When my brother and I were in Dar for the 4th of July, we tracked down the Bangladeshi consulate to see if my brother could speak to some Bangladeshis and we could have some crazy Bangla-Swahili discussions. The Honorary Consular Officer was not Bangladeshi, but he directed us to a few of the 6 or 7 Bangladeshis in Dar, one of whom was just around the corner from our hotel. This Bangladeshi then took us to meet a few others who were scattered close by. We ended up in a little bites shop, and a nice gentleman there bought us some cokes and talked to my brother in Bangla for a while (If you’ve seen how some people in Dar are surprised when an mzungu starts speaking Swahili, you can imagine the jaw-drop when one starts going off like an Mhindi). He handed us a nice business card on expensive paper, and said we should stay in touch.
Fast forward to today, and I’m cleaning up the house, and come across a newspaper from a couple of days ago. The lead story was about the scandal erupting around the $170+ million contract for emergency power generators. Weeks past the deadline, the generators have still not been delivered, and the winning-company apparently only just now officially registered with the relative authorities in Tanzania, and is not registered in it’s US headquarters in Texas. The name of the company stuck in my head, and I just couldn’t shake it. Later, I was cleaning out my travel wallet before I left for Mtwara. I pulled out a business card and did a double take: It was from the company that won the contract for the generators, the man who bought us those Cokes is the manager of the company.
Details of the deal and what went wrong are still unknown, and the generators could show up at any moment, so I don’t want to judge, but it feels a little like I had drinks with Ken Lay of Enron.
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