All in a day's work

To give you an idea of a typical day here I'll just take you through the events of yesterday. OK, it wasn't exactly a typical day, but it will give you an idea of some of our challenges.

I awoke at 5:30, before sunup. Living at 1 degree south latitude, the sun comes up unbelievably fast because it basically crosses the horizon at a right angle. At 5:50 it's pitch black. At 6:00 you can read a book outside. At 6:10 it's daylight. I tried to make coffee, eat something, read my Bible, and exercise before my planned departure for Musoma at 7:00. Both the kids got up at 6:00, so I only succeeded at the coffee and ten minutes with the Bible. When “Baba” ('Father' to all the orphans, a pastor, and quickly becoming a close friend) knocked on my door at 7:10, I lamented, “Is it 7:00 already?!” I'm not sure how exactly how I passed that hour and a half, but the kids certainly had something to do with it. So I grabbed a plastic cup of coffee and hunk of coffee cake (a rare treat somehow fortuitously left over from the day before), and jumped in the van, remembering to take some plumbing parts, some money, a shopping list, and some documents I had prepared for the government.

Realizing that our badly rutted road is no place for a lidless cup of coffee, I chugged it as the van warmed up. The van more or less refused to go into gear. As we hurried out the gate, Baba grabbed our mechanic and said, “You're coming with us. I don't trust this van.” Shortly thereafter Baba gave up fighting with the surly clutch, and pulled over. “Zacharia, you drive this thing,” he muttered. Along the way I began making phone calls to arrange a second opinion on our clutch situation from a trusted mechanic in Musoma, and trying to do it in a way that Zacharia didn't feel insulted. At least if I was watching him actually choosing to climb steep hills in fourth gear because downshifting was likely to be such a struggle, then he couldn't reasonably insist that there was no serious problem.

After 30 minutes of dust, ruts, bumps, and gears grinding, we reached the pavement. I didn't realize that I had forgotten my passport until we passed through perhaps the fourth police checkpoint of the morning about an hour later. Here's a little backstory: Musoma is the regional capital. We were going there to discuss opening the hospital with the authorities. The truth is that though we had expected to, we hadn't heard from them in a week, so we decided to conveniently be “in the area,” so that we could “just stop in to greet them.” Just two weeks ago we were there on the same errand. That day I had not brought my passport because I honestly didn't think it was necessary—we were not crossing any borders. But that day I learned that immigration officers stop all foreigners (and I'm very obviously a foreigner), and ask to see their papers. Apparently you can be arrested for not having them. I wasn't arrested that day partly because I pled ignorance, but more because I was with our director, who simply called his compatriots at the immigration office who told the enthusiastic young officers to back off Dr. C's friend.

But yesterday, as we pulled up to the checkpoint, I wished our director were there, because I realized that though now I was no longer ignorant, I had forgotten my passport in my rush to get out the door. I slunk down in my seat. Worse yet, it was the same enthusiastic servicemen who had stopped me in town before. They were very insulted that I had not heeded their week-old warning. What followed was about an hour of animated pleading and negotiating on the part of Baba, which I understood little of. My Swahili is about at the point that if someone gauges my ability correctly and then chooses to make themselves understood, then I can generally follow them. But if they don't want to be understood, they can very easily talk over my head. I tried very hard not to be, or to appear, indignant. After all, I'm here to help, I'm not getting anything material in return, and I'm not doing anything illegal or unethical. I simply forgot my papers. What is more, they knew that I actually have the proper papers because their supervisor had told them that on the phone just one week before—He actually issued them himself. Perhaps I could have reasoned with them, but both my cultural acumen as well as my language skills are sorely wanting. So I left that to Baba. Also, I realized that my being indignant was nothing more than pride, and really their modus operandi was simply feigned indignancy. It would have been easy for this to turned into a contest of wills. They really just wanted a little money to buy breakfast. The truth is that is how they make their living. I decided not to allow my pride to enter the arena, giving their pride no combatant to wrangle with.

I followed enough of the tete-a-tete to understand that Baba played the following cards: “I'm a pastor,” “You know me,” “Your boss knows me,” “Your boss knows Dr. C,” “I'm a good Christian,” “We are just trying to help the children,” “You know he has the papers because you checked with your boss last week,” and “He is just here to help.” But the officers would not relent. They insisted that the letter of the law is that you must carry your papers wherever you go. The truth is it's all about who you know, but yesterday dropping Dr. C's name was not enough. Often relationships supersede the letter of the law, but when it's to an officials advantage to insist upon the letter of the law, they certainly will do so.

In the end Baba took me aside and explained with an ironic and placating smile, “They say, 'All those things you said are true, but what about us? We haven't had breakfast. Give us something for chai and chapatis.'” It was in fact tea time (10:00AM), and conveniently they had picked the only tea shop on miles of uninhabited road as the appointed position for their stake out. It turns out Baba had already offered them 10,000 Tanzanian shillings but they refused. They wanted 20,000 (twelve dollars).

Here came my pride again. Indignancy rose in my gorge like bile. Luckily Baba had been wise enough to hide me behind the van for this discussion. I thought, “I don't care about the twelve dollars! That's nothing to me. That's less than coffee and a sandwich in the airport!  Who do these guys think they are insisting on the letter of the law? What about the law that says that bribes are illegal!?” I didn't say all this. I think I said a little of it. Clearly Baba read it in my eyes. I think I used the word bribe very quietly, which made Baba wince a little. I retreated to relying on Baba's wisdom and character. I asked, “Do you think it's OK for us to pay them?” He knows enough about Americans to know that I don't care about twelve dollars compared to standing in the blazing sun arguing over trifles. He understood exactly what I was really asking: “Is it morally OK to give these jokers bribe money?”

This is a fairly common debate amongst missionaries. Do you pay the bribe? Usually to the cops. To pay is to invite-no encourage-recurrence. And certainly there is a moral dilemma. To not pay is to face untold hassles. In my opinion, there is no clear answer to this dilemma, and you must always consider both how much time you have and what the foreseen hassles may be. In the end, it usually comes down to this: the person who wants the bribe probably has more time on his hands than you do. Are you going to wait him out over twelve dollars. Time has value—a lot of value. Would you rather he took two hours of your time or twelve of your dollars, because he's going to get one of them.

As I mulled this over, asking the Lord for a little guidance, I was reminded of a close friend and seasoned missionary laughing as he told a story about being hassled by a traffic cop in Ecuador. He guffawed, “You just pay it!”

This recollection was comforting, and I had to admit that I had in fact made a mistake in forgetting my passport.  Baba's answer was a palliative, “I think it's OK. I don't mind to pay them.” So I sheepishly forked over the two bills to the head officer, whose demeanor significantly improved as soon as I reached for my wallet.

As the men sauntered over the to chai house en masse, to allow who knows how many genuine felons to pass the roadblock unmolested for the next hour and half, Baba had the mettle to petition them: “What about me? I haven't had my chai yet either. We've been on the road for three hours. Buy me a chapati!” He was serious. This goes to show how much I do not yet understand about this culture. He did walk away with a chapati. He even offered me half of it. I was too flabbergasted to ask who had paid for it.

We stopped at a demonstration farm outside Musoma because I was interested. We have six acres of land to plant and landscape at the hospital and I want it to be a demonstration farm as well as a healthful and beautiful environment. Whenever I explain this to people here they agree, but that still doesn't keep the orphans from totally mauling what flowerbeds there are at every opportunity. Everything grows vibrantly here. We enjoy copious wildflowers. But the kids seem to be utilitarians when it comes to plant life. If they can't eat it, then they don't see any value in cultivating it. Often a horde of kids will pass by the flowers in front of our house thoughtlessly stripping the blooms and leaving them strewn on the ground in a trail of rubbish. My strategy for this is as follows: Through their caretakers, I intend to enlist their labor in planting and pruning flowers at the hospital. Perhaps through some sweat and blisters they will learn to let the flowerbeds be. We will see.

Zacharia and I share an enthusiasm for growing things. We collected both seeds and ideas for the planting program at the hospital. We would have liked to spend the whole day there, but more pressing business intervened.

Ten minutes later we dropped Zacharia and the van at the mechanic's shop and took a taxi to the government offices. They greeted us heartily, said they intended to provide us with some workers and supplies, and sent us on our way to see other officials. The short version of that long story of official discussions is this: Eventually it came out that there are certain forms that must be filled out in order to register a hospital with the government, and these forms must be sent to the Ministry of Health in Dar es Salaam. This was perhaps the seventh long meeting I have had with government officials over one month—all with the goal of obtaining registration for the hospital. Now why hadn't someone told me about these forms before? We wasted way too much time going to and fro, waiting outside one government office then another.

It was three o'clock before we had threaded our way through the catacombs of government meetings in Musoma. Along the way, we met a missionary friend who had just that morning taken a bus to Musoma. But the one hour ride had taken three and a half hours because the bus kept breaking down. She was in no mood for a repeat performance. We agreed to give her a ride home. We returned to pick up the van to find that the mechanic had fixed it for free. “I've just bought some tomatoes, and onions, and bananas for the children,” he said. We were all shocked but thanked him warmly and headed out.

About an hour later we were stopped at another roadblock. This time the police insisted on seeing Zacharia's driver's license. He has one, but it's Kenyan. And when they saw that is was Kenyan he knew that they would start hassling him about why he didn't have his passport. There's no need to repeat all the details of the above story again. Suffice it to say that Baba spent another half an hour in similar negotiations, resulting in a smaller bribe but no chapati.

It was already five by the time we started our shopping errands in several locations just before the pavement ends on the way home. At one point we parked right in front of the immigration office at the border while Baba walked through the gates to buy some Kenyan specialty on the other side. As we pulled up, the place swarming with uniformed immigration police looking like they had nothing better to do than try to squeeze shillings out of some unsuspecting white boy, I told Baba, “You know I don't have my passport, right?”

He laughed, “Oh these are our friends,” as he got out of the car and disappeared. I wasn't so sure. I hunkered down in my seat and tried to look inconspicuous for the next half an hour. After that we squandered more time waiting for a merchant from whom we had recently purchased fruit down the road. He kept calling on the phone insisting that he was “only five minutes away,” for half an hour. The sun was setting. I insisted we just head out. We endured a little more dust and ruts and finally arrived home, trail-worn but safe, into the arms of our expectant families. Everyone wanted to know what had delayed us. I answered flatly, “Government officials,” and this was a sufficient answer for all who heard.