Today, we tried to withdraw funds from local banks.  This was not fun.

ATMs are guarded by men with automatic rifles.  Rifles that they constantly stroke with their hands rather than keeping them at their sides. 

We walked up to an ATM, with three armed men watching our every move.  We read the instructions, had a conversation about what we were about to do (we’re slowly becoming Tanzanians), punched in the magic numbers, and out came a large wad of cash.  This is not impressive, since ATMS dispense small bills.  

We folded the wad in half, stuck our ATM card back in and repeated the process three times.  Why?  Because the machines are not able to dispense so many bills at one time.

Meanwhile a small line formed, which also functioned as a small crowd.  They were all wondering how much money these crazy foreigners were trying to withdraw anyway.

Apparently Tanzanians are frustrated by this.  You could understand why.  If you needed to buy something expensive, like say land, you would need a very large thing to carry the money around.

All this because we bought a pickup truck for Mama Lucy today.  Yay!

manka This entry was posted on Friday, December 15th, 2006 at 5:48 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.