down to earth person. He proceeds to make me feel even worse by offering his house, to use the internet for free, just to “be free”, my home is yours. How dare he be so fucking awesome!? That’s MY job!
I must tell him about the ninjas!
We chat more, mostly about Tanzanite, I show him Annelie’s ring, he practically hugs her off her feet, saying what an honour it is that we choose Tanzanite for the ring etc. Clearly his passion is this. I ask him politely if we could perhaps, his time permitting and since we weren’t going on the tour, if we could, you know, visit his mine. He looks at me with a quizzical “well of course we can, what kind of dumb question is that” look and replies “no problem, no problem, be free, you my guest” (broken English et al).
We say goodnight before he offers to do us any more favours. Curry tonight, with chutney (Mrs Balls, of course), bananas and yoghurt. I have my appetite back and finish off all the left overs. Just in time for slicing scalpels running through my gut. Oh shit.
I double up on some remedies and meds and Annelie and I crawl into bed.
Long day, long day. But on balance, I think we came out ahead.
Highlights: King Roika!
Spotting those 6 ninjas
Lowlights: I may need to see a doctor too...
[G & A], out
It’s as simple as something that nobody knows
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