"People with heads worth protecting wear bike helmets" -Bill Danforth

We’ve been settling in to our routines here in Dar. Which mostly consist of banging our heads against various government ministries. We’ve made some headway with Ryan’s visa renewal this week. After submitting his application, a million passport-sized photos, a copy of his resume and college transcript, then being told to return on a federal holiday when they were closed, returning the next day to find that they had ‘misplaced’ his application, and didn’t want to take the time to look for it, we returned yet again. This time, they had miraculously found Ryan’s folder and let us pay for the visa!! That was a major step, as we got a receipt! And they glued it to his application! This is progress! They told us to return in 4 working days, and THEN the visa will be re-stamped into his passport.

Other than immigration, I’ve been trying to interview people about Tanzanian health and adolescent policy, and learning that although people may be nicer at other ministries, they run at about the same efficiency level.

In our many travels, we see TONS of bikers. It’s probably the most common mode of transport here. Bike helmets aren’t sold in Tanzania and we’ve only seen one biker with a modern helmet. (Thanks to my dad's constant chiding, and several traumatic junior high years as the ONLY kid who had to wear a helmet, I pay pretty close attention to this.) The rest of the bikers who are concerned about protecting their heads, have to get creative. We’ve seen: baseball batting helmets, motorcycle helmets – worn both forwards and backwards, construction hats, and one guy wearing a WWII-era German military helmet.