Bribes and a Thai Lodge in Tanzania
July 23
Hello everyone… This is Robb and I’m filling in for Sarah on this post, continuing on where she left off:
Leaving Nkhata Bay was very difficult for all of us as it was a wondrously beautiful place and the Backpackers we stayed at was owned by a wonderful couple. Not to mention Malawi was by far my favorite of the countries we had been to at that point. But as they say all good things must come to an end.
We got on the road early in the morning to try and make a 700km journey to the city of Makambako, a small transit town in the western part of Tanzania. We were also quite pleased at having Molly and Steve in the car, as it made the ride far more entertaining (Sarah note: especially with it mostly just being the three of us for a majority of time so far - some new faces and conversation was very much appreciated), and we had a great time figuring out all there was to know about each other. Everything was going really smoothly until the boarder crossing into Tanzania.
First, we were stopped by a policeman at a roadblock and told that we had to “pay a fine,” i.e. bribe him, because we didn’t have reflective tape on the front grill of the car. We proceded to tell him, truthfully, that we spent all of our Malawian Kwatcha at the Nkhata Bay and that we only one dollar bills. He didn’t really seem interested in taking our one dollar bills and so he let us go with a stern warning to fix the problem. Little did we know what frustrations would await us at the border.
Once we arrived at the border we were told we had to pay a road tax, which wasn’t a problem as we had paid it in other countries as well. Unfortunately all we had left to pay with was four 5 dollar bills and the one dollar bills. The border officials refused to take the dollar bills as payment and an hour long debate ensued about how we were going to pay as this was all we had. It went so far as one of the offcials claiming we were trying to bring in counterfit bills and that we were trying to cheat him. We ended having to pay this money changer outside 12 dollars to get to two fives in order to pay the tax. Needless to say, this was definitely not the way I wanted to start the Tanzanian part of the trip.
However once we crossed the boarder it was smooth sailing to Makambako. It being a stop-over city for people making the trek from Mbeya to Dar we weren’t expecting much, and indeed the place we wound up crashing in for the evening (the Thai Lodge Hotel, I believe) was strange in the best sort of way. Bargaining for rooms, a tiny little restaurant, dollar beers, friendly people, a two hour wait for our food, and a whole lot of humorous of miscommunication. Still, we were all excited to be on our way to Dar es Salaam in the morning.
