So this morning Jake and I decided to change our plans completely. Here is why:
When Jake and I arrived, Gasaya took us to get our CTA Visas that I mentioned earlier. We paid an immigration officer, and have the CTA in our passport. Well, we found out later that Gasaya told Aga, Kim and Sara that he would get theirs, so they gave him the money. He returned their passport, and they assumed that their passports were just registered as having a CTA; until they saw ours and Eva's (who had also gotten hers at the immigration office). They asked Gasaya,and that is when things got complicated. He ignored them, yelled at them, threatened them and refused to help them. He basically stole their money. They went to the immigration office and they began to help them. Two of the girls got their money returned. The guy who is in charge of the entire school (primary and secondary) also got involved. He said that none of our placement fees ($200) went to the school. It was all basically a scam, so this morning Jake and I decided we are leaving with Kim and Aga in the morning to travel.
We never had any direct confrontation with Gasaya, so we decided to ask him for our money back that we paid ahead of time for the hostel for four weeks. He agreed, but said he was in Dar. We said he would meet him the next day when we got to Dar. He ended up lying about being in Dar, and has ignored our texts and calls ever since. It is all very unfortunate. We plan to report him to the school fund so that his scam stops. The immigration officer is also still working to get some money back.
We came here to volunteer, teach and try to do something good. It is sad that we were unable to do that because of a greedy person. However, we are very excited to begin traveling Africa for an entire month. We will travel with Aga, Kim and Jemshed to Zanzibar until Sunday, June 30th. Then, they will go home and Jake and I will travel more. Our plans are to see more of Zanzibar, go on a Safari and see Mount Kilimanjaro.
Wish us luck!
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ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you were able to get a few days of teaching experience in before this happened. Will you have the opportunity to teach with the school, or a different one at all the remainder of your trip?
ReplyDeleteNo, we won't get to teach again. It's unfortunate, but we didn't want to be a part of the scam. I guess that happens a lot around here, and we didn't want it to happen again. They charge placement fees that we can't be positive where they go. I will tell you more about it when I see you, but it seems the only way to help out is to start your own thing: program, school, organization, etc. Maybe someday we can do something like that :)
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