Tanzanian Reflections
State of BPP: [L:1234567abcdefghi - T:1234]

Even the last items of the L: (local) side of the BPP (Bloody Plobrem Panel) are greyed now. What's left is the BPP's  T: (Tanzanian) side.

T:1 Immigration
 
I still do not know why I have been given the order to leave Tanzania. After my midnight arrest at gunpoint, they searched my property meticulously, opening every peanut butter pot (though they did not know about my container). I felt this was mainly in the hope to find illegal arms. In vain. The subsequent grilling was exclusively about the difference between building and buying a boat. They clearly hoped "building" was illegal under a visitor's visa, and hoped to be able to claim I was "building", not "buying". But after I answered their grilling question about the difference between building and buying ("one is done with screws, the other with money, gentlemen"), they lost courage. While grilling me, each one in turn - and each one many times -  took a close look at my visa. No forge, alas.
Disappointment at Mwanza Immigration: no weapons, no title ("buying/building") for extortion by selling another type of visa, no forged visa, .
They stamped an "order to leave" in my passport anyway, but abstained from giving a reason. Later, on the desk of the District Commissioner, where I went for appeal, I thought I saw a print of my web page "arrested". If so, they had taken it from my seized computer. This means it can only have surfaced at the very end of the rough ride during the search in my my laptop, after all decisions were made: the decision of Mwanza Immigration to let police have a midnight go at me with AK47's, to jail me, to search me, to grill me, to seize property. So it cannot explain the gentlemen's drive. What can have been that drive? Money, naturally, but did they expect to get it from me bribing myself out of their claws or had someone else already paid me to take me in?

There is only one possibility of the latter kind. A connection with the Land Tribunal case. Let me consider it. My problems with the TSh 2 520 000/= money theft out of my room in the KST house of the Land Tribunal case, where Gerald Kamkala is the only viable suspect, and the violent reaction of his sister Jane, in which she shouted what I thought was just a hysteric threat: �if you want to stay in Tanzania�..�, was three weeks before the brutal but �fruit�less November arrest by immigration. Her brother Gerald might have judged I came annoyingly close to tracing him as the thief (I have never found conclusive proof, but I feel sure he was the one -  though I never told anybody). Further details: Money Stolen
The Land Tribunal Case was filed for KST by Jane at the end of January. My midnight arrest at gunpoint was February 21. That was one day after the first hearing of the Land Tribunal, that is, exactly in the days when Jane learned about our legally well taken Land Tribunal defense note, in which we pleaded the case to be rejected for the obvious reason that at the day of the summons to leave my room, I was already out..
Thus: we may consider the possibility that it was Jane who sent immigration to the Daniels dhow yard in Bwiru (no routine patrol destination for immigration!) in November. That is was Jane who send the Land Tribunal with a summons to the dhow yard end on January, and Jane who sent the Police (clearly through Immigration) to Bwiru bay at for a midnight arrest at gunpoint in February 21, after she and her people might have read our Land Tribunal defense and decided they needed an alternative way not to loose the case.
Later on I had an astonishing conversation with a reliable source who is in Mwanza for a long time. This person asked me, after hearing my entire immigration harassment story, whether I had any problems with anyone. I thought a bit, not really seeing the relevance at the time, and said: I have problems with Jane. Then he said: �then you might well be the fourth she tries to kick out of the country, thus far only the third one failed.�  Her method seems a combination of going with TSh 20 000/= (� 14) to Immigration and giving them a Kamkala family contact in Dar es Salaam.
As for the Kamkala network, I know there is one Kamkala uncle who recently lost the race for a parliament seat for Bukoba, or some part of Bukoba. He seems to have connections in Dar es Salaam government circles. I have met him. His mouth makes a lot of headless noise, he is surely even below the intelligence I would guess you need to get somewhere in Dar es Salaam, but he might have had, or have gotten the disposal of the money required for this trick, which I gather is not a big deal if you just stole TSh 2 520 000/=  from the target who is closing in on your neck. In the Netherlands this would be material for the plaintiff to consider a criminal investigation. But this is Tanzania.

After having considered this possibility of sponsors setting Mwanza Immigration in motion, I have to say I think it is unlikely and surely irrational. The suing cost Dutchman Kees van Vianen's Kamkala connections TSh 300 000/= (� 210), that is, 15 times the apparent price of Mwanza Immigration to kick a mzungu out of Tanzania. They claimed that cost in the Land Tribunal case, and, since I had already left the room I was summoned to leave, the only issue in the case was the case's cost. Would I, after having been kicked out of Tanzania, pay my fine - if Jane could counter the legal odds and bribe or force the Land Tribunal to sentence me to paying it? Doubtful indeed! So, why invest  � 210 in a court case - to retrieve by a verdict in the far future - if at the same time you spend � 14  to quickly kick the guy out? If you kick out, you don't sue.
Yet, I do not want to completely exclude Jane did it: brains are small indeed, have great difficulties even to count and calculate, and being a powerless victim of her own rage, the few she has to work with could well have been seen their access to her consciousness blocked. So, she might well have confused the two strategies, both meeting her blind urge to strike, and thus might have set them both in motion without seeing the consequences. Further details: The Kamkala Soap Index Page

Concluding: it is not clear who directed Mwanza Immigration as far as my dhow in Bwiru Bay to hunt for whites with money, but that could have been any fisherman fearing competition (I've heard such precedents). Such a person could even get things going "on credit" by informing some secret server informer you have at any street corner in Tanzania. It might also very well have been a member of Mwanza Yacht Club, the place where I thought I could openly talk about my dhow, but which, I discovered too late, is lethally infected by a thug-membership, up into the board. Nyerere (TZ pres. 1962-85) had a Soviet style security network set up by Soviet advisers. The genetic African negro predator instinct makes such a system find a lot of enthusiast supporters in any African country, so, naturally, while in the Russian home it is on its way down, in Tanzania this abject Soviet system of officially organizing neighbours' and friends' feuds is still alive and kicking under the present Tanzanian government. The informer goes to Immigration, Immigration tries to make some trouble to get money, this fails, immigration gets annoyed, immigration goes to police, police waves a bit with guns at the mzungu's midnight bed, he pays, the whole chain gets its share. But this time... he did not pay!

But neither is he ready to do anything else. Hence T: 1 is out. State of BPP: [L:1234567abcdefghi - T:1234]
 
T:2 Shipyard contractor Daniel
 
My lawyer had advised me to pay Daniel another 1.7 million from me on leave of the dhow from Mwanza. The lawyer thought the papers did not prove well enough he already owed me 3.3 million and might succeed have the boat withheld. So, I paid the ransom, and Daniel is now owing me 5 million (� 3500). Witnesses can testify my expenses on Daniel�s behalf on wages, wood and hardware for finishing the dhow. Daniel signed weekly lists of expenses. Daniel also confirmed by signature, in his contract at a lawyer's office the disappearance of some 20 logs of mninga wood after arrival in May 2005. The value of those is about TSh 1 600 000/=. Then, Daniel took the opportunity of the dhow waiting for clearance to steal from the ship. My captain Philemon, a loyal young worker Doi, and even Daniel�s brother Gabriel can witness in detail which items Daniel stole, and where they were surfacing later. In Tanzania Shillings, this is in the millions in terms of replacement value, not so much in terms of what I actually find necessary to replace and laughably little in terms of what he will get for it. Daniel probably does not even know the use of many objects he stole. It will be hard to use or even sell those. The three said persons have asked Daniel to return the goods, but he is denying everything and claims that Philemon is the thief! From what I hear, police would get an astonishing picture of open and publicly visible theft � and even quarrels and debates about what to steal, and how!  � by interviewing four or five witnesses. Apart from a theft accusation: if Daniel was, as he claimed, in the legal position to �release� the boat with my personal effects after I paid him 1.7 million for such a �release� is he not legally responsible for the integrity of boat and cargo until he �released� it? Laws laws laws, fruitless thoughts for Tanzania.
What can I do against Daniel which is not cumbersome, costly, and rich of risks of failure? Nothing. Though he swindled and stole a fortune to African standards, it is probably gone and his limited brains do not know where it went. I just repeat here roughly what I wrote at the end of Stealing in Africa: Many people witnessed the theft and swindling. If I would want twice that amount of people to declare to police they witnessed it, this would cost me less than a few hundred euros. If I would want to have Daniel jailed for 10 years this would cost me � 400/=, with may be every now and then (when his family has collected some money for release) a few additional euros to keep him in. European charities would come to feed him and his poor family.
But I know more agreeable things to do, even with that small sum of money.  Hence T: 2 is out. State of BPP: [L:1234567abcdefghi - T:1234]

T:3 Bukoba Lake Police.
 
My report on the kidnapping for ransom by TZ police is on my website click here. Again, sensational misbehaviour of government officers. Legal action? Even if there would be some capable man in judicial ranks collecting the incidents - which there is surely not - why would he start with mine? Fighting entire corrupt countries is not my idea of being in Africa. Hence T: 3 is out. State of BPP: [L:1234567abcdefghi - T:1234]

T:4 Kamkala Sinnautics Tanzania
 
I do not know the situation of the Land Tribunal case. Obviously, neither am I interested. Going after that stolen money? No way! Hence T: 4 is out. State of BPP: [L:1234567abcdefghi - T:1234]
Details: The Kamkala Soap Index Page
 

BPP killed

This kills the final, Tanzanian side of the BPP. In the end it did by reflection only, but the time it took, almost two months, was needed to leave behind any seductive idea of the cheap but time and mind consuming entreprise of retrieval, restoring order, punishment, and retaliation. A good help was my find of the Penguin Prince of Machiavelli in a Kampala bookshop. Machiavelli's idolatry of "prowess" as the proper character of a prince convinced me: prowess is the thing that makes you fight and establish - provided you keep M.'s sound advice in mind! -  victories and other depressing goodies, so it definitely is what you should leave behind if you want to be mentally healthy and independent. Your princedom is inside, the real Great Art is not loose it to fools. I just failed this time to stay uninteresting to savage ambitions. That was stupid enough: if you arouse interest, you have obviously done something wrong - at least something that should be below your standard. It starts their game. Do not make it even worse to join them in it! I still think of Tanzanian government officers once or twice a day, but I trust that will be once or twice a week soon.
What do they think? Not much. It took me some years, but I start to understand which thoughts arise there, and which do not. This is Africa: brains too small to manage, mass too big for a cure, so - with some exercise - the ideal place to be!