headquarters. I found the correct person to sell me the Statistical Abstract and national accounts summary, but he explained that what I really wanted was the Rolling Plan and Forward Budget for Tanzania for the Period 1996/97–1998/99 Volume I. “Stacks and stacks of them have just been printed,” he said. He didn’t have any, however. He sent me, with Dungeons and Dragons directions, through the building to an office with its number Magic Markered on the door. Here, another bureaucrat did have the budget. His desk was covered with copies. “Stacks and stacks of them,” he pointed out, but he wasn’t authorized to sell me one. “You should go to the planning commission,” he said. Although that’s where I thought I was. I got in the car and told Nzezele that we needed to go to the planning commission. He drove me the thirty feet there. At the planning commission a puzzled security guard, a puzzled secretary, and someone else who was puzzled considered my request, and after a closed-door consultation with a boss, they pointed me down a long hall containing several motorbikes and a lot of automobile tires. I emerged into a courtyard with extraordinarily grimy paint. Something good was cooking nearby. I climbed a couple of flights of creaking, swaying stairs, crossed a shaky breezeway, and found myself in the office of the head of environmental planning. A rattling air conditioner was creating a dank environment. He told me he had “only a very few” budget copies. I told him— just between ourselves—about the fellow in the next building who had stacks and stacks of them on his desk. He made a note. I may have set off an enormous turf war within the Tanzanian bureaucracy. Anyway, the head of environmental planning said that he couldn’t give me a budget. I looked disappointed, and he immediately offered to loan me his personal copy on the condition that I bring it back the next morning. So I spent a festive night at the Sheraton copying Tanzanian budget information into a spiral notebook. Not that I was missing much. The nightlife in Dar es Salaam consists of a few tourists being robbed of their running shoes on the downtown beach. Besides, contained in the Rolling Plan and Forward Budget were further glimmers of hope. Right on page two the document states, “The government is being reoriented to play the role of facilitation of development other than continue being seen as ‘provider’ of development.” The English may have gotten out from under them, but this is still a clear explanation of what government should
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online