Dar-tour

Singida, oh Singida, you were so good to us for the first few days, what happened?! Ok, Singida is still beautiful, tasty and overall pretty darn nice place to be but the immigration officials of Singida Region caught wind of our presence last week, apparently not good. We awoke Wednesday morning to an average Singida day, overcast and eggs done just right for breakfast, smothered of course in hot sauce (thank you Ryan & Tamara); that's where the "normal" day ended. We were just setting up our computers and getting ready for a day of research assistant training when the concierge of the hotel came to the conference room to say that someone was at the front desk for us. The person waiting at the desk was an immigration and customs agent who asked to see our documents. As all of our papers would suggest, he said that everything checked out but that he needed to take us down to the immigration office to verify, at this point we were accosted.

As we entered the office it seemed as though everyone knew us or at the very least had seen us in the streets. Singida, I didn’t realize was so small, although we are definitely the only wazungu in town, which makes us stand out a bit. They took one look at Betsy’s passport and alarm-bells started to ring! Apparently, the Dar es Salaam immigration office did not stamp her passport properly, not good. After grilling me for about 15 minutes about what I was doing in the country, they seemed to think that I had everything in order and were prepared to release me. That is where the trouble started; Betsy had applied this week to change her COSTEC permit so she would be able to do research in Singida region. Only problem with this is that the COSTEC wheels move at an amazingly slow pace! We were awaiting approval, which we were given word that next week Monday we were good to go, unfortunately this was a few days too late. They quickly realized that she was not yet approved to do research in this region, although we had not started and did not plan to start the research until given approval we were in some trouble here.

After about an hour of finagling we managed to convince them to release us from their custody with the promise we were leaving on the next bus to Dar es Salaam. After calming our nerves we checked the bus station to see if there were any buses leaving pronto, there were. We regrouped with the idea that maybe they would let us stay in Singida until Sunday, the day before the permit was to be retrieved, then return thereafter. We went and ate lunch, returned to the immigration office to be received by the very annoyed looking immigration officer who sent us away. We asked to leave on Sunday in which he threatened legal action against Betsy for over-staying her visa, which she didn’t but according to the stamps in her passport, she did. Nothing here is digitally entered, so they would have had to call Dar to verify she was here legally, apparently that’s too much to ask.

After a long ride to Dar, Monday morning was surprisingly productive! Being MLK day in the US, the embassy was not open (sorry, Mom, we weren't able to pick up the box) but everything else went smoother than it would an a Western country! Betsy had the passport stamp and COSTEC revision in hand before noon, it was simply amazing! We called the bus station to have our return tickets ready for the next morning, looks like it was a short vacation in Dar, time to go back and get ready for research.
-Ryan