2015 – Tuesday in Dar
Dar Es Salaam – There is a business principle that was very popular when I was in college called Parkinson’s Law. It states that work expands to fill the time allotted for it. That was today.
As of last night, the plan for today was to get a vodacom sim chip for the tablet that Bill is testing out for communication for the deaneries (a project for next year), stop by Air Tanzania and confirm our reservation for tomorrow morning and try to get a rate for our excess luggage. The rest of the day was going to be spent “lazing” by the pool at the New Africa and practicing music that we will sing when we go to Kagunga tomorrow. (Kagunga is a village only reachable by boat.)
No plan survives contact with reality, or in this case, contact with a Bishop. Turns out that Bishop Makaya is in Dar, meeting with some government ministers on some matters and flying out tomorrow evening to England to attend the “enthronement” of the first woman bishop in England. He called us around 7:30 am and wanted to get together with us this morning.
Bill ran out to get the Vodocam sim chip and was told that it would take about an hour to register, so he came back to the hotel shortly before the Bishop arrived. As we were talking and the Bishop heard about our plan to confirm our flight, he suggested that he accompany Bill and see if he could get us a lower rate for our excess luggage.
Al but the Partridge in a Pear Tree; Cargo heading for the airport.
Next thing we know Bill and the Bishop are at Air Tanzania and in a while Bill returned saying that we need to repack everything because Air Tanzania would ship all our excess luggage at the cargo rate ($.60 USD as opposed to 3.00 USD per pound), if we got the luggage over to the freight terminal today. Bill arranged for the hotel van to take him over to the airport with five new monitors, four boxes of toner, Three large LL Bean Duffles, a coil of cat 6 cable, a color laser printer (and a partridge in a pear tree). The rate of $.60 USD ended up expanding quite a bit as this fee, and that recording fee and the Swissport handling fee got added in; and there was the aggravation of running back and forth from office to office, BUT all of our equipment should arrive in Kigoma with us at a lesser amount. In the morning we will head to the airport with only one LL Bean Duffle and Bill’s guitar case and we believe that they will both be under the 20 Kilo max, although its hard to tell as our luggage scale has gone a little bonkers.
The view from our window of the church choir practicing next door.
Through all of this Bill made two more trips back to the Vodacom store the get the sim chip working and I spent some time reflecting on and writing out some of my testimony. Needless to say, no lazing by the pool, although we did take a short walk next door to hear the choir practice on the church’s outdoor porch before dinner.
We enjoyed a final dinner of shrimp red curry at the upstairs restaurant, did some final organizing and spent a few minutes looking at songs we might sing tomorrow, and now to bed. Three A.M. is going to come awfully early!
