Famous Last Words

So officially, according to the staff at Volunteer Africa, we are not really supposed to go out at night. We should be concentrating on the job, we shouldn’t be giving locals a bad impression of wazungu, and most importantly, it’s not seen to be all that safe. Obviously, this advice is not heeded at all and we always go out and always have a fantastic time, even if we encounter one or two minor dramas along the way (which we always do). These dramas make for good stories, but Saturday night’s drama I could have done without, even if I think it definitely makes the best story so far.

We have been hanging out on the weekends with the pilots I mentioned in my first blog – they’re lovely boys and are here making maps of the landscape which their company sells to other companies that are looking for diamonds. They’re off to DR Congo at any second so we went out to celebrate our goodbyes on Saturday night. Ann-Marie and Sandra were also leaving the following day so a big night was planned.

The evening begins questionably with one of the guys (a new one who none of us girls know or like at all) taking a leak in our compound against our day guard’s house. I bawl him out while holding him by the scruff of his neck and tell him that his defence – that Africans do the same thing – has no rationale whatsoever and that if I see him do the same again I’ll give him a beating. We manage to get over that hurdle by piling 11 people into the boys’ landcruiser – when we get out the entire Tabora Hotel peers out to watch mzungu after mzungu tumbling out of the car (it’s like the punchline to one of those jokes – “how many [insert racial subgroup] can fit into a [insert typical Australian vehicle]?”. After dealing with the good-natured, yet cringeworthy humiliation of seeing all the pilots dancing on stage with the members of the One Temi Band (who, I will admit, take it all with much more good humour than would any band whose stage had been crashed in Australia), we head off to the infamous Club Royale, home of the pikipiki Coffin Cheaters, the squat toilets with doors that don’t close, and the Konyagi that comes in plastic bags. While walking there, Pilot Ed tells me that the last time he was here, he and Matt were forced to hand over money in the toilets (either that or have their throats slit – nice that they were given the choice, I think). I say “hamna shida (no problem)! We have been lots of times and nothing like that has ever happened to us. It’ll be fine.”

We get inside and grab a couch; some of us go to dance and others sit down to drink. At some point in the evening I remember that I was dancing with Ed and a guy comes up to us, pulls out a TzSh1000 note and starts gesturing to Ed with it.

“One thousand for Liza,” he says. (I must have told him my name.)

One thousand shillings? I’m offended. A girl like me should get at least a fiver (around $5)… but I am over 25 in Africa so my value probably isn’t what it might be in Australia, even if I am a mzungu. Since he doesn’t get to have me, he settles for muscling Ed for a beer (“Serengeti or else,” he says menacingly), making it twice out of two times Ed has been threatened at Club Royale.

I dance for a while with my bag over my shoulder, then come to flop down next to Matt and we chat for a while. I get up to go have another dance, take off my bag and ask Matt to look after it for me.

I say “please don’t take your eyes off this bag and do not move from this spot.”

He looks at me like I’m a moron and says “Do you think I’m a fucking retard?”.
I say “not at all, but you know how it always makes you feel better to have said the words, right?”. He agrees and off I go.

I come back later (I don’t know exactly how much later it was because I remember getting up and back a few times, always sitting in a different spot but Matt is always in exactly the same place, sitting ON my bag and Mandi’s (Mandi carries around all – and I mean ALL – her business: two phones, passport, ALL her money, her cards, everything, which I think is completely mental). Eventually Matt leans over and asks me to take his place so he can go to the bathroom. I scoot over, look at the situation for a split second and say “Matt, where’s my bag?”

Gone. Like a ray of light only faster.

No one can work our how or when, specifically how, since Matt has been sitting ON both bags. I have a panicked ferret around for about a minute, then say “forget it, it’s gone”, and walk outside in tears to deal with the loss (my mobile [on its last legs anyway but desperately needed here] and much more importantly, my camera). Luckily I’m obsessive about backing up pictures and have everything on thumb drives and CDs, so all I lost was the pictures I had been taking that night. In comparison to what could have been taken I was extraordinarily lucky so I know all I need is a moment outside for a quick cry, and then philosophy would kick in, and another drink of Konyagi would numb any residual pain or self-flagellation at having taken off my bag in a nightclub in Africa.

I’m standing outside to the left of the door wiping away the tears when I hear a commotion to the right. Mandi is calling my name; I go over and see a group of guys including Daniel, the Sekasuas’ son who is out with us, beating the crap out of a guy who had been sitting to my right trying to talk to me about five minutes before we noticed my bag was gone (Matt was to my left, so I can’t imagine it was directly this guy, although he may have been involved in the distraction part of the operation). Mandi is hysterically saying “Liza, please tell Daniel this isn’t the guy, please tell him this guy didn’t do it or Daniel is going to kill him.” I can’t even work out what’s going on at this point; all I can see is a group of men with Mandi smack in the middle of it. I hear a punch (they don’t sound the same in the movies) and I start shouting at Mandi to stop using herself as a human shield (Mandi is pretty streetwise and never, ever thinks of herself in a dangerous situation). She turns toward me, still begging me to say it wasn’t this guy, and I see she’s covered in blood – there are streaks of it all over her shirt (which she had borrowed from me) and spatters all over her face. I know it’s not her blood but considering we are in Tanzania, that’s even more scary than if it was. Meanwhile this guy is standing there with blood all over his face, not even fighting back.

I start weeping again and scream at Mandi to get out of the middle of the madness but she won’t. Eventually (I think) Daniel stops punching the guy who runs off, and Mandi tries to calm Daniel down while I storm off (unintelligently) down the road into the darkness alone before being stopped and brought back by Matt. Matt and Ed had been trying to stop the fight as well and start listening to a man who implies he knows what had happened. This guy starts talking earnestly to Matt and Ed and is noticed by another guy I had danced with briefly inside who said he was a police officer. The guy speaking to the boys asks to see proof that this guy is a cop. Another fight breaks out, which Mandi and I, ever the pacifists, keep trying to stop. The problem is that in Tanzania, getting the police involved in anything means there will be an investigation (locals are always outraged and ashamed when wazungu are robbed and we have been told repeatedly that, unknown to us, there is a whole subculture of people who watch out for wazungu and thwart attempts at crimes against us that we will never even know took place). A Tanzanian police investigation involves rounding up all the people in the vicinity of the crime and beating them senseless until one of them confesses. Over a camera and phone, I’m not willing to subject anyone to this so Mandi and I begin protesting vehemently to everyone to let it drop and leave everyone alone. Eventually the boys convince Mandi to get into a taxi but they’re are concerned that the guy trying to help us is going to get killed if we leave him there, so we chuck him into the taxi too and speed off back to our house. When we get there there’s another dispute over what to do with the guy we have abducted from the club, and ultimately he is sent off home in the taxi.

By this time it’s 5am and Matt, Ed, Daniel, Mandi and I decide there’s little that can be done now except to lie on the water tank and drink more Konyagi (I tell you, it numbs the pain). Matt, who has been apologising profusely to me for an hour, gets his guitar and composes a song that involves a repetition of the words “pole sana” and “obviously, my ass cannot be trusted”. At 5.20am, Sandra and Ann-Marie, who are leaving today and had gone home early to be ready for Ann-Marie’s 6am departure on a bus to Arusha, come out to the tank to investigate the weird mood on it and Mandi informs them that we were jacked. Around this time Ann-Marie realises that it’s 5.30am and Sheki, who is travelling with her to Arusha, is nowhere to be found. Another fight breaks out between Mandi and Ann-Marie in the midst of the stress of trying to get Ann-Marie to the bus station (there’s no other bus until Wednesday), and Mandi, for the first time since being here, loses her temper and lets fly with a homegirl monologue to rival anything ever written by Quentin Tarantino. Ann-Marie and Sandra leave for the bus station and Mandi storms off into her room which is the last they all see of each other, despite having lived and worked together for three months. Five minutes later they’re back, Ann-Marie having missed the bus and still having no idea where Sheki is.

Around this time Matt realises he and Ed should probably get back to the pilots’ house so they can start the day’s flying. Unfortunately, Harry, their driver, is nowhere to be found and Tim, one of the guys scheduled to fly that day, apparently has food poisoning. We finally get hold of Harry and Mandi, Ed, Matt, Daniel and I pile into the car, pick up Jason from the boys’ house, and head out to the airport. Daniel is basically asleep on his feet and is wrapped in the Masai blanket Mandi bought at the market. At this point it’s 7am and I look around the truck to realise that I am in Tanzania, bagless, cameraless, sleepless, surrounded by three severely hungover Kiwi pilots, an insomniac geophysicist, a pissed-off blonde Arizonian, and a Masai warrior.

And did I mention that Sunday is the day the new volunteers are scheduled to arrive? What a good impression we were about to make.

We spend about two hours at the airport trying to get the boys’ plane to work, then meet Dr Sekasua, Mama and Sandra in the departure room. Sandra looks like she’s about to kill us both before she gets on the plane to Dar but we are focused more on a) not telling the Doctor that we had been robbed, or he would be devastated, ashamed and humiliated by his own countrymen and spend his precious time trying to fix the problem, and b) hiding Daniel from the Doctor, who would probably murder him if he knew he was out with us and this had happened. I’m like the walking dead at this point and Matt, Mandi and I head to the Tabora for breakfast, then back to the airport to pick up the pilots who flew 100 kilometres at 20 metres above the ground, encountered a thunderstorm, and turned back after half an hour. At around noon Mandi and I finally fall into bed (having been told, blessedly, that the new girls had been delayed in Dar until Tuesday) and sleep until 5pm.

Pole sana. I wish I could say at least no one was hurt. And my shirt (which Mandi looks way better in that I do, so I hated her even before she covered it in a strange man’s blood) is still soaking in a bucket of water.

…and I will never, ever let Matt live “do you think I’m a fucking retard?” down.