We never had to deal with math issues in college. Hunter and I were both history majors at UVa – I don’t think either of us have touched a pencil sharpener since Saddam was still in power. Figuring out who owed who what, calculating tip, divvying up monthly utility bills – that’s why we were friends with E-schoolers like Tom and Boo Boo Drew. History majors got a free pass on practicality. We got to chill.
The portions of our brains earmarked for long division and times tables have turned to mush as a result.
Why I think that: the other day’s gasoline fiasco.
USD 1 is worth about 1,230 Tanzanian shillings. Think about how many zero's that is when you’re buying gas. It’s just as expensive here as it is at home. Why else would about half of all five minute taxi rides in this area involve a brief stop at a “petrol” station? Even if you’re only filling up your tank with ten bucks worth, you’re paying about 12 g’s in Tanzanian currency. Twenty bucks? – about 25 g’s.
You can see how it could get confusing.
So there we were, Hunter and I, sitting in the front of our newly rented car that we’re driving around for the week while entertaining a potential donor family for the Foundation. They only do full service in
“Dude,” Hunter said, shuffling through the mad amount of cash we’d just withdrawn from the ATM for the week of taking this family around. “I’m not sure we have enough money for this. Tell him to stop.”
Twenty thousand…
“Acha, acha,” I said from the passenger seat, which, in this former British colony, is on the left.
By the time Joe Tanzanian Gas Worker actually got around to letting up on the handle, the meter was resting on 32,000 shillings.
“Dude...” Hunter was panicked. “Three hundred thousand?!?!?!" We had just withdrawn the daily limit of 400,000 and had already had to pay in advance for a week of renting the car. That was all we had. Hunter's eyes were ... open. "We are screwed man.”
I started counting the little money I had in my pocket to see what we were going to be able to piece together. Hunter was shuffling a wad of 10,000 notes like a Vegas blackjack dealer.
“Chakula, chakula,” came a voice from just outside Hunter’s window. A hungry Arusha street kid – though whether he was hungry for actual chakula (food) or glue I can’t say for sure – was looking very cracked out and very pathetic as he asked Hunter to spare just a little bit of the roughly $280 he was watching him flip through.
“Hapana, hapana,” Hunter said, the consummate nice guy, even when telling glue sniffers to leave him alone.
“Toka!” I added in. Scram! I’m not nearly as sympathetic to those little hustlas.
The dude’s lip was so swollen it looked like he had elephantitis, not that I’ve ever actually known anyone to have that.
Our focus returned to the predicament.
“Man, how much do you have??” Hunter asked again. I can't remember the exact amount, but the answer was "not enough."
The saddest part about this whole story is that at no point did either of the two UVa-educated, fully grown men stop and think to themselves, “Wait a minute. I know gas is expensive, but when was the last time gas cost over THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS?”
I take that back. One of the UVa-educated, fully grown men did stop and think about that… after about a minute.
And it wasn’t Hunter.
“Wait a minute dude.” I was double-checking the meter. It did not say 320,000. “That says only thirty two thousand.”
What followed was one of those silent pauses in which, though no words were actually said, telepathically we both knew what the other was thinking: Thank God our lives are not being documented on reality TV.
I took four of those 10,000 bills that had been part of the Vegas-size deck of Tanzanian shillings and handed them to the confused attendant. Another homeless glue sniffer was staring at us through the drivers side window now, equally confused as to how we could possibly have that much liquid cash and yet still say with straight faces that we didn’t have any spare change.
“Man,” Hunter said. “Are we like perma-stoned or something after four years of college?”
It was like the opening scene from “Super Troopers.”
“I can’t pull over anymore! I’m already pulled over!”
“Yeah, he can’t pull over anymore! He can’t pull over anymore! He’s already pulled over!”
But instead of that, it was, “Three hundred thousand?? I don’t have that much money! We can’t pay 300,000! We’re already pulled over! We can’t pull over anymore!”
Tom, Drew, someone from the E-school: please, come and save us.
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