SIM card, home school, hot Springs

We slept in ! No planned activities, other than washing our clothes. Well, that is if you don't count home schooling, which you must, and the uniquely Tanzanian experience of getting a SIM card.

The children had home schooling from 10 am to 1 pm. This is going well, but it's tough on Flo. In school, they don't constantly make demands of the teacher. At "home" with Flo, they do "mum", "mum", [repeat 1000x].

In parallel, I went to get two local SIM cards. I came back 3 hours later with 1. Why? Well, a passport is not enough. They need to take a photo and fingerprints. They write into an app every single detail of your passport and visa. This job is delegated to a junior who repeatedly fucks up. I try to explain my name is Ian not LAN, but with initially no success. I eventually take the phone from her and do the entries myself. (Precision is important because if the name spelling is not exactly the same it gets rejected and you start again).

Whole process in shop took 2 hours 15 min. Only 3 in queue in front of me. For comparison, in Egypt it took 5 minutes, and in Kenya 10 minutes.

Also in Tanzania most things are cash only, even sophisticated companies like Airtel.

Then I say to Flo, leaving to come back in 5, but it took me 30 mins why? I tried to take a tuk-tuk like I had on the way in for 500 Tanzanian Shillings, or about 25c. But the price rose 10x to 5000 and although that's still only $2.5 , I don't encourage rip offs, so I walked back.

The children had worked hard, Flo too and I was exhausted by a SIM card, so we decided to go swim at the nearby hot ( more like 30C) springs. More than warm enough, and a lot of fun playing Tarzan by swing from a tree into the water. See Flo's blog for more.Read more