Everything works out in the end

This is an old entry, which I had meant to post at the end of August. It is equally relevant today.

I remember well what it was like back home to send an important document from one end of the country to the next. You put the document in a yellow envelope and seal it, and a guy in a yellow shirt comes to pick it up, put it in his yellow van and give it to another yellow-dressed person, who will ensure it gets to your destination by the specified time.

If at any point along the way you wonder where said document is, you can log onto a yellow website and see that your package was scanned into Collierville, TN at 10:43am, and that it weighs 1.0 lbs.

It all seems so easy!

So in August, I had a plane ticket which I needed for an upcoming flight (the original one shipped to me from the US never arrived, so another was issued and shipped to Dar es Salaam - approx. 800 miles from where I live).

A colleague of mine agreed to help send that ticket to me. The method: go to the airport, meet a stranger who was taking that day's flight to Kigoma, and ask that person to carry it for me.

They assured me that it was more reliable than a courier. And after all, couriers in the US are strangers, too.

I received a phone call on the appointed day. "She goes by the name of 'Mama,'" I was told, a moniker assigned to nearly every woman my age or older. "She has your number."

I sent a friend to the airport with a sign (I was all day in a workshop), hoping to get the ticket before Mama disappeared into the countryside. Somehow my friend did not cross paths with Mama, and I envisioned my plane ticket bumping its way down the road to Kasulu.

Then a mysterious tip: a woman in a white Land Rover (a common vehicle here) was in front of the bank, asking about my boss - whose name was on the envelope.

I ran. And once I arrived, I approached every white Land Rover I could find: "Excuse me, is there a Mama here?"

And finally I saw her. Exiting the market. Somehow I just knew. Maybe it's because she was wearing yellow.

"Mama?" I asked.

"Yes," she replied.

And soon we were hugging and I was holding the envelope in my sweaty hands.

My friends and I have a saying: in Tanzania, everything works out in the end. There may not be a website to track status, or a yellow van to chase, but the systems here generally work - and are often cheaper by comparison.

Just when you think there's no hope, you get a phone call, and a stranger helps make the impossible happen. It seems like a pretty good system to me.