Geita -- the Capital

Geita used to be just your everyday district in a larger region ( a region is essentially the same as a state; a district like a county).  But as of january 1st of this year, Geita is now the capital city of it's own region.  Yes, we are now a state.  For the last several years the Mwanza region has been rapidly growing in population, yet retained the same number of government offices and employees.  Things have been getting backed up, to say the least.  We heard the rumor long before it actually came to be.  We wondered if it would really happen.  Surprisingly, it did.  And even the exact date they said it would be.

Because of this, Geita will be changing a lot over the next several years.  They've already started clearing land for the the new government offices.  They've outlawed bicycle taxis (I'm not sure why) though people aren't paying much attention to that particular mandate.  They've even put big red Xs on raggedy buildings along the main street to mark them for demolition; I assume to make Geita look prettier.  We figure one day we might even get more than the one paved road we already have.

All this, though, did not make renewing our residence permits easier.  We still had to go to Mwanza to the Immigration office there as ours does not yet have the capabilities to process the visas.  So off we went.  We were told this would take a day or maybe two--instead it took 5.  I suppose that's not so bad compared to the five months it took to get our original visas.  But we do get tired of driving to the "big city" to do things like this.  It's time away from home and work.  Brett managed to get some work done there, but still, it's gotten a little old.  I don't know if having our own immigration offices here in town will make the process any shorter, but at least at the end of the day we can come home and sleep in our own beds. And of course we also have the pride of being Geita, capital city of Geita region.  And if that doesn't make life fantastic, I don't know what will.