The Sika Struggle

Summary of an over three months battle to get hold of the deck caulking kit SIKAFLEX 290 DC

A. Ordering from Sika Ltd.

Nov 18 Email (address found on Sika International website as my order point) to: Sika Nairobi,  first enquiry
Nov 29 Email to: Sika head office SA, please reply
Dec 07 Email to: Sika SA: Please reply, second request
Dec 09 Email from: Sika SA, Dear Bert, I have not been able to view the attachments you sent, could you send them to me directly please. In the meantime I am forwarding our marine manual.
Dec 13 Email to Sika Sa: Thank you for replying! Here my attachments again Bert hamminga
Dec 21 Email to Sika Sa: questions on technical details and how to pay
Dec 30 Email to Sika Sa: URGENT !  Please reply!
Jan 06  Email from: Sika SA: Quotation Sikaflex
Jan 17 Email to Sika Sa: Quotation unclear on prices, quantities, VAT and shipping and currency
Jan 22 Email to Sika Sa: Please reply
Jan 26 Email to Sika Sa: order, further questions on shipping and payment
Jan 27 Email to Sika Sa: Repeated request for SWIFT (BIC) of your bank
Jan 30  Email from: Sika SA: Reply: Herewith Swift code
Feb 1 Email to Sika Sa: memorandum of payment
Feb 06  Email from: Sika SA: Good day Sir Thank you for the order  We have received your payment, DHL Danzas are collecting these goods from our office today. Will advise flight details tomorrow. Please forward me a contact person and Tel number for collection in Dar es Salaam
Feb 8 Email to Sika Sa: Dear Mr. Shaik, As I have informed you earlier. The shipping address for my order is Lambertus hamminga c/o MYC Mwanza  I have never mentioned Dar es Salaam and have no connections there. DHL is operating in Mwanza. I am the contact person in Mwanza. My telephone remains  + 255 (0) 748-847806 Thank you, Bert hamminga 
Feb 08  Email from: Sika SA: Good day Thank you for the information Your order has been sent to Haz packing , as the prima is Hazardous, we are trying to get the next available flight to Mwanza. As yo know there are not much flight out to Mwanza  Will keep you posted ,and will fax invoices and airway Bill once received  Best Regards RESHAAD SHAIK EXPORT CO-ORDINATOR
Feb 14 Email to Sika Sa: your fax with shipping details illegible, please send full page version
Feb 20 Email to Sika Sa: repeat please full page version of freight data fax:
Subsequently, on Feb 20,  Sika started to try faxing to my mobile phone. I called them, told them the fax number had remained Nr. .....  of Hotel Tilapia, but the faxing on my mobile phone continued the rest of the day. I had to switch off my cell phone. 

B. Getting it out of Tanzanian customs officers' claws

At the end of the afternoon Mwanza Yacht Club is phoned by shipping handler Danza. Sika has arrived. I drive to the airport and ask for Danza. Officials pretend not to know and send me to customs. I enter and show the name on my freight paper. With a quick movement, the officer snatches it out of my hands and starts to study the paper in detail. I stretch my hand to receive my document and ask again for Danza.
Wait, he says, reading the paper.

About "Wait" If you are doing some job and are spotted by or needing - for instance as a government official - a negro, you will often hear him saying one word, "Wait!", with the agitation of a predator spotting a prey. "Wait!" never means anything good for you, though he (this is mainly a negro adult male thing) thinks it will bring something good for him.

What, wait, I say, I am just asking where is Danza, if I need you, I will come back to you.
We have to follow the procedures.
I decide not to knock him unconscious, nor even to grab my paper out of his hands, and follow him to what turns out to be Danza.
My cardboard box with 60 kit cartridges, primer, tape and a tape applier is shown by Danza people.
Open it, he commands.
I do not understand why every male adult Tanzanian who even thinks he has some power starts to behave like a monkey, I say.
Open it please.
Thank you for your politeness.
Danza people stand ready with a knife and open.
My monkey starts an intensive research of all items and goes into a one hour deep interview on theory, methods and principles of caulking.
In his office a number of thick manuals are studied. I have to pay 55% or $700.
Please write it down here, I ask, I will have your calculation checked with TRA Mwanza. I they agree I'll come to pay.
My move causes some unrest, but not a really serious one, so I start to fear my monkeys are not far off the mark with their outrageous extortion attempt. With my data I leave the premises and return to Mwanza after satisfying myself the box is sealed again and in safe hands.
Feb 21 I go to my hardware shop Mandji (no relation to Mandjit, the owner of Hotel Tilapia) to ask whether they have a clearing agent at Mwanza airport. They have: Tobias, Interfreight.
At the airport, Tobias is not around but Fred from Interfreight can do clearing and offers to do some "chitty chatty". What would I be ready to offer?
After having recovered from this baffling question, I say: half of it.
Fred is ready to go to my monkeys with my offer. I wait on a bar terrace outside.
It takes quite some time before Fred returns. I will be too late to see Chief Immigration Officer Msellem to have the business visa made he advised me to apply for. Msellem's phone is off. I decide to go tomorrow morning.
Unfortunately, Fred says, we have to make the clearing papers. You see, the guys fear because you were going to their bosses. I told them you had not done it, and had realized in time that the boss sometimes is not the best solution. But we have to make the papers. We have to see in what categories we can squeeze your items to get the price down. Leave the papers here and call me tomorrow morning.
Fred is not in a hurry to get back to his office. He is agreeable terrace company. With an American accent obtained from jobs at oil companies he discusses with me some issues of neurology, religion, politics, and satisfies new questions I have concerning the structure of East African crime and how to stay friends with all kinds of shady government officers. Counter intimidation, which I had started to believe to be indispensable through to my steadily increasing skill in that art (see standoffs) seems not always to be the best way. I shall have to learn some other approaches.

Wednesday 22 After release from jail I get my cell phone back. The first I call is Fred. He is ill. I decide to wait.

Thursday 23 Fred still ill. I decide to act. I contact a man called Chila, given to me by Tobias, my original contact from hardware dealer Mandji. All the same company. Chila turns out to be the boss, and I turn out even to have met him. He is a Mwanza Yacht Club member. According to his calculations, the $700 my customs boys had tried to charge me was 30% above the official mark.
Friday 24
Early morning. Chila hangs me an airport pass and put my money, his calculation, on the table. The money comes back to me, the customs mount a motorcycle with three to go for copying Chila's papers. I have my trophies in my hands, ready to hit them hard: a the custom's assessment by Chila and the monkey's customs bill 30% higher.
But, I will have to wait.
13:00 hrs. I return at the airport site. Chila is out. The customs monkeys tell me that for bad behaviour I will have to go to Mwanza TRA (Revenue) head office. Chila explains me by phone that it is because the airport boys are not trusted with cashing in amounts over $500. We have a laugh.
SIKA had seen no reason to add my name to the address. It simply was Mwanza Yacht Club. Now, I was forced to take the MYC manager to the airport to identify himself for receiving the packet. But that still seemed far ahead.
15:00 hrs, Mwanza TRA. I enter a second hour of deep interview on interview on theory, methods and principles of caulking, with a man of Chila and a man of the Mwanza TRA head of customs, Wilson. After an hour, Wilson decides primer should be called paint, kit should be called paste, to avoid problems. It is 16:00 hrs TRA bedtime for the weekend. We shall continue next week.
Monday 27: I phone Chila. He will call back. I phone Chila in the evening. He will call back..
Tuesday 28: Morning: I should immediately meet Hamadi, a man of Chila, at TRA. On my arrival by motorcycle 3 minutes later Hamadi starts to search for a man. He is off for lunch. Hamadi would like to have a lunch too. We shall meet two hours later ("after lunch"), same place.
On arrival Hamadi starts to find his man and succeeds after half an hour. With a paper from this man we go to a bank to pay. The fee has risen back to the original $700. Our bank counter features a one hour line, but I have Hamadi in the line and can do some shopping.
Hamadi takes the papers to the airport and calls me at 17:00. MYC manager Rafa�l, on whose refusal I would have to get back in correspondence with SIKA South Africa, is ready to join me. Does not even ask money. Hamadi does: $100. If I want a receipt I should come back tomorrow.

Business in Africa. At Tuesday, 28th of February 2006, 17:43:34 hrs, after 8 days of almost full time clearing work, paying a fair ransom to Tanzania, and 102 days after the start of my operation to have the kit in Mwanza, I am the happy owner and holder of a small cardboard box with 60 cartridges of a most ordinary kit, some primer, some tape and a plastic tape applier. Do you still wonder why Africa is poor?

Wednesday 1 Phone Chiller to report I paid Hamadi (you never know), and thank him for his service.

Epilogue
Had I waited with my SIKAFLEX order for the deck to be near finishing, the SIKA problems would have caused a three month's delay of the entire dhow building operation that is, until June 2006. I did calculate correctly that I needed 65 pieces of 310 ml cartridges of kit. SIKA SA advised me to take 3 bottles of primer. Fortunately I accidentally got the stock and shipping manager on the phone who advised me to add a bottle. The man feared further direct contact and did not give his phone. In the end, I turned out to need 7 bottles. They simply do not know where in their manuals to find the ratio of primer to kit - this is a hardwood special kit, so mine is the only application! Of course, I did not engage in another month's ordeal for that primer and used transparant two component epoxy paint from the streets of Jinja. The bond braker tape did not glue, so we threw it in the lake and used ordinary paint edge tape. The KIT it should be said, looks very good.

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