Adventure in Dar, Part 2

I took my day a bit more slowly. I woke up without an alarm (so refreshing to do that every once in a while) and set out back to the Ghanaian consulate. I was there in just over half an hour this time (or 1/8 the time it took the day before) and collected everything. As it happens, the consulate cannot issue visas (I knew this in advance), but instead issues a letter that allows you to get your visa when you enter in Accra (in most circumstances, you cannot get your Ghanaian visa in Accra). As I read the letter, I wasn't entirely assured that it would take care of everything. It was signed and stamped by the Ghanaian consul, which is a good sign (I think, anyway, the man in the office when I was there was definitely Tanzanian, so I am taking it on faith that this is all above board with the folks in Ghana). But really, all it said was that he had read all of my documentation and believed that I was going to Ghana for my stated purpose.

I couldn't really do anything about it at that point, so I shifted my attention ot my next objective which was visiting some shops in Dar to get price quotes for GCS. Jodie told me that I was looking for Jamhuri Street, which I had walked past several times the day before, so it was pretty easy to walk down the road until I saw the shops. I was grateful after my adventure from the day before to find my target so easily. Then I was waiting for a phone call (I wasn't positive that my phone would ring, I had tried to contact him for several months over phone and email and only got one or two responses, but this time, he had said he would call, and I even contacted his assistant and a co-worker to make sure that he would in fact call), so I went back to the shawarma place that I had discovered the day before and grabbed some lunch while I waited.

Right as I was finishing, I got the phone call and he told me to come to Oyster Bay and meet him at his office. I figured that since I was near the post office, I could get a bus there that would go in the right direction. Unfortunately, a few different people told me that I wanted different buses, but finally, the conductor of a purple bus told me that he could drop me at the Oyster Bay police station. I stood in a cramped aisle on the bus for some distance, and when I finally made it into a seat, I asked the gentleman next to me if we had nearly arrived at the Oyster Bay police station, and he told me that we had passed it quite a while back. I asked the conductor and he sheepishly admitted that he had forgotten about me. He was nice enough to only charge me for as far as I had wanted to go instead of how far I had gone. It didn't make me any less upset with him.

Then, I got on a bus heading back toward the Oyster Bay police station. My contact called me and asked what was taking so long and then asked to speak to my driver. I explained that I wasn't in a taxi (another luxury item that is generally not part of my travel budget) and asked the man next to me where we were. My contact said that I was really far from him and that he had to leave and wouldn't be able to meet with me. Then he told me that he was really disappointed, since he had really wanted to meet with me. I was really mad at that, since I might have actually paid for a taxi if he had ever given me the sense that he did in fact want to talk to make sure this meeting happened. In this case, it felt like he was trying to put the blame on me, and I really didn't need that.

Anyway, I headed back to my hotel. I decided to walk most of the way, since it was rush hour at that point. I picked a bus and discovered that I was keeping pace with it for the better part of an hour. When it finally started moving, I decided to hop on a bus to get back to my guest house. I wanted to treat myself to a nice dinner, but my options were pretty limited, so I just grabbed a snack from one of the street vendors and called that dinner.

The next morning I was on the 8 AM bus back to Arusha. It was a pretty easy trip, though we had to deal with a lot of traffic in Dar and didn't get in until just before 7 PM. Mic told me that was a ridiculously slow pace and almost as if to prove his point, he drove to Dar a few days later and on his return trip, he left at 6 AM and made it home by 12:30 PM.