Crtd 06-03-09 Lastedit

Remote Head Quarters Jinja

Wednesday 060308
So, I suddenly sat quietly in a lake view (Nile bay) hotel room of Triangle Annex Hotel, Jinja, Uganda. With only the dirty clothes I had been wearing, the pickup truck, motorcycle, saxophone (that is, all I had wanted to leave behind with a friend in Mwanza), a computer and a cell phone. In Mwanza, Tanzania my main men were my lawyer Malongo, my customs clearing agent Chila, well known from the Sika Struggle, and my captain Philemon. The aim of the operation: let the dhow leave Tanzania - legally, now the biggest of hurries was over - as soon as possible (now now in East African English) with my acting captain Philemon. Wherever he reaches the shore outside Tanzania I will join him on my motorcycle with armed security and pilot him to Jinja (I, like any other complete stranger with GPS and GPS calibrated maps - issued 1901, last update 1955!!! - in my laptop, could do that better than whoever sailed Lake Victoria all his life).
We have the brains, the tools and the legal rights, they have the ignorance, the unscrupulousness, the greed and the guns. The most curious week in my life. Within 7 days I have lost the dhow or it is in Jinja - I thought, but see the sequel.
Now, there is spare time for an attempt to improve the involvement of my country, The Netherlands.
Now it was time to get back to Netherlands Foreign Affairs with the "circumstances". I summarized the event of this Dhow Building Logbook page in two pages, ending with the 5 essential questions on which I have as yet not been given an answer:

	On whose initiative (with lies about machine guns) have I been arrested and jailed?
	On what grounds?
	On whose initiative did I receive a stamped ORDER TO LEAVE IN THREE DAYS in my passport?
	On what grounds?
	If the story of the involved "high authority in Dar Es Salaam" is true, who is it?

Off course, I have a full list of questions that is too big to charge Foreign Affairs with. Even those five would, I expected, not set him into motion unless I would tighten some screws on him. And indeed. Nothing happened. Will it be worth to set screws? Probably only a waist of time, because once you annoy them enough to act, they will do the wrong things. My dhow first. Israeli's? I have been told they are affordable disclaimer.
I had to leave Tanzania in three days, but nobody told me a new visitors visa would be refused if I would apply for it. Three immigration officers had taken me by force to a photo shop, this might be for a persona non grata document but nobody told me. Anyway, they paid.
So I could return soon to discuss with the Mwanza community what to do with the immigration office thugs. I know exactly who are the three initiating immigration officers. Mwanza Police is innocent, they have just been taken in by the immigration. Some powerful Tanzanian people will not be amused, especially:

	Mwanza Police (taken in, being stuffed by immigration with the story I had a machine gun),
	District Commissioner (not informed until by myself in a request for annulment, and passed in the hierarchical line up to Dar Es Salaam, probably the same holds for the Regional Commissioner, if the immigration story of "Dar es Salaam" is true, which still is to be verified),
	other responsible Tanzanians fully occupied with writing big official reports on how to create a good commercial climate in Mwanza (see everything ruined for many years by three or four monkeys blinded by greed).

Backfire, in case of no ignition, I am ready to light a match. Also I had first hand report of MYC members, and even a board member, being intimidated "not to help the mzungu". These intimidated club members fear because the commodore Oscar Munisi is a flag blown by the prevailing wind, but if they could be reassured, a cleanup would be considerably enhanced.
Naturally I get many phone calls and emails from disconcerted foreigners in Mwanza. They, I think, would like to hear something from the authorities officially in charge, who as it now seems, were largely passed by in this harass-arrest-jail-ban operation.
Can Tanzanian government officers harm the interest of their country to this extent and go unpunished? I am not a Tanzanian, I do not know, but I will surely follow the events, preferably with a cool white wine and a grilled fish on my boat here in Jinja.

Photo: balcony and view of my room alias operations control centre at Hotel Triangle Annex, with view on Lake Victoria (Nile bay, elevation 1260m, 1000m from Nile source).
I always thought you should find yourself something to do after retirement, but now, I decide I am exaggerating a little. 

Day 1: Wednesday March 8. I want to start working in my room but the power had gone off in the night while my laptop was on standby. In that mode, its battery got depleted. I went to the reception desk.
Yes, we have no power today.
Don't you have a generator?
Yes, but there is no fuel.
I have a car, let me take you to the fuel station.
There is some fuel, but it is not enough.
Then I'll take you to the fuel station to take more.
There is already someone going.
I now realize I have to do with a spic and span splendid lake side hotel with hundreds of rooms that tries to save $5 on generator fuel to loose its customers. I ask: OK when do you start your generator?
Tonight at six.
O, no you won't, on checking my room on entry I asked whether I had power, you said yes, I paid, so now you have power in ten minutes or you pay me back and I leave, or I go to police for fraud.
Ten minutes later I had power.
The shower remained cold, but since my last hot shower is more than half a year ago, that fails to annoy me.
After one day, my self organized room service stopped bringing receipts for my coffee thermos and doubled the price from $1 to $2 per thermos. Pretending to almost faint by hearing the news I cheerfully paid, keep your customer satisfied...
At the end of the day a 20 pages email with the relevant information and documents went off to Mwanza, for lawyer and clearing agent. Yes, the hotel has internet (about half the European dial up speed). Both lawyer and clearing agent have yahoo, but they wanted a fax. I remember this communication instrument from the history books, as I recall the relevant high school history test it came in as a mail method somewhere after the carrier-pigeon. Curious I went though Jinja town with a 20 page print of my email to see whether someone had managed to keep such a museum piece in operation, and yes, Sunset Hotel had. And it worked. It cost me $80. Then every hour some SMS messages in and out, phone calls, email. Make sure everybody knows everybody, knows the current action, knows what to report, which dangers and possible sabotage acts to expect from whom, which friend of mine held, and even advanced money needed etc..
Time to buy clean clothes from Jinja market. The very expensive (€5, photo above) grey shirt was, especially for the smoking customers, endowed with a cigarette burning hole shrewdly hidden for the customer to surprise him the first time he would wear it. Do not go back, they will say you made the hole yourself and you have you arrested for fraud, every monkey likes to arrest a Mzungu, you never know what he is ready to pay for his release, and they are too stupid to consider what happens if he starts using his money to buy other monkeys against them. If you could negotiate with the wasps, only a little sugar would be enough to make them decide to stay clear of you. The problem is what the wasp is NOT endowed with. So, if there is no brain to negotiate with, you can only kill or stay clear. With the nigger the same.
Clearing Agent Chila calls. He needs a meticulously itemized and valued clearing list. That is no problem: I have a headache creating near infinitely split up inventory list of all my property here, made on import from Europe for the Kampala customs (254 toothpicks, 3 roll of toilet paper etc. etc.), and "valuate" by attributing a random number sequence in Excel. Of course the sum of the roughly 3000 numbers should be something like $1000, so all cells values are automatically divided by the appropriate ratio to reach that sum. Paste values to MSWord. Seeing that list, very small letters to reduce pages and increase reading problems even above the limit set by the general  reading incompetence of customs officers (the job requirement is to be tribe of the president), they surely start to long for going home. That takes 20 minutes. This time I refuse to fax. Email, gentlemen, email only, this is 2006.
Somehow I had lost my nice little photo camera. I am sure I took it from the boat. Probably lost or stolen sleeping at the Sirara border between Kenya and Tanzania not properly closing a bag. For $200 I bought, in Kampala, a high resolution gadget taking photo's, video's with sound and high resolution audio files to an internal memory, the tape era is over. All in one!
Plan C is now active (A had been block the ban, B had been sail off with the dhow). At 2 Friends Restaurant & Bar, two friends, security men, come back, late night, from a row in town between two guards of two security companies, neither of them their own. It was over an orange. Both fired on the other. One of them got hit in the foot in such a way that the whole thing had to be amputated. After taking off their bullet free vests we started considering plan D (in case the dhow would get seized): a fast armed boat trip to tow the dhow out of Tanzanian waters. disclaimer Entebbe 2, but now with Entebbe as starting place. Quite affordable money wise, given the yield (one brand new 18 m sailing dhow/house boat, not really far from my personal liking).
Friday morning 060310 clearing agent Chila reports he will finish clearing "today". I do not believe what I am hearing. No sabotage? Captain Philemon deems his money insufficient to reach Uganda coast and call me from there. He wants TSh 100 000/= (€75). I call a friend willing to lend me twice that sum and give it to Philemon. At 16:00 hrs., closing time of the Tanzanian Revenue Authority for the weekend, Chila says one paper got stuck there. We'll have to finalize on Monday. I urge Philemon not to spare money for good security for the dhow (cost: €3 per watchman). But of course that is for the simple thugs only, not for police, immigration and other professional robbers and thugs, public and private (the two are known to work together). Whatever, an 18 m 9 ton dhow is hard to hide. Seizure is bound to be done with officials. The dhow's whereabouts will be known and legal steps will be possible (but naturally may very well bear little fruit).
As I already thought, except the Philemon group, everybody around the dhow had dropped everything out of his hands as soon as I was out of sight: Gabriel had gone home, Daniel does not want to build the small boat (for putting anchors and reaching the shore if difficult). That was Gabriel's assignment. Gabriel has gone home with the school fees and family support I gave him. Philemon gets $200 from a friend of mine willing to trust I'll pay him back. I first asked Philemon to retrieve $100 I gave to Daniel for expenses he does not need to make if he does not want to do anything, but Daniel says the money is "spent".

Saturday. 060311
Of course I call Philemon in the morning to hear about the dhow and his mood. The rest if the day is teeth grinding and waiting for Monday. Jouko helped me out inviting me for a round of golf [¹ low res. video with my new gadget, 2Mb].

Monday. 060313
This is the hearing day of my Land Tribunal court case (see the Kamkala Soap). Fortunately I had not forgotten it. I had texted Malongo on Sunday. He had it fixed for mention on 4/4/2006. That will be a good reason to apply for a fresh visitor's visa for Tanzania: "Gentlemen, I am summoned to your court, Tanzanian claimants want my money, not only do I have the politesse to attend, if I loose I will even pay! And now you do not let me in?"
My not even so old MECER laptop (proudly South African, a small sticker shouts, I carefully kept it) never succeeded to remember the date on restart, but worse: sometimes has a power interruption in throughput from battery/external power to the motherboard. Simply said: sometimes the bloody thing is as dead as a doornail. Shaking and tapping seized to help after Mwanza Police had a go on it under seizure. Kampala Indian Saini repaired it for me quite nicely, but then the Ctrl button had gone dead. Repair attempts of the Ctrl button led to a total loss of the keyboard.
I did not hit Saini. First of all, due to his charming Indian nod while speaking, my fist could miss the tip of his chin, second, he is small, peaceful and friendly, third, he is the best laptop repairman in Uganda, so I would SURELY not want to be left with number 2, fourth, I really believe that if Saini fucks up my MECER, everybody, wherever in the world would. I'll tell you the secret: Saini is gold. Saini is my man. Saini can fuck up my computer. If he wants, he can fuck up my next laptop too. I love Saini.
We took the HD out, screwed it in a $40 USB high speed external box. Down in the shop I bought a new Dell. And home I went, praising the LORD that this had not happened the day before when I processed the twenty pages for my boat's customs clearing and legal defense in Mwanza.
Removing all unsolicited software, advertisement, and little shit connecting you by internet to big shit nowadays takes one full day, I discovered. Can I send the bill to Dell? No. They can't pay me. I feel like a fish tracking and cutting all hooks and nets in its new pond. The worst monkeys in the world are the white ones. Not that they have a scary lot of brains, but they have annoyingly more than the niggers.
Dell forces you on McAfee virus protection. McAfee immediately makes clear that the old times when protection and mafia meant the same are not over. McAfee seized my entire computer. The virus scanner, quite naturally called a "suite", does nothing more, even less than Norton but pops up a control window looking like a Boeing 747 dashboard. For switching in Outlook Express, off line between two already virus scanned email folders, simply for looking what's there, McAfee wants 10 seconds. Then, it forces me to register on the internet. There is only one way to escape from this dialogue box ("dialogue!", funny word for this digital gun pointed at you): Ctrl-Alt-Del. Then uninstall McAfee quickly, before the bloody blocking message returns, and you can breathe as a free man. The entire shit prompted me to set a new desktop background.
But what a leap has been made in laptop development! "Don't forget your dhow, don't forget your dhow", I mumble while locking myself up in my hotel room doing nothing but trying out all new options,  playing with all enhanced versions of software.  Enjoying my music (I used my Mwanza period to copy all my vinyl records, audio cassettes and CD's to mp3-files) coming out of the Dell as may be not from a HiFi, but surely from a reasonable radio. Wireless LAN. If my GPS, the monitors of my boat electricity supply system, my printer, scanner and my new AV gadget, my depth meter and my autopilot could be properly configured on my wireless LAN network, my boat would only need wires for power supply, not anymore for monitoring, control or any other data traffic. Guess what: none of these 7 items has the obvious wireless LAN port built in, so they will all need an external wireless LAN box glued on. Hope they start selling the real tiny ones soon. And how about a small wireless LAN gadget that remotely modifies the autopilot's GPS course so I could steer even from another boat nearby? And how about web cam direction setter  (web cam with physical zoom 30x), and similar RPG direction setter with launch-and-reload button that would turn my dhow in a remote controlled warship? All this would certainly more expensive, but also much more fun than to keep bribing monkeys all the time disclaimer ! This Dell costs $1300, 10% of my dhow, but the pleasure of it as compared to the misery of that boat...OK let us think about that in two weeks.
Monday night at the dhow beach, digging in the chaos of boxes to find my travel documents and cigars, I gave up on my pills (anti depressives and beta blocker to prevent heart slight irregularities). Apart from dizziness, both mind and heart keep themselves remarkably well. Nevertheless I ask my Dutch pharmacy to send me a whole new set of pills with DHL. DHL however requires a doctor's statement on acceptance and another doctor's statement on delivery! The bureaucracy is too much for the pharmacy, they are ready to give the medicine to anyone who comes to collect it on my behalf and is willing to study and overcome the red tape intricacies of The Netherlands, DHL and Uganda. A good friend of mine volunteers. He manages to gets together all the authorities to be involved and gets the package out, including fresh cigars, mailing me a complete set of documents and long numbers and codes I will need to access the president of Uganda to ask him whether it may be permitted to DHL to hand over those pills to me so that I could swallow them though the throat belonging to TIN number....passport number....insurance number....DHL tracking number.....customs clearing form number.... etc etc etc.
The next day I sprint by motorcycle in the dirty dust of Kampala along the best pharmacies to find one selling my pills. Yes! They do! No prescription needed. 30% of the Dutch price.
One day later I visit the best hospital of Jinja. It is neat, clean, well equipped and the doctors are white so there is some chance they have brains. I ask them what they can do, conclude I would never want to have done with my body what they can't do, after all, whichever insurance we have, we all have to die of something, take a local Ugandan health insurance covering that hospital, for 10% of my foreign health insurance in the Netherlands, and I am a free man. I save money for one more Cuban cigar a day from now.
Of course, as I expected, DHL Jinja only asked identification and a signature, and I had my pills.
No! Two more Cuban sigars! Suddenly a decision, there is no better expression for it, comes over me: I will use these pills as a reserve stock only. If heart and brain keep behaving as nicely as they do now, I will not take them anymore. Now I am not just a free, but a free free man (including my successful escape from the McAfee mafia: free free free [1. health insurance, 2. pills, 3. wrong virus scanner]). Philosophical question: once you escaped from everything, will you be completely free? Whatever, I do not mind trying. Everybody sooner or later has to. It's called death.
Phone from my lawyer Malongo. Daniel is in his office and claims TSh 2 000 000/=. If he does not get it he will sue me and block the departure of the dhow pending the court case sentence. That sentence might come off several years from now. Malongo judges that with the contract in his hand, Daniel has a chance to succeed. My over TSh 5 000 000/= supplies in kind and wages, hence my claim that Daniel owes me 5 minus 2 =  TSh 3 000 000/=, is not properly documented, I might win, but not tomorrow. All Malongo sees I could do is deduct the contract penalty of TSh 300 000/= for delay and now just pay Daniel the remainder of his claim: TSh 1 700 000/=. Apart from me being used to be advised by others to pay (as much as I like to advise others to pay), Malongo is probably right. I speedwire TSh 1700000 (Euro 1200) to the friend of mine who is already in charge of throwing my cash around in Mwanza. Malongo shall pick up a cheque, cash in at the bank and pay Daniel.
Now Daniel will owe me the full value of my supplies in kind and paid wages of TSh 5 000 000/=. And since in the Malongo contract he declared the wood fraud report to be entirely correct, compensation for 19 mninga logs @ TSh 80 000/= makes an additional TSh 1 500 000/= totaling Euro 4500. And my plan to have mercy with him now of course is abandoned without remorse. Of course he will be unable to pay, so I will seriously try to have him jailed, if I fail I will give him three knee shots. disclaimer

Wednesday 060315
Walking from the tee at the 14th hole I call Chila. He answers for a change, explains all delay in verification from the verificator officer pretending to be busy until he got offered some cash. That had been done now, we could expect him at the dhow early tomorrow morning and the captain should expect to be able to leave Bwiru beach Mwanza at 10:00 hrs. tomorrow, which would make customs clearing a ten days job of everybody phoning, texting and emailing everybody several times a day, while the officers are waiting for their bribe. I probably could have been out ten days ago if I had paid $1000. Even those armed police guys at the beach that made me decide to leave the dhow and flee Tanzania by car could well have been satisfied with, say, $200 each. I is a serious possibility that that exactly was why they were there. It is a matter of supply and demand. But OK, now I am told to expect $200 customs, $100 clearing agent and a bribe, the amount I do not know but will probably not even be $100. Then Daniel's ransom TSh 1 700 000/= and we go. And now Daniel, and some immigration officers can expect a rough ride because I  will spare no ill deeds to crush them. And that's a gratifying hobby I do not mind to spend a few thousand dollar on. I still do not believe the dhow is off 10:00 hrs tomorrow, but I have no indication that we have to do with anything else than the normal depressing African customs clearing shit.

Thursday 060316
10:00 hr.: no verificator appeared. 11:00 hrs, Chila: verificator is "on his way to the boat". 18:00 hrs: no trace of a verificator. The guy is probably waiting to see if more money comes out of this than what has been offered. Then we shall have to wait till he urgently needs money an decides to be satisfied with what has been offered. Worse possibility: Chila did not only offer, but already paid. Still worse: Chila paid someone only pretending to be a verificator. 19:00 Chila answers my call for a change: customs is too lazy to verify. We'll get the documents though one of Chila's men. But this man does not report. At the end of customs clearing day 10, we're still a sitting duck on Bwiru beach, Mwanza, Tanzania.

Tuesday 060321
Another customs officer got air of the case, insists on a verification en requires us to bribe him. Then finally, after 13 days of hectic remote control from Hotel Triangle Annex, Jinja, my captain Philemon has all his papers to sail out of Tanzania.