Trying to Do Business in Arusha

One day we went to buy 4 small fittings to extend some plumbing water lines to raise a water tank 2 m. We wanted to gt more pressure at the tap outlets. These were PVC fittings that would take about 1 hour to go buy in Australia including Melbourne traffic. The first obstacle we have over here is we do not speak the language let alone any technical terms. Most people in Tanzania do speak some English at least; otherwise, it would be very difficult to find our way around. We called the shop and through several further calls managed to get the message across that we wanted to come and visit their shop for these parts. The shop is a national company with multiple offices, but they have no email address, no webpage and they do not answer the land line, only a cell phone. The woman was doing her best but we could not understand her too well. Basically she was saying as there are no street names she could not tell us where they were other than in the industrial area. (And we did not know where that was either.) She said come with your driver as she would tell him. We have no driver!! I said I would call her again when we got into the town centre. We did this but we just could not understand her instructions and spent another 45 mins driving around. Finally I asked if she could meet us at the big grocery store, so she did. We then followed her in our truck to her shop. Turns out it is not far off the main street and is a 5 min drive from the town centre. But with no street signs how do you describe your location to someone? Once there I showed her a picture of the fittings we wanted having printed them off a website from a google search the night before. She did not have these in stock but would order them from Dar Es Salam overnight. Now this is about 2 hours later from when we arrived in town.
For the next set of brass hose fittings: The day before, I called a UK guy living here who I hoped would know where to get these parts. He suggested two places on the main street, that we already knew of, and said there were no other industrial type businesses around that would sell fittings. The PVC sales person had also suggested another hardware store on the main street as well. By now we are coming to understand that all the technical items are to be sourced from a short section of the main street of town and if they don’t have them, they are not to be found in Arusha. We drove back to the main street and it is now 1 pm’ish, so all the hardware type stores are closed for the lunch break. They close it seems for about 2 hours. So we went and had lunch too. After lunch back to the hardware stores, there are about 6 of them virtually in a row. I showed them the picture of a ¾” brass hose barb and they just shake their heads like they have never seen one before that big. A couple bought out a ¼” hose barb saying that was all they had. (These are used on compressors which they do carry). So having exhausted all those shops, we drive pass our last hope (which are the two shops the UK guy had mentioned to us.) Still closed for lunch and it is about 3 pm. So we drive back to ADRA. The result of the day was from 11 am to 3:30 we had run around after $10 worth of common fittings and none to be had.
The hardware stores are quite different too. They almost all are a single shop front with a small entrance area about 2 m x 2 m, then a counter with a bunch of bars rising from it up to the ceiling and the sales staff behind the bars. The entrance area has basic items on display like hammers, wrenches, maybe a compressor or a generator. But anything you want, you have to ask for and they tell you if they have it or not. If they do, they go to the back to get it. The back is very crammed and it is a testament to their memory I guess to know what is back there. They do stock common things that may be used on a construction site but anything else, Samehani. (Sorry). There is just no way to browse to see what they have or what else they may have that could do the job as well.
Then begins the problem of finding out who then has parts in another city (which means Dar Es Salam in Tanzania, a 10 hr drive, or Nairobi over the border, a 5 hr drive, in Kenya). Many streets have no names so there are no physical addresses, many of the phone lines have been stolen or neglected so most people are on mobile phones. This means they are not in the phone book. There is no such thing as yellow pages. Most do not have internet so there are no websites to search, let alone find a list of products a company may offer. Any website that does come up for a supplier in Tanzania is normally another search engine site listing Indian or Chinese sites that say they can sell to Tanzania or Thailand etc. Business marketing it seems is all word of mouth only. No one apart from the bigger tourist hotels take credit cards, so it is a cash only based system. There is 20% VAT added to the cost of an item or service too. But you often don’t get a receipt so it makes one wonder about where the VAT is going.
If I do find parts in one of these other cities, I have yet to figure out how to actually pay for them so they will send them. Them I am told if I get them in 2-10 days I would be lucky as I might not get them at all unless I were to use a professional courier service.
10 days later, still no sign of the PVC fittings so I cancelled them and succumbed to the convention used here which is to use galvanised steel pipe and a plumber out on site to manually thread the pipe as needed. But we got the job finished and raised the water tank 2 meters and indeed did get more pressure out the taps.