Big Losses

January 8, 2018, Monday

It was such a relief to have a nearly normal night’s sleep and wake up in a nice, quiet tropical retreat. We ordered breakfast out on the garden terrace and took our time enjoying the beauty of the lawn, trees, and flowers while I had my scrambled eggs and toast and John his Spanish omelet. We both had a fruit plate of perfect mango, watermelon, and papaya slices. I savored the ubiquitous AfriCafe instant coffee, which preceded Starbucks’ VIA and, in my opinion, tastes better. John had tea with jam on his toast, and all was very right with our world.

Once breakfast was over, we migrated about 15 feet on the terrace to the sofa and chairs setup for visiting or reading. John chose to read and I to work on my email. All of a sudden Ray, our good friend whose children I am trying to get through school, showed up and our perfect world went berserk. Ray was super ebullient and expected me to give him the nearly $2000 he needed to pay today for the school fees for his three children, Priskilla (14), Goodluck (12), and Anita (8).  I, on the other hand, was shocked almost speechless because I had already sent him the money in mid-December. We had at least 15 minutes of going back and forth about what had or hadn’t happened and I showed him the emails I had gotten from him and the ones I had sent him with the Western Union numbers he needed to claim the money. Ray immediately picked up that someone had hacked into one of our email accounts and swindled me. As he said, “But, no madam that is not an email from me. Look, the English is too good.” So, because of both my innate trust of Ray and my failure to recognize that someone might have usurped his account, I had sent the fees to some crook. Ray and John think they are going to the police to follow up on this because the crook would have had to present some official looking identification documents to get the money out of Western Union.

Poor Ray was in tears. I was so discombobulated with fatigue and disbelief that I just didn’t feel much at all. Instead, I focused on how to handle the very pressing problem of three children who would be unable to start school tomorrow unless their fees were paid today. John and I always bring some US dollars with us because there are times when payment for services or certain items needs to be made in dollars. I got out all the dollars I could from my stash (I kept $50 for the taxi fare back to the airport in March.) and John did the same. Between us, we had just enough to give Ray, who took off to the bank to place payments in each of the three school accounts. Obviously, we’ll discuss this whole fiasco more soon. However, as John pointed out we did save $1000 on our tickets by flying through Dubai, so our loss isn’t as great as it could have been.

The great School Fee Swindle kept us awake and perky all morning, and we decided to keep ourselves awake by taking a taxi out to Njiro, a nearby suburb, to the shopping center there. Do not think of a shopping center at home, but rather a partially vacant clump of small shops and restaurants with a courtyard in the center. (We sometimes treat ourselves with the noon meal on Sundays since the Indian food in particular is superb.) Today, John ordered Indian food, and I ordered a Greek salad from an Australian restaurant. After lunch we entered the super expensive grocery store where one can buy lemon curd straight from England and made a few modest purchases to tide us over for a day or so. We were forced to do our shopping at the Village Market because the only real supermarket in Arusha, Nakumat, has closed down and vanished. Now, I will have to go from one little store to another searching for items, and my menus will depend on what I can discover on some dark shelf in a crowded little shop.

After we returned from Njiro, we were able to move from the temporary apartment  in which we were first placed into the apartment we normally stay in. There are advantages and disadvantages to both places, but all in all, I like the bathroom better in our regular place because the shower is not right on top of the toilet, and it has a microwave. Mazo also put in a new TV box for us so that we can now get MSNBC and BBC instead of just FOX News, Chinese channels, Bollywood programming, and several hundred Swahili channels carrying everything from bizarre soap operas to health-and-wealth evangelists. Hearing the news from home is not particularly edifying, but it helps us keep up with the questions the Tanzanians ask us. They already know all about Fire and Fury, for example.

Around 6:00 p.m. I went outside to see if Mama Kundayo was waiting for a visit, and indeed she was. In fact, she had been waiting since 5:00 and was afraid maybe I would not show up. We moved to our regular spot under the big tree at the side of the parking area, and began what turned out to be a nearly 3-hour catch up session. She insisted on ordering me a glass of red wine and later sent her grandson Sydney down the lane to buy us some ears of freshly roasted corn. So, we gnawed on good, strong corn, and discussed our families and politics as we always do. Some of the time, Beatrice, the worker on call this evening, came and interpreted for us, but there were times when we just made do with mixed English-Swahili and motions. Eventually, John and Mazo came to join us and took over our conversation with a raucous debate on whose country had the worst president.

John and I decided we didn’t need dinner after all the corn, so we each just ate a banana and then made a few calls to the States on our Magic Jack, which worked perfectly tonight. It was then that I suddenly realized I had not seen my camera since we arrived at Kundayo. We had completely emptied our suitcases this afternoon when we moved into our apartment and re-organized ourselves. The camera had been packed in my carry on bag, which never left my sight except when we were having breakfast in Dubai. That is absolutely the only place I was physically separate from it for anytime at all. Proving a theft seems impossible, so I think I’m ending a day which started with a huge loss with another big loss. Tomorrow has to be a better day!