Eat the Rich

the EAC’s deputy secretary was a BMW. In the executive secretary’s parking space was a new Mercedes sedan. These plenipotentiaries are members of what Kiswahili-speaking Africans call waBenz, “People of the Fancy German Cars.” So the comedy of errors has a happy ending—for some folks. And not for others. When John isn’t guiding, he and his wife live in northwestern Tanzania, on an informally purchased farm near the Burundi border. They have two grown sons and did have two young daughters, but the five-year-old girl had died a couple months before John and I met. She had malaria. John took her to the local dispensary, where she was injected with a massive dose of something, and she went into a coma. When the girl had been unconscious for five days, medics at the dispensary said she needed a tracheotomy. The nearest surgeon was a hundred kilometers away. John told the medics to radio ahead and hired a car. The drive took all day. By the time John and his daughter arrived, the surgeon—the only surgeon; in fact, the only doctor —at the hospital had left. “Oh, the doctor goes home around 5,” said the hospital staff. “Go get him!” said John. And they said, “We don’t know where his house is.” John hired another car and searched for hours. Meanwhile, his daughter died. I flew to the capital of Tanzania, wherever that may be. “In 1973 it was decided to move the capital city from Dar es Salaam on the coast to Dodoma in the center. . . a dry and desolate area,” says the East Africa Handbook. The move to Dodoma is “anticipated around the turn of the century,” says the Globetrotter Travel Guide to Tanzania. “Dodoma is now the official capital of Tanzania, displacing Dar es Salaam,” says the Brant Guide to Tanzania. “Some government offices have been transferred to Dodoma,” says the CIA’s 1997 World Factbook. And an article in the February 20, 1997, Dar es Salaam Guardian begins, “Dodoma branch members of the Tanzania Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture have asked the government to clarify a minister’s statement that Dodoma is not the country’s legally recognized capital.” Anyway, I flew to Dar es Salaam. A jolly soldier rummaged through my carry-on baggage, airily dismissing my pocketknife as a possible weapon and telling me that the woman operating the metal detector was his sister and would love to go along. I was ushered into the “boarding lounge” for the requisite two- or three-hour wait before anything airplane-like happens in Tanzania. Warm soft

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