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| (This is not John's place. But it is a place.) |
At the grocery store in Tanga I hear
an older white guy talking to the Indian checkout clerk about how he had been
recently robbed and how somebody else he knows had been shot. She commiserates.
Two months later while we're getting new passports at the Canadian High Commission in
Dar Es Salaam, I see him again, explaining to the woman behind the glass how he
lost his passport and papers, all stolen. We recognize each other. Let’s call
him John. John and his girlfriend have a modest beach resort – we tell him we’ve
actually come across his website. He describes how the small resorts along his
way were robbed one after the other by men with machine guns pretending to be
police and looking for tourists with foreign cash and pretty baubles. The resort’s security guards
all ran away, and John and his girlfriend were badly beaten and robbed;
elsewhere, someone was shot through the leg; elsewhere, someone was shot to
death. Although the police took their sweet time, they eventually tracked down the
thieves, who made the mistake of using stolen cell phones. Turns out that these
guys rented their weapons from the military in a deal brokered by a policeman.
Later, I will tell this story to a Kenyan
fisherman friend, a kind-hearted Muslim bloke who insists with genuine
conviction that we’re all brothers and isn't fussed that I don't believe in God, which doesn't stop him from educating me in things Islam and polygamous. He will laugh and say he’s not surprised because
it happens all the time. The criminals get their guns from the police/military
because regular people can’t have guns and that’s the best place to get them. He doesn’t like the police because they just
take your money. He will explain that they don't normally have police at his village. If you see a policeman, you warn everyone by
cell phone that the Big Snake is coming. Before cell phones they had other methods. So I will
ask: what do you do if you, say, catch somebody stealing. He will say: we beat
him to death or beat him and kick him out of the village and turn him over to
the police, which is worse than death.
Back at the Canadian High
Commission, as we’re just about to leave, John hands us his card and enthusiastically
invites us to check out his place.
